The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many problems for people and businesses. One of the obstacles that have arisen during the pandemic is labor shortage issues. Many companies are not finding enough workers or not finding enough qualified workers to fulfill their positions. One of the industries that have suffered from the pandemic is the restaurant industry not finding enough servers to treat their customers. To combat this issue restaurants have started looking at unique ways to fulfill their server position using technology.
At Inspire Brands’ Innovation Center in Atlanta, robots made by Miso Robotics have taken on a server and fry cook role. These robots have been featured in many restaurants including CaliBurger, WhiteCastle, Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino’s, and Chiptole. Miso Robotics has a goal of these robots becoming mainstream in 2022. The fry cook robots help to relieve the dangerous, boring job and the server robots help deliver food quicker. These robots can be very beneficial in helping ease the labor shortage issue in the restaurant industry. “The National Restaurant Association recently reported that 4 in 5 operators are understaffed. This includes 81% of full-service operators and 75% of limited-service operators. Robotics can help ease the staffing challenges and speed up operations”. Any technology increase ideally should increase the supply of jobs, even though some jobs will be lost to these robots.
One issue with these robots is although they are being used to ease the labor shortage issue, producing the robots is a problem because of the labor shortage issue. The robots use AI technology to operate and other industries such as automotive, electronics, and metal also use AI technology and those other industries are more lucrative than the restaurant industry.
Although there are problems with producing robots to operate as fry cooks/servers I believe that it will be more efficient to have them. By implementing restaurants robots one would be able to receive their food faster as well as not have to worry about having a server they did not get along with. Increasing technology would also increase the supply of jobs which would be beneficial. Although it may be years until these robots become mainstream I think it is a unique way to fix the labor shortage issue.
by: Kate Rogers -CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/22/restaurants-looking-for-labor-and-speed-turn-to-robots-.html
4 comments:
This has also been seen in other sectors. For instance, grocery stores have increased the number of self-checkout lanes. With that I have also seen an increase in security within these lanes since there is such a supply issue with how many workers. Without workers monitoring these self-checkout lines, people could easily steal more products which would mean the store would be losing money. Installing all the new technology may be beneficial for firms and stores, but as you mentioned in your blog post, there are downsides to this. Machines are expensive and it may be the case that firms are paying too much for these machines given other supply chain issues. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
This innovation is the way the economy is moving, and will continue to move for the foreseeable future. Soon it will be difficult to get an entry level job, because entry level jobs are completed by robots and AI. Now that low skill workers are hard to find, and wages are increasing in the industry, this shift may even be accelerated.
With more and more robots and automation taking place in so many job sites, it is important to also realize that not everyone can adapt accordingly. More robots means that there will need to be more programmers and manufacturers. But not everyone can change their skillsets to necessarily meet those demands. That's where I'm not sure if education programs and free community college would help in this regard.
This is definitely a very cool way to look at the future of dining. At the moment, I can see this as being beneficial due to the labor shortage but I can see this being a problem in the foreseeable future. What will we do when robots begin to "take" jobs away from people instead of holding their place. Very interesting blog.
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