The destruction of the $15 an hour burger Flipper has arrived.

[Renae]

Momentum Machines robot-powered restaurant is opening in San Francisco - Tech Insider

A robot-powered burger joint is coming to San Francisco.In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It's fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.
Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline's Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.
Now it looks like the restaurant is actually happening. A job posting on Craigslist from early June gives us our first glimpse into how the company's future flagship, presumably opening soon, might work.

The real question is, doe it come with a Fry Hopper?

 

[Risky Thicket]

But you know what? Some of us, probably you as well, prefer locally owned restaurants. Chain restaurants are crap. There's nothing better for breakfast than a local squat and gobble where real cooks cook real food that caters to local tastes.

Lunch is often the same preference. Give me locally owned food vendors with family and extended family working hard to provide good food to their neighbors and friends who have been customers for years.

Screw chain restaurants and screw a bunch of robots. Gimme real food and real restaurants.

Tech world can push all that crap to us all day but in the end I believe patrons are already going back to real food in real restaurants served by real people. The robot food in robot chain restaurants will be a flash in the pan. Pun intended.

 

[RetiredUSN]

But you know what? Some of us, probably you as well, prefer locally owned restaurants. Chain restaurants are crap. There's nothing better for breakfast than a local squat and gobble where real cooks cook real food that caters to local tastes.

Lunch is often the same preference. Give me locally owned food vendors with family and extended family working hard to provide good food to their neighbors and friends who have been customers for years.

Screw chain restaurants and screw a bunch of robots. Gimme real food and real restaurants.

Tech world can push all that crap to us all day but in the end I believe patrons are already going back to real food in real restaurants served by real people. The robot food in robot chain restaurants will be a flash in the pan. Pun intended.

A Big Mac with a small Coke, small fries are together about $8.00 now around my area.

Some local great mom and pop diners have lunches for $5.99

 

[Glen Contrarian]

Momentum Machines robot-powered restaurant is opening in San Francisco - Tech Insider

The real question is, doe it come with a Fry Hopper?

Do you really think that not passing $15/hr wages would somehow have prevented this? Automation is coming, and once in place is cheaper than paying freaking starvation wages.

 

[Renae]

But you know what? Some of us, probably you as well, prefer locally owned restaurants. Chain restaurants are crap. There's nothing better for breakfast than a local squat and gobble where real cooks cook real food that caters to local tastes.

Lunch is often the same preference. Give me locally owned food vendors with family and extended family working hard to provide good food to their neighbors and friends who have been customers for years.

Screw chain restaurants and screw a bunch of robots. Gimme real food and real restaurants.

Tech world can push all that crap to us all day but in the end I believe patrons are already going back to real food in real restaurants served by real people. The robot food in robot chain restaurants will be a flash in the pan. Pun intended.

While I DO prefer small places, there is an AMAZING hole in the wall greek place near us... OMG the Lamb skewers are to DIE for...

I don't mind hopping in when in a hurry to Whataburger once in a blue moon for a burger and fries. And really if you think about the future, how hard is going to be to program a machine to make a seared steak, or whip up a buttermilk pancake? The PC power is here...

This is merely the starting point, pushed forward by artificially inflated COB.

 

[Renae]

Do you really think that not passing $15/hr wages would somehow have prevented this? Automation is coming, and once in place is cheaper than paying freaking starvation wages.

I think it helped accelerate it. When you artificially increase the COB, businesses look for ways to save.

 

[PirateMk1]

But you know what? Some of us, probably you as well, prefer locally owned restaurants. Chain restaurants are crap. There's nothing better for breakfast than a local squat and gobble where real cooks cook real food that caters to local tastes.

Lunch is often the same preference. Give me locally owned food vendors with family and extended family working hard to provide good food to their neighbors and friends who have been customers for years.

Screw chain restaurants and screw a bunch of robots. Gimme real food and real restaurants.

Tech world can push all that crap to us all day but in the end I believe patrons are already going back to real food in real restaurants served by real people. The robot food in robot chain restaurants will be a flash in the pan. Pun intended.

I agree with everything you said, except for the flash in the pan part. The robots are here to stay. Chains will use them because they will be extremely consistent, which ironically enough a lot of patrons to the chains crave. Robots will eventually end up in the mom and pop places to help with the more mundane aspects of running a restraint like cleaning and prep work.

 

[DamnYankee]

Do you really think that not passing $15/hr wages would somehow have prevented this? Automation is coming, and once in place is cheaper than paying freaking starvation wages.

Automation and $15 an hour have the same effect. People are still going, if they haven't already, lose their jobs.

 

[Absentglare]

I think it helped accelerate it. When you artificially increase the COB, businesses look for ways to save.

Then why is this a bad thing ?

 

[Deuce]

Momentum Machines robot-powered restaurant is opening in San Francisco - Tech Insider

The real question is, doe it come with a Fry Hopper?

That thing destroys a $7.50/hour burger flipper too.

 

[NoLeftNoRight]

Then why is this a bad thing ?

Because some of the displaced burger flippers will turn to crime. Others will end up on street corners and others homeless.
At the present time, the population of Earth is on the rise...not decline.
Many of those humans will need some way to earn a living.

Fewer jobs for humans means more humans with no means to support and feed themselves.
And that leads to social unrest.

 

[Deuce]

Because some of the displaced burger flippers will turn to crime. Others will end up on street corners and others homeless.
At the present time, the population of Earth is on the rise...not decline.
Many of those humans will need some way to earn a living.

