Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food slides? Smart waiters? Hook and cook? And a large orange drink?
Pneumatic tubes
But only for burritos. Pizza's not quite as resilient.
The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
271–280 of 280 posts
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#272> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…
In India, these are called "cloud kitchens." A single cloud kitchen could be listed on a food delivery app under multiple brands - one brand for chinese cuisine, one for italian, etc.
Dark kitchens in the UK.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically it seems after expanding to >30 countries then realizing COVID growth would not continue, rationalizing operations, and figuring out the model of ghost kitchens is limited in growth potential with significant customer and platform backlash TK's been trying to automate the production side using the "former self driving team" of Uber at a Cloud Kitchen subsidiary called Lab37. https://www.lab37.us/ However, t…
How'd that go in China? Robot-burger flipping always seemed cool. With the level of automation they otherwise employ, why isn't McDonald's doing it yet?
My understanding is that it's basically a cost benefit calculation where it would cost nearly as much or even more than a worker because of the mechanical repair cost over time and a restaurant still wouldn't be able to automate the entire production flow from take burger out of freezer -> package it up, so there isn't much benefit. Also, having all the burger variants McDonalds sells also doesn't make this easy.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get why people took issue with my parent comment, because it seems like I am just whining that economists are measuring the only things they can measure. But it's like the fish asking "what's water?". why do we pay people to measure these things? why do they measure what they measure and not something else? why is this type of thinking dominant among the technocratic elite? Especially when the view from the ground…
Most of the profession of economics in the last several decades has been focused on figuring out how to measure difficult-to-measure truths about how people behave. That's what behavioral economics is about. The other name on the UChicago institute you don't like, Gary Becker, won a Nobel for finding ways to creatively study behaviorism: family structure, why people commit crime, studying societal benefits from educa…
I understand the value of economics as a social science, and there are some policies that economists propose that I like. However, a lot of this stuff is either just justification for neoliberal policies, or just common sense.
For example, a neoliberal economist like Becker would say: "There's actually an economic disincentive for racial discrimination"
Sure, if your economic analysis does not take into account class conflict, which most orthodox economists do not. Discrimination is borne intentionally out of class conflict as a tool of dividing the working class.
Orthodox economics is like having a bunch of scientists devoted to a pre-heliocentric model of the solar system. They can describe isolated phenomena within the accepted framework, but they will never be able to accurately describe (in full) the world around them because their foundational world model is incorrect.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#275> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…
Same with my favorite local Thai place. I still order from there ~monthly as it's great; but I miss the lunch option.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is extremely common almost everywhere in Asia. Many places still have SROs (which were outlawed in the US decades ago) which is essentially just a room and (nowadays) a bathroom. No kitchen so the only cooking tends to be instant noodles. Virtually every meal is eaten out or via delivery.
>SROs (which were outlawed in the US decades ago) I found no evidence that existing SROs were "outlawed", rather that construction of new SRO hotels has severely declined from a century ago, for a number of reasons including laws/regulations.
That's called outlawing it
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically it seems after expanding to >30 countries then realizing COVID growth would not continue, rationalizing operations, and figuring out the model of ghost kitchens is limited in growth potential with significant customer and platform backlash TK's been trying to automate the production side using the "former self driving team" of Uber at a Cloud Kitchen subsidiary called Lab37. https://www.lab37.us/ However, t…
How'd that go in China? Robot-burger flipping always seemed cool. With the level of automation they otherwise employ, why isn't McDonald's doing it yet?
Value wise, China for mechatronic R&D is awesome. There's nowhere better on earth. It's the other stuff - legals, regulatory, HR, schools, etc. that's a PITA.
Re. McD's (actually ~15 years ago I used to work with the husband of the head of Europe but never discussed the business) - don't think their risk model has 'operational efficiency' high on the agenda. Mostly risk is outsourced to franchisees. They are so big they can just move really slowly and nobody gets fired. When competitors do something, they copy it and see if it works, recent eg. CosMc's https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/mcdonalds-unveils-cosmcs-i...
Fundamentally - are we all going to be eating from robots real soon now? Absolutely, yes. But they won't look like 'Flippy' or Creator. They'll just be infrastructure - familiar features of the public environment as common as an electrical socket, garden tap, or street sign. You'll press a button on your own device, and either the results will come to you or you'll take a short walk. Yes, that means they have to be small, highly reliable, and self-managing. Nobody (else) has this yet. We're there.
But the stock tip of this post is - current era last mile players are dead men walking. They have no means to transition to a significant position given pending commercial drone deregulation. The players set to clean up must be vertically integrated and provide both production and delivery (that's us) or have exceptional cycle time confidence and perfect autonomous drone integration with agreed standards to unknown airframes (sketchy proposition).
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely horse-centric was a lot better.
Some people seem to think manure is cleaner than tailpipes.
Reminds me of an Indian ceremony where they believe cow manure is healthy (maybe it is, I have no clue) and they are walking on it on barefeet or something.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
>SROs (which were outlawed in the US decades ago) I found no evidence that existing SROs were "outlawed", rather that construction of new SRO hotels has severely declined from a century ago, for a number of reasons including laws/regulations.
That's called outlawing it
Not when existing ones continue to operate.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#280So offended that Steak N Shake has order screens instead of servers these days and they still expect a similar tip before service is even rendered.
same with shake shack, went there once, never going back. also asked me for my phone number.
if you’re lucky enough to have a shake shack with a drive through - most don’t - they don’t ask for a tip and your order is delivered more quickly and you don’t have to use a tablet.
ours has a drive thru so we regularly drive thru and bring the food inside and eat it.