Faced with rising minimum wage, McDonald’s decides to replace staff with robots

McDonald’s will begin replacing its cashiers with automated touchscreen kiosks in all of its 14,000 chains across the country. The first stores to experience the change will be in the states with the highest minimum wage rates, including Florida, New York, and Massachusetts. Additional changes include mobile pay methods and table service.

“Customers have access to information that gives them much more control over their lives,” said McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook in an interview with CNN Money. The attempts at modernization are a result of the low sales present when Easterbrook became CEO in March 2015. Since then, healthier menu options have worked in winning back customers. “They’re expecting us to evolve and offer greater convenience,” Easterbrook said of the customers.

While employees would still be needed after the kiosk installation for table service, it is suspected that, eventually, the company will even find a way to replace them with machines. Ed Rensi, a former chief executive officer at McDonald’s, found the increase in minimum wage to be a huge hint about not needing people in restaurant jobs anymore. “I guarantee you [that,] if a $15 minimum wage goes across the country, you’re going to see a job loss like you can’t believe,” he said. “It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robot than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.”

Such a robot would likely improve customer experience and satisfaction, but the question of the results of raising minimum wage remains too vast to predict. Possible pros include lowering poverty rates and improving the economy, while cons could include more unemployment and harm toward small businesses.    

The automated kiosks won’t even be a huge adjustment for some McDonald’s chains — as of a year ago, a McDonald’s run entirely by robots was scheduled to open in Phoenix. Although the store still had human staff members to supervise the robots, the mechanical employees were estimated to run at a speed of 50 times faster than the average human worker. “With the high demand for a minimum wage of $15 an hour and the protests getting worse every day, this is something we had to implement,” said McDonald’s spokesman Paul Horner of the Phoenix store.

Sources: The New American, CNN Money, News Examiner