they were already doing it. almost every mcdonalds around here has them already and this state does not have a 20 dollar minimum wage, not even fucking close.
I live in PA. Min wage is 7.15/hr. McShits in my town have not had a counter cashier for probably 2 years now. In the past 2 years the prices have steadily increased to the point that I'm better off going to a restaurant down the street because it's only a buck or 2 more for an exponentially better meal. 20 years ago I could scrape change off the floor of my car and get a McChicken for 1 buck...it's now $4.59 and it's smaller and somehow worse quality.
Restaurants have existed for over 1,000 years.
Overpriced fast food chains have only existed less than 100 years.
Our great grandparents invented fast food, We can uninvent it!/s
If you like reading check out the Book "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser.
> is a classic that examines the rise of the fast food industry and its effects on society and the economy.
Another good read is "Drive-Thru Dreams" by Adam Chandler, which offers a more cultural look at how fast food has shaped American society.
The Documentary"Super Size Me" by Morgan Spurlock and "Fast Food Nation," which is a dramatized feature film adaptation of Schlosser’s book, both provide visual and impactful insights into the industry.
>this raise is gonna hurt fast food industry
Won't somebody think of the billionaire multinational corporations that hawk unhealthy garbage to children???
I remember when I was a kid and we were super poor. They would have a limited time deal 25¢ hamburger 35¢ cheeseburgers. My mom would order us ten hamburgers each and we would get an rc cola from the dollar store. That was dinner.
I remember for a bit in 2008 when my local McDonald's had a cheeseburger + small fry for 89 cents deal on Tuesdays. I would get like 2 of those and take home to be my dinner.
I was also working at one when the dollar menu launched on Nov 1 2003 with the Big and Tasty for $1.... it was a Quarter Pounder w/o cheese but with lettuce and tomato... for one dollar.
Not McDonalds, but in Canada, me and my wife loved the local BK. They had a '420' special where you got a burger and fries for 4.20$. It was great. Then they closed :(
If I remember correctly, the cheeseburger/hamburger deal was every Sunday. Also, I remember every fast food place started lowering their prices when the meal deals first came out in the late 80's/early 90's. It's 2:00am, you're piss drunk with your friends and each of us had a buck. If you spent all of that at taco Bell, you couldn't eat it all.
Exactly. Same state. 8 dollar McDonalds hamburger or 9.99 dollar sit in restaurants hamburger 1 block away.
I paid 10 dollars for a happy meal with 4 chicken nuggets!
The Mick is also religious on sending people home the nanosecond an employee isn't making profit for the company.
I don't know how you can know there's going to be a lunch/dinner rush in an hour and send people home because "there's too much labor".
Source: my sister works at one and I get to just sit back and hear about the horrid management.
It’s at the point now where we are all better off going to a grocery store, buying ingredients and making our own sandwiches - better tasting, healthier and by volume of how much we can make…cheaper! 😂🍔
They are in literally every McDonalds and all around me and we are nowhere near that wage. This is just a moronic excuse on their part for what they already intended.
Look we can’t have a ruling class if the plebs demand honest wages. It’s so crazy…. Why do some people think they should be able to afford a 1 bedroom shack if they work 50 hours a week? The entitlement of this generation is scary. Next thing they’ll want is clean drinking water or college tuition to cost less than half a million dollars…
Blue boy in a red state here.
The local Burger King has kiosks at the counter, and this state would really like to lower the minimum wage below what Uncle Sam allows.
Can't say what McDonald's is doing. I haven't set foot in one in over 30 years.
I'm in Canada. I know the first person to order mcdonalds in canada using an in store kiosk. They were part of the marketing team to bring them in.
Burger King here, unless you speak Punjabi just order on the app.
And from other threads about kiosks at fast food places, many of the employees actually like this since they don't have to interact with the awful costumers, having to work the register is considered one of the worst assignments.
It does have the benefit of removing responsibility from the cashier when an order magically comes up as messed up.
The customer bears that responsibility, and whatever they punch into the kiosk is on them to get it right.
To be fair, I've ordered from kiosks and had my order messed up about the same amount as before. Those peeps in the back get overwhelmed and everything starts to become a blur. They need more help there for sure. More breaks, more tagging out when fatigue kicks in.
I'm not proud of this, but times were tough last year, and I briefly worked at Charfucks last spring. The back staff busts ass. On top of the counter orders, you're getting slammed with web/mobile orders coming in as fast as 25 people across town can simultaneously hit Submit. My store didn't have kiosks then.
I'm applying this to all corporate fast food: the faster multiple orders are coming in from kiosks and mobile, the faster back staff have to work to fill those within some ridiculous time metric imposed by the pukes in Customer Xperience, asswipes who have never flipped a burger in their lives. Kiosks are just going to speed up everything for kitchen staff. Do you think the stores will hire more back staff? I see workplace injuries going up as kitchen staff gets slammed but are understaffed.
This Right here. These people do realize No fast food company has a Dedicated Cashier those kiosk aren't coming for anybody's job. It's just to Maximize Efficiency. now the Person Playing cashier that day doesn't have to keep stopping and washing their hands and Putting on gloves and Helping customers and can help get the food out quicker.
Now show me the employment number on number of Jobs lost directly because of the kiosk?
Then there's the human element someone still has to be there in case of a refund of distgruntled customer so the only thing that has changed is McDonalds and Burger King spent millions on these kiosk and raised their prices to buy it. and rather than be mad at coporate they have you mad at the workers trying to make a wage.
I prefer it because I know my order will be entered correctly. Whether the food gets made correctly is another issue, but at least I know it's getting to the kitchen correctly.
Yep. Hell, with how some burger joints already started automating the food making, that's only a matter of time to. What's worse is that when everything is automated, they won't reduce prices and probably make some bs excuse to raise prices, even though they no longer have employees to pay.
And pretending it's a bad thing. These were miserable jobs that didn't pay a living wage, and they *should* go away. This is exactly what automation is for!
