"Last year was tough — 5 percent wage inflation," said Bob Wright, Wendy's chief operating officer, during his presentation to investors and analysts last week. He added that the company expects wages to rise 4 percent in 2017. "But the real question is what are we doing about it?"Wendy's chief information officer, David Trimm, said the kiosks are intended to appeal to younger customers and reduce labor costs. Kiosks also allow customers of the fast food giant to circumvent long lines during peak dining hours while increasing kitchen production.
Wright noted that over the past two years, Wendy's has figured out how to eliminate 31 hours of labor per week from its restaurants and is now working to use technology, such as kiosks, to increase efficiency.
As Dispatch.com reports, the Dublin-based burger giant started offering kiosks last year, and demand for the technology has been high from both customers and franchise owners.
"There is a huge amount of pull from (franchisees) in order to get them," David Trimm, Wendy's chief information officer, said last week during the company's investors' day.Who could have seen that coming? As we noted previously, minimum wage laws - while advertised under the banner of social justice - do not live up to the claims made by those who tout them. They do not lift low wage earners to a so-called "social minimum". Indeed, minimum wage laws — imposed at the levels employed in Europe — push a considerable number of people into unemployment. And, unless those newly unemployed qualify for government assistance (read: welfare), they will sink below, or further below, the social minimum.
"With the demand we are seeing ... we can absolutely see our way to having 1,000 or more restaurants live with kiosks by the end of the year."
A typical store would get three kiosks for about $15,000. Trimm estimated the payback on those machines would be less than two years, thanks to labor savings and increased sales. Customers still could order at the counter.
Kiosks are where the industry is headed, but Wendy's is ahead of the curve, said Darren Tristano, vice president with Technomic, a food-service research and consulting firm.
"They are looking to improve their automation and their labor costs, and this is a good way to do it," he said.
As Nobelist Milton Friedman correctly quipped, "A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills."
Despite the piling up mountain of evidence on the harmful "unintended consequences" of artificially high minimum wages, we suspect we already know how this story ends. After all, it's much easier to win elections by promising people more stuff rather than less. And, as an added bonus, when it all goes horribly wrong it's very easy to lame the blame at the feet of the wealthy 1%'ers who are behind all the layoffs. Checkmate.
Reader Comments
In a fair world you wouldn’t need a minimum wage to protect the masses from being exploited by the greed of psychopaths via corporations and a monetary system that degrades the value of wages of employees. Corporations, banks and the elites have benefited handsomely from the economic problems from 2008 with a near endless supply of easy money and near zero percent loans given to them. They have gorged on debt issuance both public and private and reaped the rewards. Normal people and main street hasn’t benefited because either they don’t know how, it is impossible for them to accesses it with any reasonable risk or won’t try to game the system of ever-inflating fiat/debt currency. A fair system would tie minimum wage hikes to the real inflation rate (not the rigged US gov’t CPI numbers either) in order to protect people from this predation.
People do have a responsibility to try to improve their situation and themselves and not be given a free lunch though. And yet this just seems like economic slavery of people and then those doing the enslaving complaining that the slaves dare to ask for a very small slice of the pie.