McDonald's is working on it.
Seeking relief from placing help-wanted ads and betting that many consumers may prefer an electronic clerk to a live one, the world's largest restaurant chain is looking into installing self-serve ordering devices in its stores.
Two prototype ordering kiosks are already in tests at the company's food-research laboratory in suburban Chicago. And one McDonald's franchise -- in Wyoming, Michigan -- is testing a third.
Humans will remain
McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa Howard says the company will add a few more
restaurants to the test by the end of the year. In any case, the company says,
it plans to keep human order-takers at all its restaurants, too.
One retired Canadian McDonald's franchisee, who independently installed
automated devices several years ago, found that the average automated order was
US$1.20 larger than that placed with employees.
"My long-range vision is, let's put a bunch of these on the front counter,"
says the Wyoming McDonald's franchisee, Larry Berg. "I could probably deliver
the food faster with fewer people."
Watching out for the kids McDonald's competitors aren't sold on replacing their humans with machines.
"Food is a personal business," says a spokesman for Wendy's International
"We would rather have personal interaction with the customer so we can welcome
and thank them." Still, he wouldn't totally dismiss the technology.
An Arby's fast food franchise in Denver has installed some automated-ordering
devices made by IBM. Unlike the McDonald's
version, the IBM machines are based on text rather than graphics.
Mulilingual printouts Another advantage: "It's real good for the handicapped customer, especially
people who can't talk," he says.
At McDonald's, some executives are already looking beyond the current test and
talking about stand-alone kiosks that would take orders in the drive-through
lane. Because of their exposure to the elements, and would-be thieves, outdoor
models would have to be more secure than the current sheet-metal version.
Howard, the chain's spokeswoman, stresses that the whole concept of
automation, outdoors or indoors, remains an experiment. "It's still early in the
game to know if this would work," she says. "We need to see how this integrates
with our operations behind the counter."
Berg installed the ordering kiosk in his restaurant's PlayPlace as a
service to parents who don't want to leave their kids to order lunch. Instead,
they simply step up to the machine, a brightly colored box slightly smaller than
a telephone booth, make their meal selections on a touch-activated screen and
insert money to pay for the food. An employee brings their order and their
change to them.
Mark Eagleton, senior manager for the franchise, says the machine's computer
can be programmed so that if English isn't the kitchen crew's native tongue, the
order printout they get can be in another language. That helps attract and
retain Hispanic workers in that market, Eagleton says.
