Does McDonald’s need people?
Not necessarily.
Robotic Restaurants
McDonald’s
In the past we’ve seen McDonald’s take voice activated drive-thru orders (not always accurately). Meanwhile, robots have tossed chicken or fries into vats of oil. However, their Fort Worth restaurant takes the true leap into an automated world. Diners don’t see any humans. You order at a kiosk and get your food on a conveyor belt. Grab and go, there are no tables. Still, hidden in back, humans do some cooking.
Chipotle
At Chipotle, it’s the the burrito bowl robots that are hidden in back. Able to make 180 bowls per hour, they take the online orders. At the same time, up front, people do the walk-ins. In back, the robots are 6 times faster than the humans. Rather like an assembly line, a metal arm moves among food dispensers (or a chute) with squash or grains or veggies. Lastly, toppings like roasted cashew complete the order. Meanwhile Chipotle’s Chippy makes tortilla chips.
And White Castle has Flippy making burgers. (So we have Chippy and Flippy–any other names?)
Our Bottom Line: Monopolistic Competition
Fast food chains care about the speed and accuracy they can get from AI and robots.
In a monopolistically competitive market, it all makes sense.
Monopolistic competition is composed of two halves. The monopoly part indicates the company is producing something unique that you associate solely with it. But the competition half says that lots of others have something that could be almost identical. A beauty salon is the perfect example. You can get a haircut at many hundreds of shops. But the one person who does your hair is what makes the place unique. Similarly, shown in our featured image, many of the outlets sell hamburgers. But you can only get a Big Mac at McDonald’s.
In addition, speed can differentiate Wendy’s from White Castle from Burger King.
For monopolistic competition, businesses tend to be smaller and the market is their boss. On a competitive market structure continuum, monopolistic competition is located to the left on the scale. Its position indicates less price and non-price power than those firms located to the right:
My sources and more: There have been a slew of articles describing fast food automation in WSJ, Insider, and The NY Post .