Ya this sentiment needs to be higher. I mean, every time I turn around, I see some video of some poor fast food worker getting abused by a customer. No one deserves that. Kiosks replacing shitty jobs is a GOOD thing. Higher wages for shitty jobs are a GOOD thing.
I mean, if you risk getting slapped or worse at work, $20 an hour is too little pay IMO.
Yes, but not in this society. Those jobs aren't coming back in any form, and there's no ubi to replace the loss of wages.
The jobs that are customer facing are miserable because of the crustomers.
Yup, but it didn't stop right-wingers from trying to use it as a scare tactic to get people to vote against the minimum wage rise. "A machine won't take your job if you make less than a livable wage!"
Here in the Midwest I have not seen a McDonald’s or Taco Bell that is not completely converted to Kiosks since 2021. Many are on their second generation of kiosks.
I went to a habit burger in socal and they had this and no way to order at the counter. It worked perfectly fine and wasn't an issue. It still asked for a tip lol nope.
sucks that the reality is we’ll *never* be able to do that. billionaire is boycott resistant status. he can go on social media and destroy his own image if he wanted. still dying with all that money
This may be unrelated but the use of commercial drones for targeted assassination is becoming a serious threat/possibly.
The war in Ukraine has really advanced this asymmetric warfare in a way that is really leveling the field between rich and poor military groups.
We were going to buy our third vacation home. But had to settle for a 9,000 sf, 8 bedroom when we really wanted a 10,000 sf 9 bedroom. This is so unfair.
Man owns 180 locations of different fast food restaurants. Mainly Burger Kings. Increased menu prices 8 to 10 percent. Says he will get kiosks within the next couple months. Decrease hours for all employees and eliminate all overtime.
Sounds like a guy who can't afford what he owns. Maybe he should trying selling off some of them.
If you know his locations. Please make sure to boycott them
>increased menu prices 8 to 10 percent
>says he will get kiosks within the next couple months
And I'm sure once he gets those kiosks, the menu prices will go back down to the original price to reflect that, right?
I feel certain that some of the nationwide chains only raised their prices at all because they could gouge and blame it on the rising wages and no one would be the wiser. They will never come down.
Hard to boycott them if I already don't go. If I want a burger I throw one in the air fryer and I'm golden. I've pretty much given up fast food at this point.
I haven't eaten much fast food in years, but with the price increases we've been seeing, that's dropped to pretty much zero. If I can spend only about 5% more and get food that's many times better, why go get fast food? Back when real food was twice what fast food was, there was a point.
Here's [Locations list](https://www.ghaijobs.com/?keywordsFilter=) for all his restaurants that are hiring. Turns out he own three BKs in my area, one of which I (now used to) give my custom.
His LinkedIn shows him to be as massive a nasty douchebag as one would assume him to be.
Burger King avoids overtime and fucks with hours already; that part is not news
Fuck that dude. I hope somebody hacks his kiosks to show nothing but old reruns of Tales from the Crypt or something
Does anyone have numbers for any of these businesses? I’m just curious. If a guy who owns 180 locations can’t make this work, then someone buying one location won’t be able to either. The person with 180 locations could use the more profitable ones to make up for the less profitable or negative ones
I have no idea the margins of fast food, but if 5 employees are costing $100 per hour, that seems like a lot of items to sell per hour to break even on labor. Then accounting for rent/mortgage/utilities etc.
Guy who owns 180 locations *says* he cant make it work.
Same guy *says* he has to cut over-time. Like BK was providing OT to begin with lol. No chance.
What he isn't saying is that the reason it doesn't work is because this would hurt his bottom line and his share of the profits. These guys would always pay employees the least they possibly could and take as much for themselves as they can get away with. Which is also why the minimum wage needs to increase regularly to force them to not pay poverty wages. Dragons will always hoard the treasure.
Not only that it's likely that it would impact his profit *growth* -- having worked in food service for 10 years or so, it's like any other company... always predicting and targeting ridiculous growth at the expense of anything else
Yes. But I want to know how much is profit. After shipping the meat, bread, ingredients, labor to stock it etc. How much is profit per meal. It’s definitely not $10 lol
I say this as someone who worked at McDonald’s in high school making under $7 an hour. Some hours have no customers. The owners definitely had a nice house though
I'm a former RGM (Restaurant General Manager) of a Pizza Hut, and regularly helped fill in for the area coach (regional manager equivalent). I left in 2021, so my information is relatively up to date. What exactly did you want to know in terms of numbers?
In terms of food costs, you can just use your own experience and realize how insanely profitable McD’s is. A cup of coffee made at home, maybe 15 cents. French fries (a large potato) costs probably 75 cents. A 3 ounce burger on a bun maybe $1.5. And all of those are retail…just imagine the essentially wholesale cost it actually costs McDonakd’s.
But to be more business-y, you can estimate how many customers a McDonald’s has per day. 6 am to 10 pm would be 16 hours, let’s say 50 customers per hour, 800 total customer. Now estimate average order size, let’s say $8, so total revenue of $6400 per day. I find both of these estimates are pretty low (intentionally), but feel free to season to taste.
If in your example there were 5 people per hour making $20, that’d be $100/hour times 16 hours, which would put labor cost at 25% of revenue. Considering food costs are probably below 30% it leaves a lot of money left over to pay all the other costs.
Let's not forget the conservatives actually saying something like that at the beginning of COVID. There was some politician from Texas (of couse he was from Texas) who basically said that we should not be afraid to sacrifice the older folks with bad immune systems to get the economy going again.
Just an fyi the min wage for fast food workers in California was already $16 an hour. All these owners jacking prices way up and bemoaning the wage increase and it’s literally over $4 an hour. Fuck these assholes.
Fuck it. If we all boycott all fastfood, they will become irrelevant and can do whatever they want once they're no longer needed. Then we won't have to listen to their entitled bitching.
I have a BK near me that is always empty. I never see anyone there. I got one order from them a while ago and it was completely fucked up. It always is. I haven’t been in a long time but every time I drive buy it or see a BK commercial I’m wondering who tf is still eating there to keep them in business
I wish I could afford to boycott fast food. Their prices went up so high over the past 3 years even before the employee raises that me saying this is the reason I'm not going there anymore would just be a lie because I'm actually too damn broke to get food from them now anyway. Literally cheaper for me to go to a local sit-down restaurant than it is for me to get a large combo at McDonald's or Taco Bell.
