
McDonald's Says Goodbye Cashiers, Hello Kiosks - HoppedUpMenace
https://www.forbes.com/sites/edrensi/2018/07/11/mcdonalds-says-goodbye-cashiers-hello-kiosks/#4978f4576f14
======
neogodless
> While some consumers may appreciate the novelty or added convenience, the
> conveniences come at the cost of entry-level jobs.

Added convenience? In the past, someone else would translate my spoken word
into the inputs that the computer screen required. Now, I don't have to speak,
but I do have to figure out how to use this interface. Any bets how long it
takes me order my food? If Wawa is any indicator, at least 3 times as long.

(Insert secondary rant about the "convenience" of DIY grocery checkout. I
cannot stand those things!)

~~~
ghaff
One of my local grocery stores just got rid of a bunch of their checkouts in
favor of self-service. It's OK if I'm just picking up a couple of barcoded
items. But it's a huge PITA for things like produce to the point where I've
largely switched to another chain.

~~~
dacur
I got so fed up w/ the poor service at my grocery store that I've been using
Amazon Prime Now for groceries. So far, so good.

~~~
reaperducer
I used to live in a Peapod area, and it was awesome.

Amazon's grocery service in Seattle was also my go-to for a while.

But where I am now, Amazon Prime/Amazon Pantry is close to double the store
price or more for fresh items. For example, a gallon of milk is $1.49 at the
neighborhood supermarket. Prime Now is $5-6/gallon. I like largely because you
can only buy organic.

~~~
ghaff
I used Peapod for a period when I had a broken foot. Maybe I'll give them
another shot one of these days.

I don't get Amazon Prime. I can get Instacart but not for Whole Foods.

------
rainbowmverse
This discussion has already devolved into a war of slogans and soapboxing.
It's barely been an hour.

I can't really blame HN. The article focuses on minimum wage and largely
blames it for automation, and the author is under the impression that it's
still possible to go from working the register to CEO.

This is not a good article. It lacks any insight or perspective.

~~~
mattmurdog
It was an article written by the CEO of McD!

~~~
rainbowmverse
Someone conceived in a McDonalds restroom the last time he was its CEO would
almost be able to drink legally in most US states now. The US was in the
middle of an economic boom in 1997. He does not have a relevant perspective.

~~~
edanm
I think there's a big difference between "he was CEO 20 years ago" and "he
does not have a relevant perspective".

He has at least as relevant a perspective as any commenter here, though of
course I believe he has way more relevant experience, having been the CEO of
McDonalds. If you think he didn't face anything like these kinds of issues,
you're wrong.

------
paulgb
I find it interesting that much more automated fast food actually did exist
for a long period of time and fell out of favor.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat)

~~~
gmiller123456
That looks like it's more about serving the food automatically rather than
ordering it. With the kiosk, the food is still served the same way, but the
ordering involves less people.

I can see the automat process being less desirable because there's an unknown,
and obviously longer time between when the food is prepared vs when it is
served. With the kiosks the food is still served pretty much immediately after
it's prepared.

------
jt2190
> A study by University of Virginia and Middle Tennessee State University
> economists found that teenagers who held part-time jobs in school had annual
> earnings that were 20 percent higher than their counterparts without
> experience six to nine years after graduation.

> These entry level jobs such as flipping burgers or taking customers orders
> teach teens valuable jobs skills such as customer service and applying basic
> math skills. Skills that could ultimately lead to the career stepping stones
> for a working teenager to become an engineer or accountant.

I think these are good points, but I think that we should be careful that
we're not giving young people advice that's obsolete. Times change!

Here's a thought exercise: Imagine the time when the first jobs for hourly pay
came into existence. What advice was the older generation giving to the youth
of that time? (I can imagine my elders telling me that it'd be important to
learn to take care of animials, or harvest wheat, etc.)

~~~
ghaff
I suspect that it's a lot less about any specific skills and more about
earning money, showing up for work even when you don't want to, etc. I suspect
that if those same teenagers worked on a farm part-time (or perhaps even
played organized sports) instead, they'd also do better than their
counterparts who didn't.

~~~
jt2190
Very true and exactly my point! Maybe “showing up” by logging in to Facebook
to socially influence others and increase your employer’s followers is _just
as effective_ at giving young people life skills as flipping burgers was back
in the day. Let’s not constrain ourselves to burger flipping because that was
a thing once upon a time.

