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Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, burgers are the same everywhere. Minimal wage isn't.

So once there's a robot that can cook burger in SF and break even, it works pretty much everywhere else where the minimum wage is greater or equal. Just take a look at Miso robotics.

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I find myself patronizing the fast-food locations that offer food prepared from fresh potatoes sliced every morning and grass-fed beef that apparently pay their workers a decent wage while costing about the same as the places that don't. The difference I suppose is that the local chains are not satisfying profit motives of stock speculators.

Once the robot exists you can duplicate it cheaper. Once it works in SF with high wages it works in Montana with low wages. It may eventually not work out in poorer countries.

> Once it works in SF with high wages it works in Montana with low wages.

Can it? The robot in SF may make financial sense because of high utilization. A low-wage worker can do 100+ useful tasks when the restaurant is not busy enough to require constant burger making. Is a burger-making robot flexible enough to match that?

The robot can also sit around doing nothing without complaint and for no extra cost. So the robot need not be used 100% of the time. Even in SF the robot will not be used much at 2am.

Though I was referring to the small cities in Montana. Nobody will put a robotic burger joint where there are no people. However a town of 5000 has a lot of people who need to eat, more than enough to make it worth running numbers.

It won't replace all employees.

It'll just replace some.

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