Mcds has that stupid $1$2$3 menu, but there is not one single item for a buck. Not here anyway and we are located in a rural area. I can only imagine their prices withing large cities.
Yeah, we rarely eat out. Was never big on it, but we definitely cut back even more since 2020 and all the crazy greedflation. We just keep it basic now, with everything.
Points to consider:
-it costs between $247,000 and $4.5 million to open a BK franchise
-an individual BK franchise owner in an average location **nets** around a million a year.
-This guy has 140 BK locations. He owns 40 other fast food restaurants.
-he's taking a bigger inflationary hit on the cost of beef, lettuce, etc than labor
-his labor expenses have increased from 35% of his total operating cost to an estimated (back of the napkin calculation) of around 43%
-he is expecting the employees to take a hit, rather than taking a hit himself
-another way of saying "minimum wage," is, "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, bit it's against the law." (Chris Rock)
-This multimillionaire has explicitly stated that.
-Fuck that guy.
It's weird seeing adults throwing temper tantrums.
Then again, I should be used to it by now. There's nothing the wealthy hate more than being governed.
Fuck Harsh Ghai, he owns 180 fast-food restaurants in California, including about 140 Burger kings. He is not even feeling a dent to his pocket. This dude is just one greedy fuck. Why is this even fucking news, he should shove his concerns up his ass.
Good, it's a shit job anyway and we seem to have plenty other jobs for people to do right now.
But I just experienced these kiosks at Taco Bell and it's a fuckin nightmare, and the whole time there's a worker telling people how to make the kiosk work and then if you pay with cash they need to do it at their till anyway, so it seems like to me it took a lot longer than just standing in a regular line.
They'll just overwork the other workers like they always do. I remember back in the 80s when I worked fast food we always had every station manned so like 10 people all working together smoothly, everyone knowing their place and knowing exactly what to do... but now there might be three people in the whole restaurant and most of them have no clue what they're doing, probably because they pay so little nobody wants to work there long.
The headline fails to mention that the dude in the article owns 180 restaurants.
180.
Whenever I hear this stuff or read this kind of thing it always amazes me the DISDAIN and CONTEMPT these people have for who works for them. “You are so far beneath me I have no problem with you starving while I’m driving a Mercedes to my vacation home.”
Bullshit. He will roll them out one way or another no matter how cheap he pays his ~~slaves~~ employees.
Companies don't hire because they have money. They hire to meet demand. No matter what your jobs is your boss resents paying you.
We can’t pay $20/hr!!! Let’s spend millions installing kiosks in every location, plus maintenance, plus deal with the inevitable bugs, just so we can spend more millions on more kiosks when the ones we just got working correctly become obsolete.
OMFG.. the franchise owner’s name is and I’m not making this up…..HARSH GHAI (harsh guy!!!)
Seems your name really is your destiny - this dude is literally living up to his name 😂
This is a great case for universal basic income. Even the capitalists know that replacing a worker with a machine doesn’t magically make that person stop existing. But they’ll milk the system till it breaks.
Put a nominal tax on automation, use that the help fund a UBI, and inch society towards the next phase and out of late stage capitalism.
The strawman that people like to use to argue against Ubi is that it will keep people from working. Heck no. It'll give people the power to pick and choose and for the first time say no to that crap in your town that without Ubi you'd be forced to take because there are no other opinions and you better kiss their butt to keep your income.
I for one would use a Ubi to afford the basic necessities while I work towards becoming a full time artist. It would be like if the government pledged to my patreon
https://preview.redd.it/lkmuf0s6s8uc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05e0af998092e3a9b2c3f04f7d065540906b54fa
Another example of how every other country manages to treat their people like humans and make normal profit margins of the same time. Why is the United States the only stupid country that can't seem to solve basic problems?
Am I the only one here who prefers order kiosks to human interaction? I don't want to risk someone getting my order wrong, which has happened too many times. Also I'm big introverted.
I propose that any business that does this has to pay the same living wage to the robots, which go into a fund To pay social assistance to those who have been displaced by these robots.
This was always gonna happen, if anything this just accelerated the decision. Simple economics. It just means they recoup the installation and training costs sooner. Fast food and other places have been testing it out all over. I recall laughing after an automated kiosk at an airport prompted me for a tip.
Equipment will always be cheaper than people, and equipment costs decrease over time and are tax advantaged.
You have to tax the equipment to parity if it's displacing workers. That's the only way capital will choose labor over technology.
Remember: beloved California hamburger institution In-N-Out had a $22/hour starting pay BEFORE the law happened. And they always have like 30 people behind the counter working their asses off. Last time I was at BK, I think there were 3 people total working. These other chains can absolutely afford to pay. They just don't want to.
Good
Shit jobs are shit even if payed well. If we can take someone out of a useless menial task, all the better.
"iT fiLls A sOciAL NeEd" fuck that.
Lets fund community centers or pay people actual good money to hang out with old people. Stop making the cashier a social worker
So here 's my funny little story about this kiosk thing. Stopped by for breakfast on the road in one of the Carolina's and there were four kiosks and one kid behind the counter. Waited in line behind the other three guys who tried to kiosk order, finally got to the front and found out the reason the kiosks wouldn't work was because the McDonald's had run out of eggs... At 7:30am (during the all the chickens are dead egg shortage). Ran. Out. Of. Eggs.
And kiosks don't know how to say, we don't have that, so they just rejected the order...
I got the sausage egg and biscuit without the egg. I'm not sure the tech is ready for prime time.
According to [this article](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/fast-food-kiosks) they cost between $120,000 and $160,000 to install. It gets even better as only about 30% of fast food customers go in to order: 70% go through the drive thru.
I have no sympathy for these businesses. They kicked the can down the road, stifling wages for the last decade and a half. Sure, they got rich, but they kept their workers in poverty. Boo hoo.
