McDonald’s Hits All-Time High as Wall Street Cheers Replacement of Cashiers with Kiosks
Posted: June 22, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Food & Drink, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Associated Press, Drive-through, Fast food, Intel Corporation, International Olympic Committee, McDonalds, Michigan, Olympic games, Snapchat, United States Leave a commentCowen believes McDonald’s digital ordering upgrades will drive the fast-food chain’s sales higher.
McDonald’s shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday as Wall Street expects sales to increase from new digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 restaurants.
Cowen raised its rating on McDonald’s shares to outperform from market perform because of the technology upgrades, which are slated for the fast-food chain’s restaurants this year.
McDonald’s shares rallied 26 percent this year through Monday compared to the S&P 500’s 10 percent return.
Andrew Charles from Cowen cited plans for the restaurant chain to roll out mobile ordering across 14,000 U.S. locations by the end of 2017. The technology upgrades, part of what McDonald’s calls “Experience of the Future,” includes digital ordering kiosks that will be offered in 2,500 restaurants by the end of the year and table delivery.
“MCD is cultivating a digital platform through mobile ordering and Experience of the Future (EOTF), an in-store technological overhaul most conspicuous through kiosk ordering and table delivery,” Charles wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “Our analysis suggests efforts should bear fruit in 2018 with a combined 130 bps [basis points] contribution to U.S. comps [comparable sales].” Read the rest of this entry »
I Had the Spooky Halloween Black Burger
Posted: October 4, 2015 Filed under: Food & Drink | Tags: A1 Steak Sauce, Black Burger, Burger King, Fast food, Halloween, Hamburger, Whopper Leave a comment
It was good! Actually, it tasted like a regular Whopper. But the novelty was irresistible.
Read more…
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- おいしいです!サムライバーガー!Burger King to Debut Bright Red ‘Samurai Burgers’
Colonel Sanders, Born Today in 1890
Posted: September 9, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, History | Tags: chicken, Colonel Sanders, Fast food, Fried chicken, Kentucky, Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC, The Economist, The South, video Leave a commentColonel Sanders, born #onthisday in 1890, wasn’t a real colonel. But he is an American icon
More: Burger King Japan’s Burgers of Color
Posted: June 18, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Japan | Tags: Aka Samurai Chicken, Bun, Burger King, Cheese, Chicken sandwich, Chili pepper, Fast food, Fried chicken, Hamburger, Japan, Red 1 CommentThe red buns are colored with tomato powder. The cheese is also made with tomato powder to turn it red. The sauce is also red. It’s based on miso paste mixed with Chinese chili bean sauce and red pepper
Kazuaki Nagata reports: Burger King Japan surprised the public when it released its black burger series in 2012. Now the fast-food chain has announced a similarly colorful promotion involving red sandwiches.
Just as the black burger series had dark black buns and cheese, the new red burgers come with red buns and cheese.
Tokyo-based Burger King Japan said it will sell two types of seasonal red burger starting July 3. One is called “Aka Samurai Chicken” that sandwiches fried chicken, lettuce, tomato and cheese between red buns colored with tomato powder. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] おいしいファーストフード!What American Fast-Foods Look Like In Japan
Posted: May 26, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Food & Drink, Japan | Tags: Burger King, Chicken (food), Fast food, French fries, Japan, Ketchup, Rice, Taco Time, Teriyaki, Tomato sauce Leave a commentAmerican fast food franchises make tweaks to their menus in order to adapt to local tastes. In Japan, in particular, ingredients such as shrimp, teriyaki sauce and mayonnaise seem to be important to catering to the tongue of the Japanese consumers.
Martin Ford: Attention White-collar Workers: #Robots Are Coming for Your Jobs
Posted: May 19, 2015 Filed under: Reading Room, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Books, California, Computer security, Electromagnetic radiation, Eye tracking, Fast food, NPR, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, United States, United States Department of Homeland Security, University of Oregon, Visual perception Leave a commentInterview: Martin Ford, Author Of ‘Rise Of The Robots’
From the self-checkout aisle of the grocery store to the sports section of the newspaper, robots and computer software are increasingly taking the place of humans in the workforce. Silicon Valley executive Martin Ford says that robots, once thought of as a threat to only manufacturing jobs, are poised to replace humans as teachers, journalists, lawyers and others in the service sector.
