by Tdarcos » Tue Nov 16, 2021 4:01 pm
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:20 pm
I remember writing about Del Taco when I first moved out here, so the corporation is at least 25 years old. If Del Taco hasn't been saving money for an occasion like this over 25 years, to where they can overpay workers to get the best talent and stay in business, then whoever has been running that corporation is pretty dumb and should resign. They probably DO have the money, and Jimmy John's, but the reality of the situation hasn't hit them.
Flack's later comment hits a lot of this on the head, but also, the owner may have figured his customers are price-conscious or price-sensitive, and believes he can't raise prices to cover the extra cost. Just because he can do expensive hobbies does not necessarily mean he's rich enough to pay more, he may be living beyond his means, and financing his lifestyle. Or he may be a cheap son-of-a-bitch, and is either unable or unwilling to understand that now-former fast-food employees are no longer willing to do shit jobs for shit wages. Either you improve the job, so it isn't a hellhole, or you pay enough to compensate for the unpleasant job. There is also another reason, I'll link to Louis Rossman's video below, as he explains, from both the viewpoint of an employer who lost zero people in his business during the pandemic, and are very loyal to him, even as he admits he's probably not a nice boss.
Flack wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:59 pm
We can pay people $20/hour to make tacos and then the price of tacos doubles. The headline everyday is how inflation is going up. I don't understand what people want.
Louis Rossman explains that, too. The TL;DR of his video is that being able to improve your lifestyle is the carrot dangling from the stick of life. The average person was able to reach the carrot of a better life. Now people are seeing the carrot is now attached to a moving vehicle. No matter how fast you run, you can't catch it, and if you stop to take a breath, it gets even further away. The average (male) high schooler has zero chance of doing what their father and grandfather did: work honestly, save enough for a down payment and buy a house. By the time you retire, you'll own your own home. But housing prices are going up exponentially while wages have been stagnant or rose very little. So a lot of them may be dropping out, refusing to be part of a rat race you can't win. And girls are doing the same thing, dropping out, for essentially the same reason: things will never get better for them.
Flack wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:59 pm
sushi place I go used to pay $10/hour... raised everyone's pay got rid of their sushi chefs and replaced them with a robot ... Now they pay $15/hour... they got rid of the front counter help... congrats to the one guy left who makes $15/hour now.
I have said that the only reason restaurants have staff is the high cost of automation. There is no reason that most quick-service restaurants can't be fully automated. Harry Harrison, in his book,
A Stainless Steel Rat is Born tells about a completely automated fast-food restaurant that's an expy of McDonalds. A delivery guy loads the backroom storage with the things needed to make meals. When a customer at a kiosk/delivery door places an order, his payment is accepted, the delivery system dispenses everything for their order, flash-cooks it, bags it, drops it in the delivery slot, and the door opens. Once finished, the door closes and that kiosk waits for the next order. Robotic janitors go through the place and sterilize everything as customers leave the area. There are no employees at all. The delivery person - who might be the owner - collects any cash inserted in the machine. Everything is counted, weighed and portioned; there is no waste, no erroneous orders, and no thumb-fingered employees to fuck up the customer's order.
The reason they're not doing this is two-fold: (1) automation technology is expensive, there is a big capital cost, even if the operational cost is very low; (2) (A) the full suite of equipment isn't there yet to fully automate a restaurant; (B) the cost of automation of an existing location is still more than hiring live people; (C) nobody has put all the pieces together to do it.
I expect the cost-benefit calculation is going to eventually make 100% automated order taking, food preparation, and delivery in quick-serve restaurants is coming, probably sooner than we would have expected. Covid-19 changed office work; companies who would never have considered working from home had no choice, and if it could be done during a pandemic, why do we have to come back into work? So, it's very difficult to find people willing to do fast-food work, let's eliminate the people. You can already order and pay at a kiosk; food can be cooked by automated equipment (a lot of the work is already automated), all that's necessary is an automatic food wrapping and packing system, plus something a bit more advanced than a Roomba. If your place has no dine-in facilities, you don't even need a janitor, make the entrance waterproof and hose the place down when no customers are present.
Maybe even have all liquids used for cleaning saved by recycling them. Wash water is drained into a holding tank. Solids are filtered out and trashed. Filtration purifies both recycled water and additional public water added as needed. This water is poured into the cleaning tank where it's heated above 160 then mixed with detergent and used to clean systems as needed, then they are rinsed with clean water, and the cycle starts all over.
