With the middle class on life support, does anyone else think self service kiosks are the way of the future?

I was chatting with a friend about this.

I’ve been noticing that more place are doing self serve style operations, with kiosks to order, pick up your own food from the counter etc. I went home for Christmas and in my hometown there’s a chicken place like this; I was mentioning it to a friend that I went there with my brother and his wife. It was such a change and a breath of fresh air how great it was; you lined up, paid with card at at a terminal, got a paper ticket and got your food yourself. They still had busboys but because you prepaid, you could just…leave.

My buddy was like “so it’s basically just McDonald’s?” And like yeah, the business model was pretty much the same, but with restaurant quality food. And there was no tip option on the screen. I mean, even if it was, you probably could’ve just bypassed it.

Anyways, just a Sunday thought about the state of the industry while I sip my coffee here. With the economy either going basic efficiency or high end, do you foresee more and more restaurants will go this way? And nothing against servers, but I remember this chicken restaurant only had the cooks, the dishwasher/busboy kids and one person checking tickets.

Happy Sunday Yall