------
jdlyga
I like the kiosks at least in Manhattan. No line, I don't have to deal with a
moody cashier, and the menu is more complete. It's like using the Starbucks
App.

~~~
n17r4m
The only item I semi-regularly enjoy from McD's is a McDouble Like a 'Mac.
Unfortunately when I tried a kiosk, I couldn't order it. If they go 100%
kiosks and not offer this delicious mod, I will no longer be their customer.

~~~
loco5niner
hmm... I'd like to try this. Is that how you order it? "I'd like a McDouble
like a Mac, please"

~~~
n17r4m
Exactly

------
k__
I think the basic idea is good.

In Germany we already have many such Kiosks, but you can still go to a regular
person and buy your stuff, without using this computer.

I had the impression many people don't use the Kiosk, don't know why.

My take is, you're standing right before a big screen and everyone behind you
can see what you're doing, which feels kinda awkward.

Maybe they should have used an app for this.

Only you can see what you buy, you can take as long as you like, pay online,
get your number and with it your food without the need to stand in line or
something.

------
Simulacra
FYI this is an opinion piece written by a former McDonalds CEO. As for my
opinion, I welcome the kiosks as there will be less communication barriers and
greater order accuracy. Innovation will always lead to a reduction in human
labor costs, but we should not artificially keep human labor where it's not
needed.

------
yoz-y
I can't read forbes anymore since it only displays a blank page to me.
Personally I have been using kiosks at Mc Donald's for years. Compared to self
checkout at grocery stores, they are usually a good experience. My only
problem is that some of the promotions don't work with them.

~~~
Yuioup
Same here. I use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and https everywhere.

Edge opens the page just fine. My eyes are bleeding.

------
superfrank
I used to work right near a McDonalds in Los Angeles that has had two of these
in addition to cashiers for a few years.

Here is what I've noticed:

\- All other things being equal and given the option, it seems that most
people went to the human cashier. I can't ever remember seeing a person using
one of these if there was no line at a person.

\- During peak traffic times (lunch hour, as this McDonalds was near a bunch
of business parks) they often needed an employee manning the kiosks to answer
questions and help customers who got stuck. In this case, it was one employee
for two terminals, but it could probably have been a 1:4 or 1:6 ratio no
problem.

\- Kind of unsurprisingly, people you would assume were not good with
technology (older patrons) seemed to struggle more and take longer to order
and get stuck more.

\- There was a little bit of a learning curve to be able to confidently use on
quickly, but even once I had gotten the hang of it, going to a cashier was
always faster. Having a friendly, categorized, nested UI is just slower than
what the cashiers have. Also, the terminal touch screen wasn't super
responsive.

This all leads me to believe that this really isn't that big of an issue at
this point. I expect to see a hybrid style approach like we do we self-
checkout at grocery stores, where you have the option to do it yourself, but
it's not the only option.

No matter how simple they make these to use, it's still a new "thing" to
learn. Frequent McDonalds customers may opt for the terminal, but infrequent
customers aren't going to want to take the time to learn how to use these,
especially when they are in a rush or have other pressing issues (imagine a
one parent 3 screaming children type scenario).

~~~
jstarfish
The nested UI kills it for me. It's so goddamn slow and irritating, especially
if the submenu doesn't have what you're looking for. The pictures of
everything are huge. It's not a menu, it's a web site.

I literally have an easier and faster time ordering food from Japanese fast-
food places, with the entire menu being listed in Japanese and me knowing only
enough kanji to distinguish pork from fish.

------
ryanmercer
Good, one less person to screw my order up.

