These futuristic, streamlined stores are the next big thing in automation and digitalization, allowing customers to order through mobile apps or high-tech kiosks. And the best part? You can get your grub on in record time!
In order to keep up with the ever-growing demand for quick and convenient ordering options, chains are taking things to the extreme by "demolishing" their dining rooms or shrinking them down to size.
That's right, gone are the days of sit down fast-food restaurants - it's all about the drive-thru and digital ordering experience now.
Vox reported that by the end of 2021, dine-in visits to fast food chains had fallen to just 14 percent of restaurant traffic, compared to 28 percent pre-pandemic, according to the market research firm NPD Group. When it comes to burgers and fries, people are increasingly scarfing them down in their homes, at their offices, in their cars — anywhere, really, but in the restaurant.
Now, McDonald’s and other fast food and fast casual giants are betting on the “digital kitchen” — sleek, compact stores that harness automation and digitalization to have diners ordering through mobile apps or digital kiosks — to get diners in and out in record time. Meanwhile, chains are “demolishing” their dining rooms, or shrinking them, in order to meet the demand of drive-thru and digital ordering, Steven Baker, an architect at Harrison French and Associates who works on fast food restaurant design and development, wrote in an article last year. For McDonald’s, Sweetgreen, and others, reducing seating means chains can open smaller stores, saving on expensive real estate, especially in urban areas.
The big transformation taking place inside restaurants also threatens to change how the industry looks at labor. In April, McDonald’s announced hundreds of layoffs in its corporate offices as part of a larger strategy to open new locations while investing more into digital, delivery, and drive-thru. And for all fast food and fast casual restaurants, whether it’s third-party delivery apps, automated kiosks, or even food delivery by drone, the glittering promise of tech is the ability to offload to machines more and more of the tasks performed by people paid an hourly wage.
What do you think? Is a step in the right direction? Or is losing a "dine-in" experience going to effect our culture negatively?
Sound off in the comments and let us know!
