Jack in the Box CEO Leonard Comma claimed “it just makes sense” to replace human workers in the restaurant industry with robots as the minimum wage increases.
“As we see the rising costs of labor, it just makes sense,” declared Comma at the ICR conference in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday.
According to Business Insider, “Jack in the Box previously tested technology such as kiosks,” and “the kiosks resulted in a higher average check and helped with efficiency.”
“But at the time Comma said the cost of installing the kiosks wasn’t worth it,” they explained, adding, however, that “with minimum wages increasing, Jack in the Box is reconsidering the use of kiosks and other technology.”
This year, the minimum wage is increasing in 18 states, including Jack in the Box’s home state of California, where a $15 minimum wage will be implemented.
Eventually, all human workers at fast food restaurants could be replaced, with Momentum Machines raising $18 million for their robot-powered restaurant, which includes a robot that can produce over 400 hamburgers an hour, last year.
Last week, it was reported that LG Electronics is planning to sell robots that will replace human workers in hotels, airports, and supermarkets, while in September, a report claimed that four million British private sector jobs could be replaced by robots within ten years.
In 2017, Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan also declared that a “big number” of his employees would be replaced by robots eventually, and Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov encouraged people to embrace the replacement of human jobs by robots and start focusing on jobs that machines can’t perform.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.