Fewer jobs for humans means more humans with no means to support and feed themselves.
And that leads to social unrest.

Tractors put a lot of farm workers out of work too. Progress will make some jobs obsolete, but that's not an argument for halting progress.

But you are correct on some level about the future of this trend. Sufficiently high levels of automation will make our current economic model untenable. Society will have to change with the time on a large scale just like burger flippers will have to change with the times on an individual scale.

 

[Spartacus FPV]

Then why is this a bad thing ?

Because you're forcing them to do it, with bad reasoning, and often the effects of looking for ways to save include replacing whole ingredients with cheap chemical ingredients that may or may not be carcinogenic.

 

[Absentglare]

Because some of the displaced burger flippers will turn to crime. Others will end up on street corners and others homeless.
At the present time, the population of Earth is on the rise...not decline.
Many of those humans will need some way to earn a living.

Fewer jobs for humans means more humans with no means to support and feed themselves.
And that leads to social unrest.

That's a reason why we should provide more social support, not less.

Why should we provide even less social support because poor people have even more working against them ? How does that approach make any sense ?

 

[Absentglare]

Because you're forcing them to do it, with bad reasoning, and often the effects of looking for ways to save include replacing whole ingredients with cheap chemical ingredients that may or may not be carcinogenic.

Nobody is forced to do anything by the minimum wage except pay the minimum wage, a safeguard that protects the exploitation of American labor.

Going off on some "they're forcing fast food restaurants to give you cancer because of the minimum wage," is among the more ridiculous conspiracies i've seen.

 

[Deuce]

Nobody is forced to do anything by the minimum wage except pay the minimum wage, a safeguard that protects the exploitation of American labor.

Going off on some "they're forcing fast food restaurants to give you cancer because of the minimum wage," is among the more ridiculous conspiracies i've seen.

Literally "it's the government's fault if a business chooses to poison us."

 

[Renae]

Then why is this a bad thing ?

I don't care really in the end, it was inevitable as computers and machines reached that epic point in history they could start doing the menial PHYSICAL as they have the menial mental (calculation, spreadsheets, sorting files...) However their introduction was spurred by ludicrous economic demands by under skilled, undeserving workers who are merely pawns used by others to enrich themselves.

 

[Deuce]

I don't care really in the end, it was inevitable as computers and machines reached that epic point in history they could start doing the menial PHYSICAL as they have the menial mental (calculation, spreadsheets, sorting files...) However their introduction was spurred by ludicrous economic demands by under skilled, undeserving workers who are merely pawns used by others to enrich themselves.

Are you seriously under the impression that $7.50 an hour beats this machine?

 

[Absentglare]

I don't care really in the end, it was inevitable as computers and machines reached that epic point in history they could start doing the menial PHYSICAL as they have the menial mental (calculation, spreadsheets, sorting files...) However their introduction was spurred by ludicrous economic demands by under skilled, undeserving workers who are merely pawns used by others to enrich themselves.

I don't think the minimum wage is a ludicrous economic demand. If anything is a ludicrous economic demand, it's CEO pay and preferential capital gains tax treatment.

 

[Renae]

I don't think the minimum wage is a ludicrous economic demand. If anything is a ludicrous economic demand, it's CEO pay and preferential capital gains tax treatment.

People who think profit is bad and government should make everything equal tend to not get real world economics.

 

[Deuce]

People who think profit is bad and government should make everything equal tend to not get real world economics.

People who think this is the argument liberals are making tend not to get real world economics.

 

[Renae]

People who think this is the argument liberals are making tend not to get real world economics.

It's a NEW MONTH! Your one reply, if you make it worth my time I'll extend it, but only for a short time.

Yes, it's obvious the person I was responding to sees the gains of investors and CEO's as bad. If ONLY some force could make that pay filter down to the "workers!" There are two forces that could cause that. One is a business decision by the shareholders and investors to reduce their own ROI and filter it to the workers. The other is Government regulation.

Now as there aren't a whole lot of "High paying line workers, low CEO and investor" pay companies out there...

This sort of economic view of the world is one that starts with "I'm a victim being exploited" Generally a very progressive POV as most Conservative's start life from a "How can I better myself" POV

 

[Absentglare]

It's a NEW MONTH! Your one reply, if you make it worth my time I'll extend it, but only for a short time.

Yes, it's obvious the person I was responding to sees the gains of investors and CEO's as bad. If ONLY some force could make that pay filter down to the "workers!" There are two forces that could cause that. One is a business decision by the shareholders and investors to reduce their own ROI and filter it to the workers. The other is Government regulation.

Now as there aren't a whole lot of "High paying line workers, low CEO and investor" pay companies out there...

This sort of economic view of the world is one that starts with "I'm a victim being exploited" Generally a very progressive POV as most Conservative's start life from a "How can I better myself" POV

CEO wages are disproportionate. That is a problem.

 

[Quazimodo]

CEO wages are disproportionate. That is a problem.

Could you support that remark with some data? And...who gets to write the definition of the word "disproportionate?" Does that responsibility fall on your shoulders?

 

[eohrnberger]

A Big Mac with a small Coke, small fries are together about $8.00 now around my area.

Some local great mom and pop diners have lunches for $5.99

Yeah, I know.

Over the course of the last 2 years or so, BK hiked their double whopper, small coke, small fries from $6 + change to $8 + change. With this price hike, I've cutback from eating there once a week to once a month.

I can get a 1/2 cobb salad with double dressing and a sourdough role for $6 + change, and eat that for most lunches.

BK is pricing themselves out of the market.