~~~
mattmurdog
A human is still reading the order and making your food. I've had mistakes
with mine that were very obvious like "No cheese" yet I still get cheese

~~~
loco5niner
So... like they said. Down from 2 to 1.

------
bovermyer
I've had nothing but positive experiences with the kiosks.

As for automation reducing the amount of available jobs... well, yeah, that's
going to happen. Humanity will adapt. It's what our species does best.

------
wbraun
I rarely, if ever, go to McDonald's at home. However, I realized that the
kiosks in foreign countries allow you to order in english. They are quite
convenient if you want food quickly but don't want to deal with a language
barrier. I am looking forward to seeing more kiosks at fast food places in the
future.

------
turc1656
I have two problems with this approach to cost control. Neither is concerning
the potential loss of jobs (or at least the lack of need for additional
hires).

First, I don't think it will be more convenient. Sure, it is much more
convenient for McDonald's to do this. But probably not for the user. Is it
really easier to press a bunch of buttons on a system you don't use that
often? Or is it easier to just verbalize what you want to a human being and
have them enter it appropriately because they are more familiar with the
system and can do it faster? I think it's a no-brainer that just saying what
you want is far better for most consumers. If you order the same thing
whenever you go and memorize how to quickly enter it, then it could be
simpler. But that's probably the only case. That's what I do at Wawa - I
always get the same sub so it's not time consuming for me to order. If I got
different stuff, it would take me longer to order than just telling someone.

The other issue I have is that this whole concept of adding devices supposedly
improves the bottom line of the company but they will surely charge customers
the same prices. It also provides the customers with _less_ service, not more.
I remember when Applebees was testing out the same thing - trying to push
everyone to order on those table devices that they have which have the games
for kids on them. I outright (but politely) refused and requested a normal
server/service. They happily obliged. But the reason is because it's more of a
pain for me to put in the order and then it's an annoyance to call someone by
pressing the button to notify them like they are flight crew on a plane.

Things get more complicated if you have coupons, or special requests. My wife
is currently pregnant and these kiosks were at the McD I went to recently. She
had asked for the McD big breakfast but since she can't have the sausage due
to her pregnancy she wanted it totally separated so I could have it. Now I
have to, presumably, type in notes for my special request?

Another thing I just thought of is the issue with errors in ordering. When McD
(or anyone else) currently makes a mistake, it's on them. But now there's a
chance that I will enter it wrong by incorrectly using their system. I'll
never make a mistake ordering verbally. There's a decent chance I mess up when
doing it via kiosk.

------
neo4sure
"I started working at McDonald’s making the minimum wage of 85 cents an hour.
I worked hard and earned a promotion to restaurant manager within just one
year, then went on to hold almost every position available throughout the
company, eventually rising to CEO of McDonalds USA."

Howmany people didnt make it up that far?

------
mikehines
I've been using the McDonald's iPhone app, which shares the same objective as
the new kiosks. Besides several glitches here and there, I definitely think
that's the future. However, I wonder if it is a humanity milestone to liberate
us from cashier jobs.

------
wink
Tried this a few years ago, it was interesting. Foreign country, not very good
at the language. Sure, let's try the kiosk. What I didn't think of that they
would mumble the number of my order when I was supposed to pick it up.

Tried this recently again, it failed horribly.

Enter local McDonalds, see huge queue at normal counter and short queue where
you grad your stuff.

Notice new kiosk, choose stuff, it works flawlessly and quick.

Try to pay with card, machine doesn't accept my card. Now I have to use the
long queue to pay. Awesome. Of course the card worked there.

That's my main problem with these "automated" things - it's fine for the
regular use case, but you better not run into any trouble (which is not your
own fault).

------
agumonkey
This move is extremely bad in terms of execution. At least the one I see in
France.. gosh, I don't even want to go to McDonalds. It's ridiculous both in
technical and cultural terms.

The old cashier / queue was part of the spirit. Rush hour sucked but after
seeing the new 'decoupled' scheme, I regret waiting 10minutes for my
hamburger.

The kiosks are damning, huge and not very efficient, often breaking the space
in the worst possible way.

The kitchen which was a tense flow of cooking is now a boring sight of
randomness. The other employees are looking at each others waiting for someone
to answer their ticket number.

Almost comical. Bonus point, there's opportunity to snatch some receipts and
get free lunch from time to time.

~~~
reaperducer
I agree. The kitchen seems far more chaotic now that the employees are all
answering to a computer. And when something goes wrong, there's nobody with
the training or authority to fix it.

And because the customer has to stand around for ten minutes waiting for the
food, you have nothing better to do than watch the kitchen mayhem. Half the
staff running around. The other half waiting for something to happen so they
can start running.