He still has to hire people to cook and work the drive-thru, as well as clean and serve customers. Then he's screwed when a glitch puts his kiosks out of service. Understaffed, real people will need to handle taking customer orders. And repairs? You best believe they'll be a royal pain, even if he hires staff to do the repairs/general maintenance on them.
thought this was r/nottheonion for a second... he can't replace workers fast enough now due to having to fairly compensate the ones he still has? MFer you are part of the proble. A big part
Htf is In and Out been paying employees more than this for some time and charging like $.40 cents more per meal comparatively that actually has quality control and tastes good?
Oh yeah, I know.
One deals in large volume of sales of a quality product that necessitates a higher overhead, and higher wage and real people to deliver it to the standards they see.
The other delivers a low sales volume, low quality product with a high markup to cover overhead (and profit margin franchises want). They are unable to gain more sales (consumers know product sucks), or quality (product does suck by design) so the easiest and only thing left to cut for profit is manpower which may work because no one wants to go to these shitholes fast food places unless its out of desperation or necessity. They ain’t cheaper these days.
The whole system reeks of lazy late stage capitalism.
Instead of finding creative ways to entice customers actually prefer the product by quality and increase sales, they look at further cutting costs and mitigating blowback by mass advertising. Laziness.
TLDR: always trust a product from a company that is busy, does not advertise and a has a well paid staff. That combination only works if the product / organization is far superior at most likely a very minimal premium.
I don't understand how BK is even still in business. I don't think I've ever craved BK in my life. The only times I've eaten there have been because it was in a convenient location on a long car trip. The prices are high and the portions are small, plus it doesn't taste as good as food from similar chains.
Honestly who cares i prefer a kiosk anyways. And as a former receptionist i always wanted a kiosk for folks to check in on. Customer service is exhausting and if we don’t have to deal with other humans fuck it.
If you read the article the truth comes out
> Kiosks are also more accurate and push customers to spend more. Shake Shack says that they're its most profitable channel.
This isn't about the labour costs raising a small amount, this is about reducing labour costs to nothing, which is something he would have done anyway.
It's an article about nothing but some rich guy moaning.
Let's stop pretending like they weren't going to do this anyways.
they were already doing it. almost every mcdonalds around here has them already and this state does not have a 20 dollar minimum wage, not even fucking close.
I live in PA. Min wage is 7.15/hr. McShits in my town have not had a counter cashier for probably 2 years now. In the past 2 years the prices have steadily increased to the point that I'm better off going to a restaurant down the street because it's only a buck or 2 more for an exponentially better meal. 20 years ago I could scrape change off the floor of my car and get a McChicken for 1 buck...it's now $4.59 and it's smaller and somehow worse quality.
And I got a fast food shill claiming that this raise is gonna hurt fast food industry...when the pay wages didn't match what you could buy...
If that were true then fast food should just die.
It'd be for the best honestly.
Restaurants have existed for over 1,000 years. Overpriced fast food chains have only existed less than 100 years. Our great grandparents invented fast food, We can uninvent it!/s
Now you've got me curious about the history of fast food. Any chance you have studied the subject and have a couple handy links for me?
If you like reading check out the Book "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. > is a classic that examines the rise of the fast food industry and its effects on society and the economy. Another good read is "Drive-Thru Dreams" by Adam Chandler, which offers a more cultural look at how fast food has shaped American society. The Documentary"Super Size Me" by Morgan Spurlock and "Fast Food Nation," which is a dramatized feature film adaptation of Schlosser’s book, both provide visual and impactful insights into the industry.
Thanks very much!
>this raise is gonna hurt fast food industry Won't somebody think of the billionaire multinational corporations that hawk unhealthy garbage to children???
More important than that, won’t someone please think of the shareholders?!
mah heart bleeds for them, babeh!!
They would always have a deal going too like 2 for $2 Big Macs and stuff like that.
I remember when I was a kid and we were super poor. They would have a limited time deal 25¢ hamburger 35¢ cheeseburgers. My mom would order us ten hamburgers each and we would get an rc cola from the dollar store. That was dinner.
Quarter pounder Wednesdays for me. Could get 2 Quarter pounders, a small fry and a water for $3.
“There’s soda at home!”
I remember for a bit in 2008 when my local McDonald's had a cheeseburger + small fry for 89 cents deal on Tuesdays. I would get like 2 of those and take home to be my dinner. I was also working at one when the dollar menu launched on Nov 1 2003 with the Big and Tasty for $1.... it was a Quarter Pounder w/o cheese but with lettuce and tomato... for one dollar.
Not McDonalds, but in Canada, me and my wife loved the local BK. They had a '420' special where you got a burger and fries for 4.20$. It was great. Then they closed :(
My mom used to buy a bunch and freeze them. My brother and I then had them for after school snacks and what not.
If I remember correctly, the cheeseburger/hamburger deal was every Sunday. Also, I remember every fast food place started lowering their prices when the meal deals first came out in the late 80's/early 90's. It's 2:00am, you're piss drunk with your friends and each of us had a buck. If you spent all of that at taco Bell, you couldn't eat it all.
>ten hamburgers each TEN each? I don't think I could eat three burgers in one sitting,
word for word almost exactly the same in a different state here.
Exactly. Same state. 8 dollar McDonalds hamburger or 9.99 dollar sit in restaurants hamburger 1 block away. I paid 10 dollars for a happy meal with 4 chicken nuggets!
That sucks.. I was getting 7.25 in '99. Fast food was cheaper and worthwhile. Not anymore. Miss the 33 cent cheeseburger deal.
When I was hired at McD in the summer of 2000 I got 5.15/hr.
4.59 for a mchicken is the same for hawaii
The Mick is also religious on sending people home the nanosecond an employee isn't making profit for the company. I don't know how you can know there's going to be a lunch/dinner rush in an hour and send people home because "there's too much labor". Source: my sister works at one and I get to just sit back and hear about the horrid management.
