Pricing yourself out of the market is not so smart
J.D. Tuccille|Apr. 20, 2015 2:04 pm
The Momentum Machines website is low-key right now, but that may have something to do with high-profile arguments in the press and protests in the streets demanding that fast-food chains pay workers $15 an hour to do the job the company’s robots are designed to fill. Even before those placard-wielders decided to raise their costs in terms of dollars and grief, the San Francisco-based start-up announced that they were obsolete.
Momentum Machines’ old, boastier website claimed:
Fast food doesn’t have to have a negative connotation anymore. With our technology, a restaurant can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.
Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant.
It does everything employees can do except better:
*it slices toppings like tomatoes and pickles only immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible.
*our next revision will offer custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground after you place your order? No problem.
*Also, our next revision will use gourmet cooking techniques never before used in a fast food restaurant, giving the patty the perfect char but keeping in all the juices.
*it’s more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour.
The labor savings allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high quality ingredients and the gourmet cooking techniques make the ingredients taste that much better.
https://reason.com/blog/2015/04/20/will-minimum-wage-protesters-order-fries
