>Which is why in NYC when they raised the minimum wage for fast food workers, most of the people at McDonald's who used to take orders just got replaced with kiosks
Is it really true though? When you actually look at the real world, you'll find those kiosks at McDonalds in airports too, despite not being in districts that raised minimum wage. And what about McDonalds in other wealthy countries, that often have state mandated living wages much higher than in the US? They don't particularly seemed to have rushed to automate any quicker than in the US.
In fact, I think it's more likely that you are overlooking the myriad of other benefits: The kiosk can take orders in any language, for example. Perhaps the Kiosk was always the superior option for McDonalds to use for their store. It just took until the coincidental timing for the technology to become cheaper, and robust enough, to use in practice.
They've been superior for a while. We had touchscreen kiosks at a Jack-in-the-Box (cheap burger chain) at near my university back in 2007.
It was a pilot program, and the CEO said they found that young people preferred to wait in line for the kiosk rather than place their order with an actual human, but older people preferred the opposite, so they decided to wait before rolling it out to all their locations. I think touchscreen devices are finally omnipresent enough that the older age demographics can handle ordering via a touchscreen.
A more sinister take would be that the larger restaurant chains anticipated minimum-wage increases, and timed the rollout of touchscreen devices to coincide with the rollout of minimum wage legislation, so their lobbyists can make the argument that minimum wage increases cost jobs, because they're still going to have to pay the cooks in the back and the people to keep the place clean.
Is it really true though? When you actually look at the real world, you'll find those kiosks at McDonalds in airports too, despite not being in districts that raised minimum wage. And what about McDonalds in other wealthy countries, that often have state mandated living wages much higher than in the US? They don't particularly seemed to have rushed to automate any quicker than in the US.
In fact, I think it's more likely that you are overlooking the myriad of other benefits: The kiosk can take orders in any language, for example. Perhaps the Kiosk was always the superior option for McDonalds to use for their store. It just took until the coincidental timing for the technology to become cheaper, and robust enough, to use in practice.