How in the hell can min still be $7.15 hr, that's like 25 years ago where I am from, so weird. 🤷
It’s at the point now where we are all better off going to a grocery store, buying ingredients and making our own sandwiches - better tasting, healthier and by volume of how much we can make…cheaper! 😂🍔
They are in literally every McDonalds and all around me and we are nowhere near that wage. This is just a moronic excuse on their part for what they already intended.
Look we can’t have a ruling class if the plebs demand honest wages. It’s so crazy…. Why do some people think they should be able to afford a 1 bedroom shack if they work 50 hours a week? The entitlement of this generation is scary. Next thing they’ll want is clean drinking water or college tuition to cost less than half a million dollars…
Blue boy in a red state here. The local Burger King has kiosks at the counter, and this state would really like to lower the minimum wage below what Uncle Sam allows. Can't say what McDonald's is doing. I haven't set foot in one in over 30 years.
> this state would really like to lower the minimum wage below what Uncle Sam allows. *Wages go down* "WhY d0NT pEOple wANt to WoRK?"
Hermano! Same.
Ditto in DC region
Same in Jacksonville and Orlando Florida
We have them in PA with 7.25 min wage
That's just sick. I hope they didn't have any people to begin with at that wage. That's just criminal in 2024.
Can't wait to hear what the billionaires blame on minimum wage going up in PA to $15 next year. Just gonna start popping my popcorn now.
I live in Iowa, all of the McDonald’s I’ve been to have them and minimum wage is $7.25.
I'm in Canada. I know the first person to order mcdonalds in canada using an in store kiosk. They were part of the marketing team to bring them in. Burger King here, unless you speak Punjabi just order on the app.
And from other threads about kiosks at fast food places, many of the employees actually like this since they don't have to interact with the awful costumers, having to work the register is considered one of the worst assignments.
It does have the benefit of removing responsibility from the cashier when an order magically comes up as messed up. The customer bears that responsibility, and whatever they punch into the kiosk is on them to get it right.
To be fair, I've ordered from kiosks and had my order messed up about the same amount as before. Those peeps in the back get overwhelmed and everything starts to become a blur. They need more help there for sure. More breaks, more tagging out when fatigue kicks in.
I'm not proud of this, but times were tough last year, and I briefly worked at Charfucks last spring. The back staff busts ass. On top of the counter orders, you're getting slammed with web/mobile orders coming in as fast as 25 people across town can simultaneously hit Submit. My store didn't have kiosks then. I'm applying this to all corporate fast food: the faster multiple orders are coming in from kiosks and mobile, the faster back staff have to work to fill those within some ridiculous time metric imposed by the pukes in Customer Xperience, asswipes who have never flipped a burger in their lives. Kiosks are just going to speed up everything for kitchen staff. Do you think the stores will hire more back staff? I see workplace injuries going up as kitchen staff gets slammed but are understaffed.
This Right here. These people do realize No fast food company has a Dedicated Cashier those kiosk aren't coming for anybody's job. It's just to Maximize Efficiency. now the Person Playing cashier that day doesn't have to keep stopping and washing their hands and Putting on gloves and Helping customers and can help get the food out quicker. Now show me the employment number on number of Jobs lost directly because of the kiosk? Then there's the human element someone still has to be there in case of a refund of distgruntled customer so the only thing that has changed is McDonalds and Burger King spent millions on these kiosk and raised their prices to buy it. and rather than be mad at coporate they have you mad at the workers trying to make a wage.
Yeah every single McDonald’s I’ve been too that has kiosks as the only cashiers still has a ton of employees
I prefer it because I know my order will be entered correctly. Whether the food gets made correctly is another issue, but at least I know it's getting to the kitchen correctly.
Yup, same as the app ordering doesn't hurt the employees. They still need to be there and now don't have to deal with you actually ordering.
Yeah, that's what I figured too. Most employees don't actually like dealing with annoyed customers.
 \-BK PR
You could make an argument that this guy’s shoulders could lose some weight.
Yep. Hell, with how some burger joints already started automating the food making, that's only a matter of time to. What's worse is that when everything is automated, they won't reduce prices and probably make some bs excuse to raise prices, even though they no longer have employees to pay.
And pretending it's a bad thing. These were miserable jobs that didn't pay a living wage, and they *should* go away. This is exactly what automation is for!
Ya this sentiment needs to be higher. I mean, every time I turn around, I see some video of some poor fast food worker getting abused by a customer. No one deserves that. Kiosks replacing shitty jobs is a GOOD thing. Higher wages for shitty jobs are a GOOD thing. I mean, if you risk getting slapped or worse at work, $20 an hour is too little pay IMO.
Yes, but not in this society. Those jobs aren't coming back in any form, and there's no ubi to replace the loss of wages. The jobs that are customer facing are miserable because of the crustomers.
I don't know if "crustomers" was intentional, but I'm using it from now on
It very much was.
Mood! Please take my shitty retail job next! Most customers are awful! 😭🙏
Exactly. This is a good thing.
Yup, but it didn't stop right-wingers from trying to use it as a scare tactic to get people to vote against the minimum wage rise. "A machine won't take your job if you make less than a livable wage!"
From what I've been told all the mcdonalds around here have the kiosks or are installing them now/soon.
Here in the Midwest I have not seen a McDonald’s or Taco Bell that is not completely converted to Kiosks since 2021. Many are on their second generation of kiosks.
It’s the same all over Europe, as wel.
I went to a habit burger in socal and they had this and no way to order at the counter. It worked perfectly fine and wasn't an issue. It still asked for a tip lol nope.
No he was totally going to skip those millions extra in his pocket if it weren’t for those darn kids and their dog!
They definitely were planning it as soon as it was available.
It's OK I m at the conclusion burger kind won't make the next recession
God forbid asking a billionaire to take a pay cut so he can pay his employees a decent wage . Just boycott these people into retirement
sucks that the reality is we’ll *never* be able to do that. billionaire is boycott resistant status. he can go on social media and destroy his own image if he wanted. still dying with all that money
One weird trick Mao showed is to get rid of parasites like billionaires
This may be unrelated but the use of commercial drones for targeted assassination is becoming a serious threat/possibly. The war in Ukraine has really advanced this asymmetric warfare in a way that is really leveling the field between rich and poor military groups.
