This McDonald’s restaurant runs with a few employees, including one made entirely of metal, motors and computer programs.
The doors to fully automatic are open, and the catering world is one of the pioneers in this area. McDonald’s, a brand known for its Big Mac and for its innovative approaches, has just opened its first (almost) fully robot restaurant. The restaurant – the first of its kind for the brand – has been open since December, for better or for worse.
This happens near the city of Fort Worth in the state of Texas in the United States. From the outside, fast food doesn’t look that different from the rest, and yet if you go to the drive-thru, it’s not a human being who will give you your order. As TikTok user @foodiemunster shows us, it actually is a robotic arm that hands you the bags with your sandwiches inside.
@foodiemunster @McDonald’s has a new testing concept
♬ Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
The changes are also felt in the restaurant. Not a human in sight, only empty counters and a few terminals welcome you to accept your order and pay for it. A McDonald’s spokesperson said the Texas store uses “enhanced technology that allows the restaurant team to start preparing customer orders when they are near the restaurant.”
Heading towards a completely robotic world?
Aiming to improve the brand’s overall performance, this robotization system increases the speed of order picking and also avoids oversights. This naturally raises a number of questions and raises concerns among those who see this phase as the beginning of a dystopia. Don’t panic, the company explains that the restaurant employs the same number of people or almost as in a more traditional sign.
There will always be employees to prepare the sandwiches… at least for now. However, the situation has enough to irritate the inhabitants of the region as well as the group’s employees, who are demanding better pay. McDonald’s response with its investment was therefore not unanimous. One could imagine a world where we would be served only by robots, although there was still a long way to go to reach this goal.
