Even with Rising Wages, Robot Revolution Skips Restaurants

Labor-saving technology is taking its place in restaurants across the country as the efforts to raise wages are increasing. Burger flipping can be done with clamshell grills, kiosks and tablets are taking orders, and robots are now programmed to make pizza. Despite these significant advances, early evidence suggests that robots and automation are simply changing the way people in food service are working instead of replacing their jobs, according to a recent Reuters article.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and DePaul University conducted a study that found that found that minimum wage increases between 2000 and 2008 did not affect the displacement of workers. In fact, in 2015 there were more workers per restaurant than in 2000.

Since restaurants employ more low-wage workers than any other industry, automation is seen as a serious solution for many fast food chains as the fight for a $15 minimum wage continues. Restaurant operators feel that kind of raise in wages would force them to kill jobs. But robotics researchers believe installing this kind of automation and technology would not simple task, and that a robotics revolution is still many years away.

"It's not like we're at the precipice of a revolution where the minimum wage goes up, and all these jobs disappear," said Ken Goldberg, a professor of engineering and director of the People and Robots Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kitchen jobs may also still be too complex for robots that can’t work in small spaces or multitask like humans can.