Do Self-Service Kiosks Actually Increase Employment at Fast-Food Restaurants?

Instead of eliminating jobs, self-service kiosks at McDonald's and other fast-food chains 'have added extra work for kitchen staff,' reports CNN — and as a bonus, 'pushed customers to order more food than they do at the cash register...'

Kiosks 'guarantee that the upsell opportunities' like a milkshake or fries are suggested to customers when they order, Shake Shack CEO Robert Lynch said on an earnings call last month. 'Sometimes that is not always a priority for employees when you've got 40 people in line. You're trying to get through it as quick as possible.' Kiosks also shift employees from behind the cash register to maintaining the dining area, delivering food to customers or working in the kitchen, he said. [Although a study from Temple University researchers found long lines at a kiosk stress customers — making them order less.]

Some McDonald's franchisees — which own and operate 95% of McDonald's in the United States — are now rolling out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations, McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new 'guest experience lead' jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. 'In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts,' said RJ Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail industries at data analytics firm Placer.ai....

Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. 'The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers,' he said. 'Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value.' Self-checkout also has not caused retail job losses. In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers.

Fast-food chains and retailers need to do a better job communicating what the potential benefits of kiosks and self-checkout are to consumers and employees, Andrews said. 'What I think will be central for customers is that they see how this technology is providing them with more or better service rather than more unpaid busywork,' he said. 'Otherwise, the public is just likely to view it as yet another attempt to reduce labor costs via automation and self-service.'

This article ends up taking both sides of the issue. For example, some befuddled kiosk users can take longer to order, the article points out — and of course, kiosks can also break down.

Restaurant analyst Hottovy told CNN 'If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell, they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.