Wendy’s Serves Up Big Kiosk Expansion As Wage Hikes Hit Fast Food

[OnlinePoker]

Wendy’s (WEN) said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.

It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes.

McDonald’s (MCD) has been testing self-service kiosks. But Wendy’s, which has been vocal about embracing labor-saving technology, is launching the biggest potential expansion.

http://www.investors.com/politics/policy/wendys-serves-up-kiosks-as-wages-rise-hits-fast-food-group/

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Pretty soon, there won't be any jobs in the service industry if they can figure out ways to automate them. Fight for $15 is fine, but nobody will be employed in those jobs anymore.

[scscholar]

1. Why is this legal?

The only positive is that your order is more likely to be correct, but it hurts the people.

[Travis_0004]

2. How would it be illegal?

Should we also ban ATMs, auto bill pay, etc?

[yeoman6987]

3. Lol. You forgot the sarc tag

You can't force companies to not put in automation when they told the government they can't afford the mandatory 15 dollars an hour minimum wage. The companies are fighting to survive. To

[Fuddnik]

8. If they wanted to survive, they'd make better food.

I went there last week to try a new creation. A burger with ghost pepper sauce.

I love hot, spicy food, but this thing was putrid. I got the regular fries, and they were so bad, my dogs wouldn't eat them. And they''ll eat an aged opossum carcass.

[noneko]

4. Why can't the CEO get a salary cut?

And all the higher ups. I read the CEO got $2.5 Mill last year. What the heck do you do with 2.5 Mill? Granted it's less than most big company CEO's but still. And McDonalds CEO got $8 Mill.

[yeoman6987]

6. So I did some digging

Wendy's has 21,500 employee and the CEO makes 2.5 million. I took away the CEO's salary completely to give each worker a raise. Each employee would get an extra 179.27 dollars a year. Nice but doesn't change anything. Not sure what can change but obviously it's harder then what many of us believe.

[yeoman6987]

7. McDonald's is worse. They have 1.9 million employees

Take away the 8 million and each employee gets 4.21 dollars a year.

[noneko]

9. Its not just the CEO who makes a lot

It's the entire board of exects. Anyone in a higher position.

Mcdonalds was doing experiments in certain locations where they increased the wages they gave their workers and they actually noticed an increase in profits. Worker turnover decreased because they were more content. So in the end everyone benefited in the long run. I would link the article but I can't remember where it was.