A few Big Macs in a Texas restaurant Robots are taking over the preparation and serving of food at McDonald’s.
The McDonald’s restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, which is the first of its type and manned mostly by robots, is now undergoing testing. This comes at a time when quick-service restaurants are looking more and more for technology to help them simplify their operations.
It seems that this store does not have any human cashiers working at any of the registers. Because it serves clients who are in a hurry rather than those who like to linger over their meals, the restaurant itself is rather small, and there are no tables to be found inside.
Customers enter the establishment and make their orders at computerised registers; afterward, robots transport their meals via conveyor belts to predetermined areas where they may be picked up.
When placing their orders, customers can use either the drive-through window, the company’s mobile app, or the touch screen kiosks located within the shop.
The recently automated location was the focus of a viral video that was uploaded to the platform TikTok. As of the time this article was written, the video has been seen more than 1,300,000 times.
Despite having modern technology, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s was quoted as saying that the new location “is not entirely automated.” This was reported by The Guardian. Even though they don’t often engage with the customers, there are still people working at the restaurant who are human.
The spokesman said that as a result of the “enhanced technology” that is now in place, “the restaurant staff may start processing the orders of the clients as they are approaching the restaurant.” This works extremely effectively for orders placed using the McDonald’s app that are being collected by delivery drivers.
McDonald’s has said that the goal of the test restaurant is to improve the standard of customer service while simultaneously increasing its level of productivity.
Despite the firm’s joy about the new automated location, consumers have not shown much “McLovin” in response to it.
McDonald’s pays their workers $9.87 an hour, which is equal to the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In the state of Texas, an hourly wage of $16.41 is considered to be decent.
Staff at McDonald’s have been requesting an increase in compensation for many years, and many users on social media have theorised that the fast food chain’s usage of robots is a tactic to avoid really boosting salaries for workers.
