> Take even the most unskilled labor that people can think about such as flipping a burger at a restaurant like McDonald's. In reality that job is multiple different roles mixed into one that are constantly changing. Multiple companies have experimented with machines and robots to perform this task all with very limited success and none with any proper economics.
In actual reality, McDonalds has already automated to a vast degree. People were talking about burger-flipping robots as a trope 30+ years ago. Their future has come, just not in the way imagined.
If the McDonalds franchises near me are anything to go by we went from a busy lunch rush needing a staff of 20 or so individuals to properly handle, to around half a dozen. At least a half reduction in peak staffing needs - nearly entirely due to various forms of automation and supply chain optimization. The latter of which is just another name for automation further upstream and abstracted from the point of sale.
> This is a complete non-reality in the restaurant industry. Every piece of equipment they have cost them significant amounts and ongoing maintenance even if it's the most basic equipment such as a grill or a fryer.
Perhaps grills are the hardest bit to automate, so they may never not be staffed by humans. I'd argue some places have done a fairly good job "automating" this aspect too if you squint a little. Stuff like double-sided grills where the top comes down and cooks a burger from both sides at once. Doubles your line throughput. Call this mechanization if you want, but it's in the same bucket to me.
But look at soft drink machines. They are now fully automated with some locations able to go from 3-4 people staffing two machines during a busy lunch rush, down to a single person who simply puts caps on stuff coming off the tiny conveyor belt. Mistakes are also cut down to close to zero, including stuff like "less ice" or "more ice" customizations.
The locations I'm aware of now operate fryers on a rotation so the "wait for fresh fries" experience is a thing of the past. This probably wasn't a major capital investment - just an improvement in the automation of data collection, modeling, and demand prediction. Still an automation though, as it replaces some manager making those decisions.
Ordering kiosks are the obvious one everyone knows about, so not worth discussing. They are universal in large cities these days, and I'm starting to see them more and more even in small towns during road trips. App-based ordering is also not someone anyone predicted 20 years ago either. Locations went from 6-8 cashiers on duty down to 1 or 2.
It already happened. Fast food is getting more out of less workers, just as predicted. It just happened incrementally over decades. Sure, a typical fast food franchise will never be operated in a "lights out" style manner with a roving team of highly paid technicians simply responding to alerts. But the labor force has been reduced and optimized for efficiency, and will continue to be chipped away little by little as technology gets better.