“As we look forward from this point, we need to keep in mind that this technology is going to continue to accelerate. So I think there’s every reason to believe it’s going to become the primary driver of inequality in the future, and things are likely to get even more extreme than they are now.”
“There’s already a hardware store [in California] that has a customer service robot that, for example, is capable of leading customers to the proper place on the shelves in order to find an item,” Ford tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies.
In his new book, Rise of the Robots, Ford considers the social and economic disruption that is likely to result when educated workers can no longer find employment.
“As we look forward from this point, we need to keep in mind that this technology is going to continue to accelerate,” Ford says. “So I think there’s every reason to believe it’s going to become the primary driver of inequality in the future, and things are likely to get even more extreme than they are now.”
Any jobs that are truly repetitive or rote — doing the same thing again and again — in advanced economies like the United States or Germany, those jobs are long gone. They’ve already been replaced by robots years and years ago.
So what we’ve seen in manufacturing is that the jobs that are actually left for people to do tend to be the ones that require more flexibility or require visual perception and dexterity. Very often these jobs kind of fill in the gaps between machines.
[Read the full text here, at NPR]
For example, feeding parts into the next part of the production process or very often they’re at the end of the process — perhaps loading and unloading trucks and moving raw materials and finished products around, those types of things. Read the rest of this entry »
[PHOTO] IRONMAN Burger Break
Posted: November 19, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Mediasphere | Tags: Fast food, Iron Man, Marvel Comics, Movies, Robert Downey Jr, Tony Stark Leave a commentPro-Statism Protester Reality Check: Meet the Minimum Wage Employee Replacement Bot
Posted: September 4, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, Robotics | Tags: #Fastfoodstrike, Fast food, Hamburger, Labor Movement, McDonald, New York City, Protest, September 4 2014, Statism, Statist, unions, United States 2 Comments#Fastfoodstrike 360 hamburgers per hour No bitching. pic.twitter.com/sdNWSxSlHW
— Liars Never Win (@liars_never_win) September 4, 2014
Gold Medalist Tweets ‘Olympic’ Onion Rings
Posted: February 8, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Global | Tags: #OlympicOnionRings, Fast food, Humor, Olympic Gold medalist, Olympics, Patriotism, RUSSIA, Sochi, Sports, USA 1 CommentGold medalist tweeting onion rings is the most America thing ever RT @sagekotsenburg: #OlympicOnionRings pic.twitter.com/eCidJrjQdo
— Reid Wilson (@PostReid) February 9, 2014
[VIDEO] ReasonTV: What We Saw at NYC’s Fast Food Strike
Posted: December 7, 2013 Filed under: Economics, U.S. News | Tags: Burger King, David Neumark, Fast food, Foley Square, McDonald, Minimum wage, New York City, Service Employees International Union, YouTube 1 CommentLess than 0.1 percent of the industry’s workforce participated
Jim Epstein writes: Yesterday, Naomi Brockwell and I attended a demonstration demanding that fast-food restaurants boost their minimum wage to $15 per hour, or a little more than double the current federal minimum wage. The strike, which was led by a group called Fast Food Forward that’s affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was one of more than a 100 similar demonstrations held in cities across the country.
The New York demonstration had about 150 people, but the number of actual fast food employees participating in the strike was small. It was business as usual at every restaurant we dropped by yesterday morning and, at a McDonald’s restaurant on 23rd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan, employees behind the counter said they had heard nothing about a strike. Read the rest of this entry »
The New Civility: Seattle man flies into rage after being asked to pay 25 cents for third tub of ranch dip
Posted: October 16, 2013 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Cashier, Customer, Fast food, Jack in the Box, Ranch dressing, Seattle, Twitter 1 CommentMan flies into rage after being asked to pay for third tub of ranch dip. http://t.co/dXBhrpBwuN Suspect possibly headed for @HVRanch
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) October 14, 2013
via Twitter