The Future of Fast Food

Hey a FIBO.

'Murika had those back in the 1920s/30s. Automats, they called'em.

Why did Automats ever fall out of style?

Seems like a great way for autists to get hot food without having to wait in line or talk to anybody (or tip)

Precooked food is going to be absolute garbage unless it has an extremely high turn over. Theres almost no where in the US that has that kind of population density

Inefficient, so expensive. The microwave at 7-Eleven is cheaper to run than an automat box even if people are taking food as fast as it's put in, automat only helps to speed throughput further but then needs high staffing.

Why it died out in the US first? Cheap labor. Tyrone will work as a waiter for $2 so why bother--especially because Cletus preferentially patronizes places where his $8 from Walmart still lets him boss people around.

I'm going to do it.
I'm going to bring back automats.
We can do it this time, we have the technology.
Robots can cook food fresh to order.

We have fucking pizza vending machines for gods sake.

youtu.be/Pyrav_9Pbsc

Automats actually still had a pretty high labor cost. They were basically full cafeterias behind the scenes. And to add to what says about 7-11, a corner store has a ton of added value from people buying their smokes and condoms and whatnot. Basically, take the least profitable, highest labor part of a 7-11's selection, add some tables, and you have an automat.

Even if you're convinced you can produce the quality you want with robot labor, you'd still be better off in terms of overhead running a food truck with a person in the window and the robot in the back than trying to bring back a brick & mortar automat.

I guess what I'm thinking of is less of a traditional automat, and more of a Japanese style with walls of vending machines cooking and dispensing various things.

Most of the Japanese walls cook nothing. Some have heated compartments for precanned drinks and soups, but the only actually-mixes-and-dispenses machines are the oldschool 60s ones like American coffee or soup machines rigged to do miso and udon rather than chicken noodle.

I was actually looking earlier in the evening at where I could pick up the shell of a ticket vending machine to hack American coin/bill acceptors into, but those aren't automated at all, they're like the fast food POS terminals that kick out order tickets for the cook except the customer operates it--you still need the cook AND an employee to check receipt while handing out orders.

It should just drop the pizza, I don't need a creepy blue alien like hand giving it to me.

Those only work in Japan because they have a combination of a) entirely too much pocket change, b) exorbitantly expensive land and labor and c) densely populated cities where people have basic respect for common property

>Japan
Only works because there's no niggers

C is basically implied by B, but yeah. It's not all gleaming, but the banchi kids tag rather than smashing sometime in the 70s because freebies quit being worth it even by teenager logic.

Also pocket change really isn't an issue at this point, they all take the local equivalent of Apple Pay/Android Wallet and even the shittiest paygo free phone supports it (which actually has buyin because it's run by the seminationalized railroads, rather than in the US where Walmart and CVS went to Apple/Google and said "nope not until you share mailing addresses and demographic details")

eh. i've eating from a few japanese vending machines at expressway rest stops that microwave frozen food. hot dogs, pizza, croquettes, fries, etc

Interesting, when I travel overland it's always been by train so less microwave machines and more aunties walking down the aisle selling beer and iffy chicken.

Definitely reinforces that microwaving rather than oldschool automat is the way, even if it's mechanically loaded.

Yes no one lives in "cities"

>durr America doesn't have vending machines or anything coin-operated at all

Decades, you mean. Automats are barely over a century old.
Entirely this. Low-cost labor, plus inflation. It stopped being convenient when you started having to pay multiple dollars for vending machine food instead of a quarter or a nickel.

*spits into the container after the transaction*