Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s and other fast-food chains have loomed as job killers since they were first rolled out 25 years ago, reports CNN.com (Sept. 20, 2024). But nobody predicted what actually happened. In one of the earliest mentions of kiosks in fast-food settings in 1999, industry publication Business Information said that McDonald’s was working to “develop an electronic order-taking system that may eventually replace some of its human equivalents.”
Instead, touchscreen kiosks have added extra work for kitchen staff and pushed customers to order more food than they do at the cash register. The kiosks show the unintended consequences of technology in fast-food and retail settings, including self-checkout. Chains are now experimenting with AI at drive-thru lanes, and the experience with kiosks holds lessons for them.
Today, instead of replacing workers, companies deploy kiosks to transfer labor to other tasks like handing off pickup orders, help increase sales, easily adjust prices and speed up service. Kiosks “guarantee that the upsell opportunities” like a milkshake or fries are suggested to customers when they order, said Shake Shack’s CEO. “Sometimes that is not always a priority for employees when you’ve got 40 people in line.” Kiosks also shift employees from behind the cash register to maintaining the dining area, delivering food to customers or working in the kitchen, he said.
Some McDonald’s are now rolling out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations, McDonald’s is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new “guest experience lead” jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts. Kiosks “have created a restaurant within a restaurant.”
Quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels. The impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. In banking, ATMs freed tellers from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value.
Classroom discussion questions:
- In what other industries have kiosks altered the service process?
- Which of the 10 OM decisions in your Heizer/Render/Munson text are impacted by technologies such as this? How?
