The Future of Fast Food? Cashiers Take Orders from 8,000 Miles Away | NACS
At Sansan Chicken in Manhattan’s East Village, customers are greeted by a cashier who’s over 8,500 miles away. Instead of a human standing in front of them, customers see a face on a screen, working over video chat from the Philippines.
The company behind these virtual cashiers is Happy Cashier. They hire employees from the Philippines to video call into the restaurant. This innovative approach is part of a growing trend to limit the number of human workers in a store at any given time. In the fast-food industry, companies are exploring ways to grow profit margins in an era of increasing wages.
According to Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at MIT, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have a clear niche. They’re not looking to revolutionize their offering. Instead, their brand is to provide relatively cheap food, making labor costs a significant factor. Labor accounts for 36% of an average restaurant’s costs. Using automation to cut down on repetitive tasks while outsourcing labor to foreign workers could be a way to save money.
Mohammad Rahman, a professor of management at Purdue University, suggests that hiring virtual workers, including those from the Philippines, could cost restaurants like Sansan only 10% of what they would pay in-person cashiers. These virtual workers strike the sweet spot of automation. While they save on labor costs, they provide the troubleshooting ability and warmth that completely automated self-service kiosks don’t have.
As Rahman puts it, “Customers expect better services, so if you can bring in that person who is virtually there, this person can do all your customer service, just as if the server was just standing there. As long as that experience is the same, the customer probably doesn’t care.”………….
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Reflect on the impact of this virtual cashier trend on the fast-food industry. How might this shift influence business strategies, marketing tactics, and the economy? Consider the implications for investors and shareholders in the fast-food industry. How does this innovative labor and customer service approach affect market dynamics and consumer behavior?
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According to behavioral science, the set of beliefs that a consumer hold about the world is a key influencer of consumer behavior.
I believe that having virtual cashiers could work for certain places such as fast food, however, not for sit in restaurants. This is because having a virtual chaser takes away from the experience and also makes it more difficult to have food tailored to your needs.