🖖 Cache-ing checks

After COVID hit the world, plenty of changes took happened.

The most interesting being that more people learned how to make a good chunk of change while staying at home.

It’s hard to return to a minimum wage job after unlocking that door. But minimum wage jobs still exist. Only there are much fewer applicants to fill the spots.

The hardest hit were probably the quick service (fast food) and casual dining sectors. All the work and frustrations now outweigh the low pay on the scales of choice.

To adapt to this change in staff, tech quickly came to the rescue.

Modern restaurant history

First, it was the standing kiosks that allow the convenience and speed of self-service.

Then came the moving machines- robots that could take orders like the kiosks. But now they can deliver the orders to your table.

When you’re done it can even carry your tray and dishes to the right place to be sorted and cleaned.

There are robots that answer your questions on the phone and take your reservations.

You may have talked to one already.

Maybe I’m a robot…

There are even robots in the kitchen frying your chicken and fries. While robots in other venues are prepping stir-fry dishes.

I have to mention the coffee bots- machines that make a mean latte with crazy consistency.

Where this is headed

Most of these robots and droids were designed to assist the existing workforce- not replace them.

But I gotta ask, what happens when there’s no one left to assist?

When the wages are no longer attractive enough for anyone to join the team.

Restaurants can’t disappear. We still need to eat.

There will always be humans at some restaurants because there will always be those that enjoy the craft of what they do. Chefs will still be into food.

Bartenders will still be into mixology.

I’m talking about the middle ground- the average restaurants. Where people don’t come for the service anyways.

The places where people are there to fill their bellies. I can see those places operating without humans.

Probably not those rolling food-delivery robots I mentioned earlier, but humanoid robots like the bartender on the movie Passengers.

The American drive-thru? Easily all robots.

What about dining out though? The nice business lunch or date night?

By then we’ll have the commercialised versions of the humanoid robots I talked about in a previous email.

Robots like OpenAI’s and Figure’s Figure 01. Or robot bartenders like Kime.

When you’ve had a rough day and you just want to sip on your cold beer in silence at the bar, a robot will be there.

Remember that at a certain bar on a planet far, far away they didn’t serve droids.

But here, the droids will be serving us.