Here's Louis:
[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey" post_id=125135 time=1636935637 user_id=3]
I remember writing about Del Taco when I first moved out here, so the corporation is at least 25 years old. If Del Taco hasn't been saving money for an occasion like this over 25 years, to where they can overpay workers to get the best talent and stay in business, then whoever has been running that corporation is pretty dumb and should resign. They probably DO have the money, and Jimmy John's, but the reality of the situation hasn't hit them.
[/quote]
Flack's later comment hits a lot of this on the head, but also, the owner may have figured his customers are price-conscious or price-sensitive, and believes he can't raise prices to cover the extra cost. Just because he can do expensive hobbies does not necessarily mean he's rich enough to pay more, he may be living beyond his means, and financing his lifestyle. Or he may be a cheap son-of-a-bitch, and is either unable or unwilling to understand that now-former fast-food employees are no longer willing to do shit jobs for shit wages. Either you improve the job, so it isn't a hellhole, or you pay enough to compensate for the unpleasant job. There is also another reason, I'll link to Louis Rossman's video below, as he explains, from both the viewpoint of an employer who lost zero people in his business during the pandemic, and are very loyal to him, even as he admits he's probably not a nice boss.
[quote=Flack post_id=125138 time=1636945163 user_id=840]
We can pay people $20/hour to make tacos and then the price of tacos doubles. The headline everyday is how inflation is going up. I don't understand what people want.[/quote]
Louis Rossman explains that, too. The TL;DR of his video is that being able to improve your lifestyle is the carrot dangling from the stick of life. The average person was able to reach the carrot of a better life. Now people are seeing the carrot is now attached to a moving vehicle. No matter how fast you run, you can't catch it, and if you stop to take a breath, it gets even further away. The average (male) high schooler has zero chance of doing what their father and grandfather did: work honestly, save enough for a down payment and buy a house. By the time you retire, you'll own your own home. But housing prices are going up exponentially while wages have been stagnant or rose very little. So a lot of them may be dropping out, refusing to be part of a rat race you can't win. And girls are doing the same thing, dropping out, for essentially the same reason: things will never get better for them.
[quote=Flack post_id=125138 time=1636945163 user_id=840]
sushi place I go used to pay $10/hour... raised everyone's pay got rid of their sushi chefs and replaced them with a robot ... Now they pay $15/hour... they got rid of the front counter help... congrats to the one guy left who makes $15/hour now.[/quote]
I have said that the only reason restaurants have staff is the high cost of automation. There is no reason that most quick-service restaurants can't be fully automated. Harry Harrison, in his book, [i][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Stainless_Steel_Rat_Is_Born]A Stainless Steel Rat is Born[/url][/i] tells about a completely automated fast-food restaurant that's an expy of McDonalds. A delivery guy loads the backroom storage with the things needed to make meals. When a customer at a kiosk/delivery door places an order, his payment is accepted, the delivery system dispenses everything for their order, flash-cooks it, bags it, drops it in the delivery slot, and the door opens. Once finished, the door closes and that kiosk waits for the next order. Robotic janitors go through the place and sterilize everything as customers leave the area. There are no employees at all. The delivery person - who might be the owner - collects any cash inserted in the machine. Everything is counted, weighed and portioned; there is no waste, no erroneous orders, and no thumb-fingered employees to fuck up the customer's order.
The reason they're not doing this is two-fold: (1) automation technology is expensive, there is a big capital cost, even if the operational cost is very low; (2) (A) the full suite of equipment isn't there yet to fully automate a restaurant; (B) the cost of automation of an existing location is still more than hiring live people; (C) nobody has put all the pieces together to do it.
I expect the cost-benefit calculation is going to eventually make 100% automated order taking, food preparation, and delivery in quick-serve restaurants is coming, probably sooner than we would have expected. Covid-19 changed office work; companies who would never have considered working from home had no choice, and if it could be done during a pandemic, why do we have to come back into work? So, it's very difficult to find people willing to do fast-food work, let's eliminate the people. You can already order and pay at a kiosk; food can be cooked by automated equipment (a lot of the work is already automated), all that's necessary is an automatic food wrapping and packing system, plus something a bit more advanced than a Roomba. If your place has no dine-in facilities, you don't even need a janitor, make the entrance waterproof and hose the place down when no customers are present.
Maybe even have all liquids used for cleaning saved by recycling them. Wash water is drained into a holding tank. Solids are filtered out and trashed. Filtration purifies both recycled water and additional public water added as needed. This water is poured into the cleaning tank where it's heated above 160 then mixed with detergent and used to clean systems as needed, then they are rinsed with clean water, and the cycle starts all over.
Here's Louis:
https://youtu.be/52HpzZ4HT4g
https://youtu.be/u6dYdlbVteo