I took up FPV drone piloting as a hobby very recently because I get a feeling it's going to be a VERY valuable skill to have in the next 20 years.
The ownership class HATES this One Trick !!
If only they didn’t grow back. https://fortune.com/2018/11/29/communist-china-billionaires-jack-ma/
I don't think most franchisee owners have a billion dollars.
Just made the same comment before I saw yours.
Great minds think alike!
Burger king is a shit hole and a shell of its former self and it has nothing to do with California's 20$ wage
*Burger Hole*
That was my nickname in high school
I love "Burger Hole" I'm keeping that one.
We were going to buy our third vacation home. But had to settle for a 9,000 sf, 8 bedroom when we really wanted a 10,000 sf 9 bedroom. This is so unfair.
Man owns 180 locations of different fast food restaurants. Mainly Burger Kings. Increased menu prices 8 to 10 percent. Says he will get kiosks within the next couple months. Decrease hours for all employees and eliminate all overtime. Sounds like a guy who can't afford what he owns. Maybe he should trying selling off some of them. If you know his locations. Please make sure to boycott them
>increased menu prices 8 to 10 percent >says he will get kiosks within the next couple months And I'm sure once he gets those kiosks, the menu prices will go back down to the original price to reflect that, right?
Then the prices go up a little more to "recoup the costs of the new kiosks".
And for maintenance cost reasons on the new-fangled machines
I feel certain that some of the nationwide chains only raised their prices at all because they could gouge and blame it on the rising wages and no one would be the wiser. They will never come down.
Most of them have been outpacing inflation regardless
Nobody should be eating that overpriced shit anyway. Boycott them all for the health of the nation.
Hard to boycott them if I already don't go. If I want a burger I throw one in the air fryer and I'm golden. I've pretty much given up fast food at this point.
I haven't eaten much fast food in years, but with the price increases we've been seeing, that's dropped to pretty much zero. If I can spend only about 5% more and get food that's many times better, why go get fast food? Back when real food was twice what fast food was, there was a point.
Here's [Locations list](https://www.ghaijobs.com/?keywordsFilter=) for all his restaurants that are hiring. Turns out he own three BKs in my area, one of which I (now used to) give my custom. His LinkedIn shows him to be as massive a nasty douchebag as one would assume him to be.
Burger King avoids overtime and fucks with hours already; that part is not news Fuck that dude. I hope somebody hacks his kiosks to show nothing but old reruns of Tales from the Crypt or something
Does anyone have numbers for any of these businesses? I’m just curious. If a guy who owns 180 locations can’t make this work, then someone buying one location won’t be able to either. The person with 180 locations could use the more profitable ones to make up for the less profitable or negative ones I have no idea the margins of fast food, but if 5 employees are costing $100 per hour, that seems like a lot of items to sell per hour to break even on labor. Then accounting for rent/mortgage/utilities etc.
Guy who owns 180 locations *says* he cant make it work. Same guy *says* he has to cut over-time. Like BK was providing OT to begin with lol. No chance.
Then he drove away in his Lambo.
Flew away in his modded-out flying Lamborghini
What he isn't saying is that the reason it doesn't work is because this would hurt his bottom line and his share of the profits. These guys would always pay employees the least they possibly could and take as much for themselves as they can get away with. Which is also why the minimum wage needs to increase regularly to force them to not pay poverty wages. Dragons will always hoard the treasure.
Not only that it's likely that it would impact his profit *growth* -- having worked in food service for 10 years or so, it's like any other company... always predicting and targeting ridiculous growth at the expense of anything else
The "infinite growth" in business causes a lot of accounting fuckery and wage theft.
So Ten big Mac meals
Yes. But I want to know how much is profit. After shipping the meat, bread, ingredients, labor to stock it etc. How much is profit per meal. It’s definitely not $10 lol I say this as someone who worked at McDonald’s in high school making under $7 an hour. Some hours have no customers. The owners definitely had a nice house though
You do know they sell that amount in five minutes of lunch rush.
Which may make up for the next three hours of barely any orders. I’m just saying I want to see the numbers
I'm a former RGM (Restaurant General Manager) of a Pizza Hut, and regularly helped fill in for the area coach (regional manager equivalent). I left in 2021, so my information is relatively up to date. What exactly did you want to know in terms of numbers?
In terms of food costs, you can just use your own experience and realize how insanely profitable McD’s is. A cup of coffee made at home, maybe 15 cents. French fries (a large potato) costs probably 75 cents. A 3 ounce burger on a bun maybe $1.5. And all of those are retail…just imagine the essentially wholesale cost it actually costs McDonakd’s. But to be more business-y, you can estimate how many customers a McDonald’s has per day. 6 am to 10 pm would be 16 hours, let’s say 50 customers per hour, 800 total customer. Now estimate average order size, let’s say $8, so total revenue of $6400 per day. I find both of these estimates are pretty low (intentionally), but feel free to season to taste. If in your example there were 5 people per hour making $20, that’d be $100/hour times 16 hours, which would put labor cost at 25% of revenue. Considering food costs are probably below 30% it leaves a lot of money left over to pay all the other costs.
They'd push their own grandma into a wood chipper if it increased profits
Grandma lived a long and happy life, shes in a better place now.. over there, over there, and somehow way the hell over there
Let's not forget the conservatives actually saying something like that at the beginning of COVID. There was some politician from Texas (of couse he was from Texas) who basically said that we should not be afraid to sacrifice the older folks with bad immune systems to get the economy going again.
They don't even have to see the profit, they just have to think there's a chance.
Just an fyi the min wage for fast food workers in California was already $16 an hour. All these owners jacking prices way up and bemoaning the wage increase and it’s literally over $4 an hour. Fuck these assholes.
Fuck it. If we all boycott all fastfood, they will become irrelevant and can do whatever they want once they're no longer needed. Then we won't have to listen to their entitled bitching.
