“The employees will be those smart enough and who show enough initiative to learn to maintain and operate the robotics and they’ll make decent money.”
That was my thought too. Automated restaurants aren’t going to doom the $15.00/hr restaurant wage at all. In fact, wages are likely to be higher than that in those kinds of restaurants. However, the number of workers will be only a tiny fraction of those currently working in manual restaurants, so while the wages won’t be doomed, the jobs themselves are doomed.
Basically, the movement for higher unskilled labor wages will simply accelerate the collapse of unskilled labor jobs.
I can see 2 man shifts. 1 primarily responsible for the robotics and the other doing the cleaning and helping out as they learn to operate the robotics.
Contrary to popular belief, a college education isn’t really necessary for robotics. I’m a high school drop out who learned to maintain, operate, and program industrial painting robots on the job and I became a foreman in the process. It was 2 less painters and 3 jobs getting done by 1 man.