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Reuters report says restaurants and robotics still haven't mixed

Reuters today published a story on the use of robots in food service, which shows that most restaurateurs are staying with humans for the bulk of their needs due to the high cost of investment in robotics, complexity of tasks in food service, and the problems presented by robot maintenance and repair issues in a restaurant setting.

October 5, 2016 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Reuters today published a story on the use of robots and other labor-saving devices in food service, which shows that, on the whole, most restaurateurs are staying with carbon-based human life forms for the bulk of their needs due to the high cost of investment in robotics, complexity of tasks in food service, and the problems presented by robot maintenance and repair issues in a restaurant setting.

The article’s authors — Lisa Baertlein and Peter Henderson  — explain that while robots and labor-saving devices may be changing the way restaurant staff do their jobs, the devices still haven’t taken over those jobs in food service, unlike other industries. 

"The early evidence suggests robots and other forms of automation are merely reshaping the work of people in food service," said the reporters in their analysis. "They are not — as they have in banks, on factory floors and in other sectors — replacing them.

"In spite of improvements in technology, minimum wage hikes between 2000 and 2008 caused little immediate displacement of workers by technology, especially in kitchens, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and DePaul University."

In fact, the reporters cite NRA data compiled for Reuters, showing that the number of restaurant employees per site actually grew between 2001 and 2015. While the report cites U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that show restaurant employment will grow 0.6 percent annually over the next eight years.

This is especially important this year, when a major overtime rule is put into effect in December,mandating that all salaried workers earn a much higher minimum than is currently the case or be eligible for overtime pay for working any hours over 40 in a specific work week. Many restaurateurs and food service organizations, including the NRA, have adamantly opposed this measure and others to increase the minimum wage to more than double its current $7.25 level. 

The Reuters article points out that food service employs more low-level wage workers than any other industry in the U.S. and many industry leaders have stated that the upcoming federal mandate and push for higher minimum wage will only force operators to speed up their shift to automated labor, like robots, in order to eliminate the higher costs of paying human beings to do the same jobs. 

But in their article, the reporters' research showed simply that there is little evidence that will happen any time soon because most restaurateurs have concluded the potential costs of investment in robotics is just too high at the moment.

The article quotes University of California, Berkeley professor and director of the People and Robots Initiative Ken Goldberg, who states, "It's not like we're at the precipice of a revolution where the minimum wage goes up, and all these jobs disappear."

The authors state that the following problems are keeping most food service operators from delving more deeply into robotic staff: 

• Overall complexity of restaurant tasks are maladaptive to robotics, requiring multi-tasking in relatively confined spaces. 
• The risk versus reward equation is too high for most restaurateurs, as the authors said the experiences of Burger King with automation in the late 1980s proves. 
• The costs of robotic maintenance and breakdowns is too high for most restaurants to gamble on, since dependence on machines can literally bring an evening’s business to a complete stop when they break, with huge customer experience repercussions that could cost a brand its good name. 

Among the robotics and automation creators we spoke with, Flok -- whose chat-bot-based marketing platforms automate some online customer interaction -- sees validity in the report, but qualifies that by saying his business has found that restaurateurs on the whole are just beginning to "wake up" to the benefits of specific robotic applications. For instance, Flok COO Ido Mart said they have found that restaurateurs are essentially very utilitarian when it comes to technology in that they only adopt it when it clearly meets a specific unmet or poorly met need. 

"It is our experience with food retailers that automation is only accepted when it solves a known problem, otherwise it makes people nervous, regardless of how effective it can be," said Mart in an interview this morning. "Having said that, there is a widening gap between retailers and consumers. In a world where 90 percent of consumers prefer messaging over any other form of communication, local businesses are still held back by outdated engagement practices. 

"In the context of relationship automation, this gap manifests itself most prominently as a problem of scale: Without some form of acceptable automation, retailers would have to spend an inordinate amount of resources in order to be able to connect with customers via messaging in real time. In providing these retailers with marketing automation, conversational UX and AI chat functionality, flok aims to bridge that gap, powering scalable, effective relationships between businesses and their connected consumers. 2016 has been the year where the Food and Beverage retail community woke up from its slumber and started future-proofing its marketing strategies. ... We predict that cross-channel automation would become the theme of 2017, as retailers strive to avoid a fragmented experience for their customers and for those who manage the various communication channels."

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Ido Mart

COO | www.flok.com

This website is currently working to obtain responses to the article’s findings from some of the top names in food service robotics. When we obtain feedback from them, we will report the findings here. 

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.