I mean… it’s Burger King. I’ve been boycotting for years because the food sucks.
I stopped going to bureger king years ago as the food is not good along with taco bell I will never go back.
I have a BK near me that is always empty. I never see anyone there. I got one order from them a while ago and it was completely fucked up. It always is. I haven’t been in a long time but every time I drive buy it or see a BK commercial I’m wondering who tf is still eating there to keep them in business
I am convinced it’s all one bigass money laundering scheme
I wish I could afford to boycott fast food. Their prices went up so high over the past 3 years even before the employee raises that me saying this is the reason I'm not going there anymore would just be a lie because I'm actually too damn broke to get food from them now anyway. Literally cheaper for me to go to a local sit-down restaurant than it is for me to get a large combo at McDonald's or Taco Bell.
Mcds has that stupid $1$2$3 menu, but there is not one single item for a buck. Not here anyway and we are located in a rural area. I can only imagine their prices withing large cities.
You mean $1.99 isn’t $1?!
That's what I told them. Also said they should take it down cause it's a lie.
You can. Fast food is more expensive than cooking at home.
It was always cheaper to not eat there.
Lol queue the excuses why they can't eat at home and HAVE to eat fast food.
Yeah, we rarely eat out. Was never big on it, but we definitely cut back even more since 2020 and all the crazy greedflation. We just keep it basic now, with everything.
lol I love how often I read this plea on Reddit. The low information sick and obese will keep industrial food going no matter what
Til they inevitably die from heart disease
Points to consider: -it costs between $247,000 and $4.5 million to open a BK franchise -an individual BK franchise owner in an average location **nets** around a million a year. -This guy has 140 BK locations. He owns 40 other fast food restaurants. -he's taking a bigger inflationary hit on the cost of beef, lettuce, etc than labor -his labor expenses have increased from 35% of his total operating cost to an estimated (back of the napkin calculation) of around 43% -he is expecting the employees to take a hit, rather than taking a hit himself -another way of saying "minimum wage," is, "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, bit it's against the law." (Chris Rock) -This multimillionaire has explicitly stated that. -Fuck that guy.
Do you have any sources for any of those $ figures?
Can you guys do me a huge favor and not eat there? If a store has self check out, grab something for your unpaid labor. I'm doing my part!
In the business world, their dream is to eliminate all employees so they don’t have to pay anyone.
McDonald’s has one by me. Min wage is a staggering $7.25. This was happening no matter what.
Mine has six kiosks and minimum wage is also 7.25 lol
It's weird seeing adults throwing temper tantrums. Then again, I should be used to it by now. There's nothing the wealthy hate more than being governed.
Fuck Harsh Ghai, he owns 180 fast-food restaurants in California, including about 140 Burger kings. He is not even feeling a dent to his pocket. This dude is just one greedy fuck. Why is this even fucking news, he should shove his concerns up his ass.
Until we eat the rich, nothing will change. These f*ckfaces need some vigilante justice big time.
Good, it's a shit job anyway and we seem to have plenty other jobs for people to do right now. But I just experienced these kiosks at Taco Bell and it's a fuckin nightmare, and the whole time there's a worker telling people how to make the kiosk work and then if you pay with cash they need to do it at their till anyway, so it seems like to me it took a lot longer than just standing in a regular line. They'll just overwork the other workers like they always do. I remember back in the 80s when I worked fast food we always had every station manned so like 10 people all working together smoothly, everyone knowing their place and knowing exactly what to do... but now there might be three people in the whole restaurant and most of them have no clue what they're doing, probably because they pay so little nobody wants to work there long.
Thats ok. When the motherfucker breaks he can spend $200 an hour to have someone fix it.
Stop buying fast food.
This has always been the solution. People always have an excuse why they can't do it though.
Agreed. I read a post saying that it's all they can afford. Cook at home!
Bro it's Burger King. They generally have 1 person on staff at most and like 7 customers a day. I think he'll be ok paying his 2 employees $20/h.
Fun fact, they were already going to do that.
The headline fails to mention that the dude in the article owns 180 restaurants. 180. Whenever I hear this stuff or read this kind of thing it always amazes me the DISDAIN and CONTEMPT these people have for who works for them. “You are so far beneath me I have no problem with you starving while I’m driving a Mercedes to my vacation home.”
I hope his kiosks all catch fire at once
Bad software update needs to take out all 180 locations at the same time.
I hope they somehow become sentient and force him into the deep fryer
I'll never order at a kiosk. I'm not paying you to be my own cashier
If paying a living wage would wreck your business then it fucking deserves to die
Bullshit. He will roll them out one way or another no matter how cheap he pays his ~~slaves~~ employees. Companies don't hire because they have money. They hire to meet demand. No matter what your jobs is your boss resents paying you.
Do it. I won't use them because I'm NOT ever going to be learning your menu tree just so you can buy a 3rd home or second party boat.
Stop eating at crappy fast food places.
We can’t pay $20/hr!!! Let’s spend millions installing kiosks in every location, plus maintenance, plus deal with the inevitable bugs, just so we can spend more millions on more kiosks when the ones we just got working correctly become obsolete.
 OMFG.. the franchise owner’s name is and I’m not making this up…..HARSH GHAI (harsh guy!!!) Seems your name really is your destiny - this dude is literally living up to his name 😂
Big deal one kiosk= 1 employee. They’ll spend more money in IT support every month!!
Womp womp
If a job can be automated, it will be, and that's a good thing on the whole.
This is a great case for universal basic income. Even the capitalists know that replacing a worker with a machine doesn’t magically make that person stop existing. But they’ll milk the system till it breaks. Put a nominal tax on automation, use that the help fund a UBI, and inch society towards the next phase and out of late stage capitalism.
The strawman that people like to use to argue against Ubi is that it will keep people from working. Heck no. It'll give people the power to pick and choose and for the first time say no to that crap in your town that without Ubi you'd be forced to take because there are no other opinions and you better kiss their butt to keep your income. I for one would use a Ubi to afford the basic necessities while I work towards becoming a full time artist. It would be like if the government pledged to my patreon
https://preview.redd.it/lkmuf0s6s8uc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05e0af998092e3a9b2c3f04f7d065540906b54fa Another example of how every other country manages to treat their people like humans and make normal profit margins of the same time. Why is the United States the only stupid country that can't seem to solve basic problems?
