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Fact checking website disputes claim that Wendy’s replaced workers with kiosks

July 26, 2017

Snopes.com, a fact checking website, reported that a July 20, 2017 meme claim that Wendy's replaced 6,000 workers with kiosks is false. The claim was posted on the Facebook page of Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit group, along with a photograph of self-serve kiosks at a Wendy's restaurant.

Turning Point USA blamed leftists for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour while castigating Wendy's for something it "may" do in replacing workers with kiosks in 6,000 locations.

A Wendy's representative told Snopes.com that about 30 restaurants had kiosks at the end of 2016, and that there could be as many as 1,000 kiosks at the end of 2017.

A Wendy's spokesperson also told Snopes.com that the intent of these kiosks is to "shift" human labor, not to eliminate it, and to improve the customer experience.

Snopes.com further noted that the kiosk in the photograph is not a self-serve restaurant kiosk but a cropped photo of a Wendy's in-house tech lab "90º Labs" originally published in a DigiDay May 27, 2015 article about how Wendy's works to improve the customer experience with technology.