The savings likely aren't worth it. Trains can pull a lot of cargo compared to a truck, so the marginal cost for a driver is a substantially smaller percentage.
I don't think it has anything to do with cashier wages, and more to do with customer perception.
Kiosks are already cheaper than people.
With minimum wage at $7.25/hour, and a Kiosk being able to replace 2+ shifts (16 hour days 7 days a week), that's $30K/year in savings, which would more than pay for a kiosk and maintenance.
Developing the software to run them isn't free, but spreading $15M in development costs among 14,000 restaurants is only $1K each.
But many customers would balk at having to order at a kiosk, so McDonalds will still hire humans.
> But many customers would balk at having to order at a kiosk, so McDonalds will still hire humans.
A lot of locations around me have both kiosks and staffed registers.
I used the kiosk once and thought it was annoying to work through. If you have a simple order like "A medium #3", then its an order of magnitude faster to order through a person. On the other hand, if you like to customize your burger, or order a several things a la carte, the kiosk might be better depending on the competence of the human at the cash register.
(Of course, whether or not your customized burger or list of a la carte items gets made correctly by the kitchen staff is an entirely different conversation...)
> If you have a simple order like "A medium #3", then its an order of magnitude faster to order through a person.
This is a user interface [fixable] problem, not some inherent defect in kiosks. You should be able to walk up to the kiosk, tap #3, wave your NFC payment at it, and walk away with a hamburger. Today's "Tap. Tap. Scroll, Scroll. Tap. Back. Tap. Tap checkout. Tap Ok. Insert credit card in this other machine. Tap confirm. Sign. Remove card. Tap done." mess is merely incompetent product design.
Also usability. Ever watched an older person try to get a drink out of one of those touch-screen drink dispensers with 100 choices of soda+flavors?
Same would happen with a kiosk order taker. Two humans talking can still communicate much more reliably than one human navigating a somewhat unfamiliar UI.