At least, that's how it looks in America. In Germany, it seemed to achieve the
goal of a well-ordered, speedy kitchen.

~~~
agumonkey
Yeah I understand there are different 'implementations'. But I've seen the
same in a totally different company. Work was split vertically, each employee
was responsible for handling from a to z. It had issues but it wasn't chaotic.
Then consultants came with horizontal decoupling. We were all devoted to a
piece of the task, and then nobody knew what the hell was going on. Things
were bouncing back and forth. It's nobody's job since you "talked" to the
kiosk and employees aren't there to give you something. It's not a restaurant,
it's a badly designed factory.

------
UncleEntity
The McD's up the street has a couple of these but they don't accept cash which
makes it necessary to for me to use the cashier since I'm a 99.99% cash-only
person.

The main benefit AFAICT is they only use the fancy table tents so they bring
your order out to you, using the cashier is hit-n-miss on those things and
seems to totally depend on how the cashier's day is going.

One thing I have noticed lately is there's a whole lot more kids doing the
entry-level jobs at McDonalds these days, for a while it was almost
exclusively older folks and the youngins were just out of luck trying to get a
foothold in the job market.

------
natecavanaugh
I have a friend who works for a McDonalds competitor (a Little Caesar's) in a
small town in North Dakota, where McDonalds is already the big spender at 15
bucks an hour, not because they desire to replace entry level jobs, but
because hiring people who are competent and reliable is a literal day to day
struggle.

This seems like the inevitable result of both the pressure to hire decent
workers and a desire to keep costs down.

Once customers become fluent in the interface, I can't imagine businesses not
adopting it en masse. What's to lose, if you're struggling to keep meatspace
workers?

------
artursapek
Soon, I imagine places like McDonald's will let people pre-program their
favorite orders into their phones and order via something like NFC. Walk up,
wave your hand, and your order is in the queue.

~~~
munificent
Most have apps for ordering ahead of time already:

[https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/mobile-order-and-
pay.html](https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/mobile-order-and-pay.html)

[https://one.chick-fil-a.com/](https://one.chick-fil-a.com/)

[https://www.wendys.com/wendys-app](https://www.wendys.com/wendys-app)

[https://www.bk.com/app](https://www.bk.com/app)

[https://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-
apps/mystarbuck...](https://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-
apps/mystarbucks)

~~~
lancewiggs
Mobi2go.com sets up apps like this for any restaurant chain.

------
gmiller123456
This is one of those things where I wonder if it will be faster, or take
longer. I'm sure the idea is to have multiple kiosks open so that more people
can order simultaneously, so that would typically result in faster orders. But
having stood behind many people at the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines watching
them figure out how to use it and decide what they want to drink, I can see
this making things a lot slower even with 2-4 times the kiosks vs human
cashiers.

~~~
talltimtom
In Denmark most macdonalds in the capital area have kiosks now, there is never
a line and they are pretty intuitive. No problems at all.

------
southphillyman
I prefer kiosks for these type of transactions. The only problem I see arising
is if a customer has a specific question about a menu item, though I can't
remember the last time I had a question like that.

Maybe the 3-4 cashiers this displaces can now focus their efforts on helping
out in the kitchen or perhaps roving the dining area providing Chick Fil A
level service by getting me refills or taking my tray away.

~~~
InitialLastName
> Maybe the 3-4 cashiers this displaces can now focus their efforts on helping
> out in the kitchen or perhaps roving the dining area providing Chick Fil A
> level service by getting me refills or taking my tray away.

I suspect the 3-4 cashiers this displaces will add $45-$60/hour of operation
to the franchise's profits.

------
flatfilefan
Is someone in the world already working on the 3D printing of the
cheeseburger? With the Mac food being so standard why even use a single human
in its preparation? Get a 3D printer and open the shop. BYOD for the consumer
UI instead a kiosk, too.

~~~
krapp
How would 3D printed food even work? You would grind the ingredients into a
paste first then extrude them all out into some vague semblance of their
original form? It's not as if you can 3D print cheese, tomatoes and beef from
the same substrate without Star Trek levels of quantum mechanical superwoo.

Someone posted a link to a startup a few weeks ago[0,1] that wants to try
automating food... that's more likely to be what fully automated fast food
would look like.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368139)

[1][https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/creator-hamburger-
robot/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/creator-hamburger-robot/)

~~~
flatfilefan
Who said they should be printed from the same substrate? Color printers is a
thing, right?

