I am skeptical that "upskilling" and "re-skilling" will work in the short term given how the closing of mines and factories in Britain resulted in a generation of men out-of-work and their children having to work local low-paying jobs or move to cities for "email jobs". A lot of the jobs that replaced the skilled labour were in entertainment and leisure, mainly shopping, cafes, and restaurants, especially in the north. If those sectors becomes automated, which would involve turning kitchens into assembly line style workplaces, then a huge portion of the workers would be out of work for a long time. The saving grace is that a lot of cafes and restaurants, at least in my are area, are independents. They may not employ a lot of people but they can't afford automation either, at least not yet.
Interestingly, the supermarket Booths, a high-end British chain, has ditched all it's self-checkouts (which are everywhere in Britain now and have been for years) in favour of staffed tills due to customer demand. Now this is a small chain with a well-to-do clientele and I suspect that will influence what will be automated and what won't. In the future we will pay a premium to have "the human touch" when going to shops, restaurants, etc.
I agree 100% with the sentiment that it'll be way tougher to replace cooks than to replace line workers, although there could be some exceptions. I can't remember if we talked about this, but one of the salad chains (Sweetgreen, maybe?) announced they would roll out a salad bot - basically, just to replace the position on the line that assembles ingredients and mixes them together. Some of the more limited line positions will probably go sooner rather than later, but the more complex jobs are still many years off.
Definitely, some of the more simple tasks can be automated much easier. For example, I saw a video the other day of a fully automated pizza restaurant, I believe it was in France, maybe but it only took 2 robotic arms to make a pizza from a raw doughball to a cooked pizza. The robotic arms put the pizza in a to-go box and that was it. Customers ordered and paid at a kiosk. You need a lot less space and minimal supervision to run an operation like that. The future!
Damn. Some types of food, you really can't imagine eating something not prepared by a human... but pizza? This really feels like it could work.
I mean Domino's and other chains have the oven process automated, where the worker just sets the pie on a conveyor belt of sorts, right? This is just another step in that direction.
Within 10 years, ALL major pizza chains will use this, I bet. All of them.
Oh yeah, the conveyor belt pizza ovens have been used for years. If pizza is this easy to automate think about burgers or subway, any assembly line concept could probably be automated fairly easily. These robotic arms can precisely portion ingredients making inventory and ordering much easier and without a human to over portion these companies will save a ton of money.
You're definitely right. I moved to Richmond in 1994-95 and got paid $4.25 an hour to work at Subway. At least half of that stuff would be easy to automate with stuff like this, although a lot of the fresh prep would be tougher (for now, anyway).
I'm not sure if we'll see a net loss in food jobs, though. I think this may just open up a LOT more opportunities for a variety of food types, like even very personalized diets catered to, etc. If history is any indicator, food prep won't go away for humans any time soon, but the landscape will change a LOT.
I am skeptical that "upskilling" and "re-skilling" will work in the short term given how the closing of mines and factories in Britain resulted in a generation of men out-of-work and their children having to work local low-paying jobs or move to cities for "email jobs". A lot of the jobs that replaced the skilled labour were in entertainment and leisure, mainly shopping, cafes, and restaurants, especially in the north. If those sectors becomes automated, which would involve turning kitchens into assembly line style workplaces, then a huge portion of the workers would be out of work for a long time. The saving grace is that a lot of cafes and restaurants, at least in my are area, are independents. They may not employ a lot of people but they can't afford automation either, at least not yet.
Interestingly, the supermarket Booths, a high-end British chain, has ditched all it's self-checkouts (which are everywhere in Britain now and have been for years) in favour of staffed tills due to customer demand. Now this is a small chain with a well-to-do clientele and I suspect that will influence what will be automated and what won't. In the future we will pay a premium to have "the human touch" when going to shops, restaurants, etc.
I agree 100% with the sentiment that it'll be way tougher to replace cooks than to replace line workers, although there could be some exceptions. I can't remember if we talked about this, but one of the salad chains (Sweetgreen, maybe?) announced they would roll out a salad bot - basically, just to replace the position on the line that assembles ingredients and mixes them together. Some of the more limited line positions will probably go sooner rather than later, but the more complex jobs are still many years off.
Definitely, some of the more simple tasks can be automated much easier. For example, I saw a video the other day of a fully automated pizza restaurant, I believe it was in France, maybe but it only took 2 robotic arms to make a pizza from a raw doughball to a cooked pizza. The robotic arms put the pizza in a to-go box and that was it. Customers ordered and paid at a kiosk. You need a lot less space and minimal supervision to run an operation like that. The future!
Damn. Some types of food, you really can't imagine eating something not prepared by a human... but pizza? This really feels like it could work.
I mean Domino's and other chains have the oven process automated, where the worker just sets the pie on a conveyor belt of sorts, right? This is just another step in that direction.
Within 10 years, ALL major pizza chains will use this, I bet. All of them.
Oh yeah, the conveyor belt pizza ovens have been used for years. If pizza is this easy to automate think about burgers or subway, any assembly line concept could probably be automated fairly easily. These robotic arms can precisely portion ingredients making inventory and ordering much easier and without a human to over portion these companies will save a ton of money.
You're definitely right. I moved to Richmond in 1994-95 and got paid $4.25 an hour to work at Subway. At least half of that stuff would be easy to automate with stuff like this, although a lot of the fresh prep would be tougher (for now, anyway).
I'm not sure if we'll see a net loss in food jobs, though. I think this may just open up a LOT more opportunities for a variety of food types, like even very personalized diets catered to, etc. If history is any indicator, food prep won't go away for humans any time soon, but the landscape will change a LOT.