Topic: The future of fast food?

[MikeHz]

Not long ago, while watching some bored teen behind the counter at a local burger joint manhandle my coming meal, I said to my wife, "You know, there really isn't much to cooking a burger. I'm surprised some enterprising chain hasn't come up with some way to automate the process."

She gave her usual observant reply. "You're an idiot."

But, today I saw in the news that an outfit in Europe is selling a vending machine that turns out a pizza made from scratch without the touch of a sweaty, filthy human paw. http://gma.yahoo.com/let-s-pizza-to-debut-pizza-vending-machine-in-u-s--this-year.html

I can see this sort of process being used to make all sorts of fast foods--without human intervention.

[gcason]

I worked at a McDonald's while I was in High School. We had a timer light above the grill.  Drop the patty.  Turn on the timer.  Obey the lights. Consistent mediocre burgers every time.

I think you could train a chimpanzee to run the grill at McDonalds.

[David E.]

What do min wage workers do then?

[gcason]

What do min wage workers do then?

Take care of the chimps. 

[EhJayArr]

mmmm, delicious chimpanzee...

[Jolimont]

There is a pizza "distributor" thingy 1/2 mile from my house in France. 10€ for a 14" thin crust, only two or 3 choices for toppings. Hubby used it once when he came back from a business trip in the middle of the night to an empty house/fridge. There are very few  24h food options in France late at night, so this fills a niche need.

The way it's setup is there's a pizza counter that opens regular day-time hours with pizza chefs and lots of options, and after hours (probably 9pm) you can use the "distributor" right next to it. Hubby says pizza came out hot, in a cardboard box, was totally edible, but not near as good as the one he could have gotten at the same outfit during the day. He didn't go back for seconds.

I don't think this is the future of fast food, but it does meet a need in a pinch.

[daemonowner]

Isn't the future of everything just to automate it and make our lives lazier easier.

I can remember my dad, who used to bullshit me about fricken everything, telling me when I was around 7yo that we hadn't made everything entirely automated so that we would still have something to do and so we wouldn't be so lazy. Made perfect sense at the time. He also told me eating cheese before bedtime gave you nightmares, but I think there was an ulterior motive...