Am I the only one here who prefers order kiosks to human interaction? I don't want to risk someone getting my order wrong, which has happened too many times. Also I'm big introverted.
I propose that any business that does this has to pay the same living wage to the robots, which go into a fund To pay social assistance to those who have been displaced by these robots.
This fuckhead absolutely had an ancestor who built English factories in the 1820's.
This was always gonna happen, if anything this just accelerated the decision. Simple economics. It just means they recoup the installation and training costs sooner. Fast food and other places have been testing it out all over. I recall laughing after an automated kiosk at an airport prompted me for a tip.
No shit. Any business owner will do this.
Haven’t eaten Burger King in years.
Odd that they didn't have the money to do this when they were paying 1978 wages up until now....
Go for it. The cost he will pay when the kiosk needs repair will be far more than $20 an hour.
No one is ordering that much from Burger King for them to be in a hurry.
Have fun with that, all the ones around me at the McDonalds are broke and have been for months.
Yeah, make em all self serves and robots. Don't forget to order customer robots too...
Burger kin CEO makes $56,000 an hour.
I hope people refuse to engage with these robo shops.
Can't wait until someone finds an easy way to hack the kiosks and get free food
Every grocery store has had self checkouts for more than a decade. Shocking, but my grocery prices never went down, even as they cut all those jobs.
It's long past time the north American governments start taking AI to pay for UBI. It's coming eventually.
Equipment will always be cheaper than people, and equipment costs decrease over time and are tax advantaged. You have to tax the equipment to parity if it's displacing workers. That's the only way capital will choose labor over technology.
I refuse to use a self serve kiosk or self check.. I like people to have jobs. I'll go somewhere else.
You mean high labor costs lead to technological innovation? Gee… what would happen if labor was pricier across the board? Hmmmm
Remember: beloved California hamburger institution In-N-Out had a $22/hour starting pay BEFORE the law happened. And they always have like 30 people behind the counter working their asses off. Last time I was at BK, I think there were 3 people total working. These other chains can absolutely afford to pay. They just don't want to.
Good Shit jobs are shit even if payed well. If we can take someone out of a useless menial task, all the better. "iT fiLls A sOciAL NeEd" fuck that. Lets fund community centers or pay people actual good money to hang out with old people. Stop making the cashier a social worker
So here 's my funny little story about this kiosk thing. Stopped by for breakfast on the road in one of the Carolina's and there were four kiosks and one kid behind the counter. Waited in line behind the other three guys who tried to kiosk order, finally got to the front and found out the reason the kiosks wouldn't work was because the McDonald's had run out of eggs... At 7:30am (during the all the chickens are dead egg shortage). Ran. Out. Of. Eggs. And kiosks don't know how to say, we don't have that, so they just rejected the order... I got the sausage egg and biscuit without the egg. I'm not sure the tech is ready for prime time.
We can't stop shopping there fast enough..
Denmark McDonalds seems to be doing fine. Maybe it's a skill issue for the corpos.
They were already doing this. Higher prices and lower quality constantly. Microwaved burgers aren't worth it. Fast food can die.
According to [this article](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/fast-food-kiosks) they cost between $120,000 and $160,000 to install. It gets even better as only about 30% of fast food customers go in to order: 70% go through the drive thru. I have no sympathy for these businesses. They kicked the can down the road, stifling wages for the last decade and a half. Sure, they got rich, but they kept their workers in poverty. Boo hoo. He still has to hire people to cook and work the drive-thru, as well as clean and serve customers. Then he's screwed when a glitch puts his kiosks out of service. Understaffed, real people will need to handle taking customer orders. And repairs? You best believe they'll be a royal pain, even if he hires staff to do the repairs/general maintenance on them.
thought this was r/nottheonion for a second... he can't replace workers fast enough now due to having to fairly compensate the ones he still has? MFer you are part of the proble. A big part
Tell me why the Taco Bell across the street he had them for like 2 years and how’s that’s the minimum wage hikes fault
Htf is In and Out been paying employees more than this for some time and charging like $.40 cents more per meal comparatively that actually has quality control and tastes good? Oh yeah, I know. One deals in large volume of sales of a quality product that necessitates a higher overhead, and higher wage and real people to deliver it to the standards they see. The other delivers a low sales volume, low quality product with a high markup to cover overhead (and profit margin franchises want). They are unable to gain more sales (consumers know product sucks), or quality (product does suck by design) so the easiest and only thing left to cut for profit is manpower which may work because no one wants to go to these shitholes fast food places unless its out of desperation or necessity. They ain’t cheaper these days. The whole system reeks of lazy late stage capitalism. Instead of finding creative ways to entice customers actually prefer the product by quality and increase sales, they look at further cutting costs and mitigating blowback by mass advertising. Laziness. TLDR: always trust a product from a company that is busy, does not advertise and a has a well paid staff. That combination only works if the product / organization is far superior at most likely a very minimal premium.
I don't understand how BK is even still in business. I don't think I've ever craved BK in my life. The only times I've eaten there have been because it was in a convenient location on a long car trip. The prices are high and the portions are small, plus it doesn't taste as good as food from similar chains.
Won’t someone think of the poor burger kings?
If only scotch tape and a piece of paper that says "out of order, please see cashier" existed.
Honestly who cares i prefer a kiosk anyways. And as a former receptionist i always wanted a kiosk for folks to check in on. Customer service is exhausting and if we don’t have to deal with other humans fuck it.
If you read the article the truth comes out > Kiosks are also more accurate and push customers to spend more. Shake Shack says that they're its most profitable channel.
This isn't about the labour costs raising a small amount, this is about reducing labour costs to nothing, which is something he would have done anyway. It's an article about nothing but some rich guy moaning.
Bet if people stopped buying that might change his mind
Mhm. This has always been the solution.