In the USA, more than 3 million people work in different fast food chains, such as Mc Donald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Just as employees are protesting to obtain improvements in pay and working conditions, a young start-up has just announced the sale of a robot that could result in them losing their jobs for good.
The company, Momentum Machine, has just announced that it will soon sell its mini production line capable of making up to 360 burgers per hour. For this, ingredients are placed into tanks in the machine, which then cuts, cooks and assembles them as required. The only human intervention required is to fill the machine's tanks with the necessary ingredients - without the need to cut them, as the machine cuts its own pickles, onions and tomatoes, to ensure they stay as fresh as possible.
On the Momentum Machine site, you can read that the machine "does everything employees can do except better". The inventors have already planned a future version capable of making gourmet, customised burgers. A customer could precisely choose the composition of their burger, with, for example, different proportions of bison and beef meat ("1/3 pork and 2/3 bison" for example).
As engineers with degrees from top universities, who have worked for leading companies such as NASA and Tesla, Momentum Machine's directors are well aware of the bomb that they have just launched on the fast food sector. According to the magazine, Xconomy, the cofounder, Alexandros Vardokostas, notes that "our device isn't meant to make employees more efficient. It's meant to completely obviate them".
This robot presents numerous advantages for restaurant owners. The return on investment of the production chain is less than a year, and burger production costs are significantly reduced. It also takes up less space than usual fast food restaurant equipment, in addition to employee work positions that are no longer required.
Because of this, the invention could put thousands of people out of work in the fast food sector. To remedy this problem, Momentum Machine's directors say that they are ready to help employees that could lose their jobs with the arrival of the burger robots, and want to set up partnerships with training institutions - although this task doesn't seem very realistic. "We want to help the people who may transition to a new job as a result of our technology the best way we know how: education".
*Photos from the Momentum Machine and Serious Eat websites
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