#Fightfor15 Update: Meet The Burger Flipping Robot

The people in the Fight for $15 an hour crowd should be worried. The more they agitate, the more companies are willing to look at solutions which make low wage low skill workers unnecessary

(UK Telegraph) A burger-flipping robot has just completed its first day on the job at a restaurant in California, replacing humans at the grill.

Flippy has mastered the art of cooking the perfect burger and has just started work at CaliBurger, a fast-food chain.

The robotic kitchen assistant, which its makers say can be installed in just five minutes, is the brainchild of Miso Robotics.

“Though we are starting with the relatively ‘simple’ task of cooking burgers, our proprietary AI software allows our kitchen assistants to be adaptable and therefore can be trained to help with almost any dull, dirty or dangerous task in a commercial kitchen — whether it’s frying chicken, cutting vegetables or final plating.”

Flippy uses all sorts of technology, like cameras and sensors, to make sure the food is cooked correctly each and every time. A human would need to take over then to add condiments, but, how long till Flippy can do that, as well? Caliburgers finds the cost/benefit analysis in a sweet spot, hence, they plan on having them in 50 of their restaurants by 2019. Will other restaurants follow suit? Well, what is the cost of Flippy, along with the maintenance costs? Is it better than the long term cost of employees, who are agitating for $15 an hour (to start, of course), who walk off the job to agitate, who can have workplace accidents, who can be late and miss days, who can bring drama to work, and, really, in some cases, should never interact with other humans?

This goes hand in hand with Wendy’s looking to install ordering kiosks

Fast food giant Wendy’s plans to install self-ordering kiosks in about one out of six of the burger chain’s franchises nationwide by the end of this year.

A typical location would get three kiosks for about $15,000, The Columbus Dispatch reported. David Trimm, Wendy’s chief information officer, estimates that payback on those machines would come in less than two years thanks to labor savings and increased sales.

The kiosks have two purposes according to Trimm: appeasing younger customers by given them an ordering experience they prefer and reducing labor costs.

And, don’t forget, removing people who should never interact with customers yet are also demanding more money for poor work.

So, the question for the #Fightfor15 folks is “do you really want to go there? Cause you’re easily replaced.”