When I was a teenager the most popular part time jobs among my piers were either working in a supermarket or at a fast food place.<p>Lots of supermarkets are starting to replace humans with self-checkouts and things like this will probably become standard in fast food.<p>So how is a teenager supposed to fund his pot habit in 2020?
Not exactly kitchen-free, is it? You've got to have food storage areas, produce washing stations, produce prep stations, garbage disposal, and even if the actual grinding, cooking, and sandwich assembly functions are all contained within the robot, you're still going to want to house that somewhere out of reach of the general public, making that area a de facto kitchen.<p>I wouldn't worry too much about jobs--you're still going to need people to wash, inspect, prep and load the produce, as well as the meat grinders and bun burners. And there better be someone in there to disassemble the robot periodically to give it a good thorough cleaning and reassemble it.
Interesting, you don't think of Krispy Kreme as making robot donuts.<p>Curious that Macdonald's, with so much careful specification of all processes, hasn't done this, at all. e.g. fry/remove/salt fries. (though their standard coffee is mostly automated). Macdonald's is so well-placed, I can only assume it isn't actually cost-effective for them. Maybe it's worth it for Momentum, for the PR? Or, by starting from scratch, they can make radical changes? Or, it isn't happening? (it's just a "concept" so far).<p>Finally, Larry Niven wrote a short story about automated restaurants "Intent to Deceive" (1968).
It sounds like they are a long way from actually operating a restaurant. This is just speculative hype.<p>"Momentum Machines – the minds behind the burger maker — have expressed plans to create their own “smart restaurant” chain, serving burgers made by their own crime-fighting cooking robots. According to the company’s site, the technology will provide “the means for the next generation of restaurant design and operation.”"
Robots in a restaurant benefit only the owner, not the customer (esp. when they burn the burgers like in the pictures). When robots are able to cook proper meals, they'll be in our homes to do so, because we'll want to save time and money and not walk to the next fast-food restaurant.