Supposedly its opening on the East side of Phoenix. I can let you know. The story was also carried locally in the Ahwatukee times.

Isn't this a fake news article? (My apologies if this was mentioned in previous comments, there are *a lot* of comments on this thread.)

I was thinking just last night it would be nice if the McDonald's in my town went robot. Then maybe the ice cream sundae machine would finally work.

Actually if they can maintain production of these machines in the US and continue their improved development they could become a very hot export.

I want the kiosks. Its faster, and I dont have to deal with mindless clerks who cant even listen to what I want. Try putting in one sentence all that you want and delivering that to one of these clerks- they will just come back and ask you the questions one by one again. Very annoying

I love it. People refused to understand the effect of cheap labor overseas, and still demand high wages that are overpricing themselves. Now they are refusing to understand how effective robots can be and how cheap they can operate. And these people are out there demanding $15 an hour when a robot can undercut them even more than outsourcing to other countries.

I bet the government passes the equivalent of directive 10-289 where they levy a HEAVY tax on every hour a robot is used, so as to make the $15 an hour be cheap. And kill the robot business.

Any job not worth the minimum wage will disappear, period.

If the government stays out of it, things will equalize and we will all be ok.

Funny thing but back in the day there were automats where the food was in locked compartments into which you made your purchase and the door opened and you took it out. All the workers did was restock the compartments. Spring ahead to the better food choices we have now and we just did the automated cafeterias one better !

No tips either. Tipping is an antiquated system anyway and should not be considered mandatory.

This is great !!! I love it. I am tired of dictating my order to some clerk who isnt listening anyway and just tells me "welcome to.......". Give me a kiosk right now and let me order the right way. Let a robot Put my food on a tray with a number and let me come up and get it. $15 an hour is just the impetus this new technology needs, and the idiot workers pushing for it are going to rue the day they marched in the streets !!!

Fake article. Great idea but it isn't happening.... yet.

I was totally had by AJ! the fact that I could take this comment seriously is a reflection of what our expectations are of people. sad commentary instead of satirical, really

Not yet but I'm looking forward to it.

Keep this article, and in 15 years it will seem funny that a basic fact of modern life was a was a joke back in the 2010s.

And if you click the right link when you're ordering with your smartphone, a gorgeous salesperson will ask you leading questions like, "So, why the hell are you Still living in CA?!"
:)

I sense a new novel gestating... :)

Not completely, but what's the worker-per-car-per-minute number looked like over the past couple score of years? Like a rock falling.

Yes indeed! Hard to spot the ones who are real:-) Did you see a movie called Ex Machina?

I recently did a mind-screenplay where either fully automated self-driving delivery trucks (or Amazon-managed delivery drones) pulled up or flew to exactly that kind of automated 'burger kiosk,' mated up and delivered all the materiel the Burger Box needed and then drove/flew away to their next replenishment task.

I still can't understand why the garbage trucks with their new claw-grabber-dumper mechanisms aren't reading a bar code on my trash bin or recycling bin, then weighing the net contents and charging me accordingly!

Ah, maybe some day...

Ah, the mindlessness is already installed, but the cost/hour is still exorbitant.

Back when I lived in NJ, I was always amused when the Turnpike or Parkway toll collectors went on strike for better wages or benefits....

Because I knew that, as soon as the strike ended, the toll rates would go up.

In the end, automatic toll collection machines replaced virtually all of the toll booth coin collectors and probably shifted just part of their previous total cost to the maintenance folks that serviced the machines.

McDonalds is just a few years late to the realization, but the $15/hour strikes and protests are undoubtedly the driving force for Change (no pun intended) today.

Hey, Obama wanted Change, didn't he? McDonald's is now going to further automate it!

radicalbill, you're displaying exactly the kind of ignorance of economics that enables the lefties to get away with this crud.

Robotizing a place like McDonalds, assuming the machines do the job well, is a huge productivity increase -- instead of each employee producing a few tens of burgers an hour, each employee (who now have to be robot technicians) indirectly produces millions.

But meanwhile, the displaced cooks have not disappeared from the market. They just have to retrain and find a job they can do. Of course, the new minimum wage may have made them not worth hiring -- in which case, they will either have to go into business for themselves (thus legally avoiding the law by not being anyone's employees) or find someone who will hire them under the table. Most likely the latter.

This is how countries become banana republics. Go to any country in Latin America, and you'll find that every kind of business is so over-regulated and over-taxed (including bribes that must be paid to cops and bureaucrats galore, to get permits to operate legally) that none of them operate legally. They're all black-market. Which means that the state mostly can't collect taxes, so government funds itself by printing money, and inflation is hundreds of percent per year.

As for your last question, people on welfare have so many kids because the government is making you and me pay them to have them. The cycle of welfare dependence will only stop when government stops paying them to breed and starts taking the kids away instead. Put them in foster care somewhere, so they'll have a future.

I don't see it that way. A few union bosses and their dupes are paying off politicians to bring this on all young people.

I wish I could publish their names and addresses. Wanna bet the Occupy folks could do some good by picketing there?