~~~
krapp
That's usually what people seem to think of when they consider 3D printers,
because that's what 3D printers tend to do.

Otherwise to "3D print" a tomato slice you would spray tomato slurry layer by
layer into the shape of a tomato slice, which would just be silly and far less
efficient (and probably more expensive) than having a person slice a tomato.

------
neuralRiot
They make it sound as if the reason for the switch is the minimum wage raise
but in reality they would do it anyway. Human cashiers probably have less
communication with customes than kiosks so not much to lose there.

------
ben174
The kiosk UI looks pretty slick actually:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL6dWNi-o7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL6dWNi-o7Q)

~~~
_nickwhite
I thought for sure the McDonalds Kiosk would be woefully worse than a real
cashier. So I tested it. My goal was to order a cheeseburger with extra
pickles, no salt, and no onion. Boy was I wrong; not only was this stupid easy
to do, it was probably easier (and quicker and more accurate) than a real
person taking the order. I walked away seriously impressed.

------
mchahn
At our local McDonald's there are 9 kiosks and yet no one is ever at one. The
lines at the human cashiers are as long as ever.

------
RickJWagner
Our Wal-Mart has self-checkout kiosks. It's usually convenient, unless you've
got things to weigh.

------
starpilot
We need basic income.

~~~
adventured
We used to have tens of thousands of low paid telephone operators. As recently
as 1984, AT&T still employed 40,000 of them.

We didn't need that profession either.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/us/once-a-friendly-
fixtur...](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/us/once-a-friendly-fixture-a-
telephone-operator-finds-herself-obsolete.html)

~~~
quxbar
There's almost 4 million employees in the fast food industry in the US, so the
problem is a few orders of magnitude bigger. Also, what happens when the pool
of jobs for unskilled workers dries up?

------
merinowool
If a person does a job of a cashier, should that person be compensated
appropriately for their time?

~~~
adventured
That's not the question. The question is whether the job should exist at all
vs the cost of a fair wage in that job if it does continue to exist.

Should we hire five million people to unnecessarily sit and click a button or
type out phone numbers to send text messages and connect phone calls to their
destination through a switch in the cell networks? We could make it that way.
Rhetorically how much would that job be worth? That's why it doesn't and
shouldn't exist.

~~~
merinowool
If machine is capable of doing the same job as human, then machine should be
paid salary that could be then used for healthcare, electricity or education.

~~~
loco5niner
That's an absurd statement.

The job it replaced doesn't just go away. The people who made the machine can
either sell it or lease it for a profit. That's where the job goes. To the
machine-maker.

------
jadedhacker
This is literally what Andy Puzder threatened to do back in 2016. We cannot
leave labor decisions to capitalists. They are the class enemy.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/23/andy-puzder-on-automation-
if...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/23/andy-puzder-on-automation-if-robots-
take-your-job-the-minimum-wage-is-zero.html)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonalds-ceo-
labor/mcdon...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonalds-ceo-
labor/mcdonalds-ceo-sounds-positive-note-on-trumps-labor-nominee-
idUSKBN15H2QS?type=companyNews)

------
teeray
I wonder if the workaround will end up being to order at the drive through
window with a person and bring your meal into the store to eat.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Seem to recall a few years ago McDonald's testing out routing the audio from
the drive thru to a call center in India. Not sure how it turned out but
probably is still an option if they want it to be.

I rarely go to McDonald's but the last two times I was there I would have
preferred the kiosks. Not because the employees weren't good at their jobs but
because the menu boards with all the items and prices were filled with
animated graphics. By the time I'd find the section with what I was looking
for, it would disappear and be replaced with some animation pushing a product
I didn't want. Finding the price difference between a sausage biscuit and a
sausage McMuffin shouldn't end up being like playing a puzzle app on my phone.

The kiosks likely try to upsell too but ultimately you have to be able to find
what you want on it to be able to order for the kiosk to work.

~~~
reaperducer
_> Seem to recall a few years ago McDonald's testing out routing the audio
from the drive thru to a call center in India. Not sure how it turned out but
probably is still an option if they want it to be._

It's like that the two McD's closest to me. But I don't think it goes to
India. I think it's domestic. Or at least North America.

