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Step into the ITSU branch, the Asian chain of fast services restaurants, and one faces a kiosk bank of self -service. Customers enter their orders into bright -lit screens and pay, before connecting the boxes for drought and bento or picking noodles or rice bowls from the kitchen counter.
This parade of top -quality services automation will soon change. “I think we have embraced the technology too quickly,” Julian Metcalfe, founder ITSU, tells me. Itsu had only one staff to each of his 83 outlets, along with kiosk self -service. The chain now adds two more staff as part of His plans for expansion.
It is a counter intuitive decision, given the line of merchants and catering chains that announce that they will automate more. Increased British labor costs, which are encouraged by an increase in the minimum wage, and contributes to the national employer insurance, which was determined by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the deciduous budget, has encouraged changes.
J Sainsbury is cutting 3,000 jobs, part of the closure of 61 cafes in their supermarkets. Retail traders, such as Next, begin testing tests for self -serving in stores, lagging behind on supermarkets. The retail sector has spilled 225,000 jobs in five years, and the British retail consortium says that the cost of £ 5 billion in the minimum wage change sector, and contributes to or accelerate the earthquake.
Metcalfe’s heart change is significant for what he says about difficulties as well as automation opportunities. He is a pioneer of using technology to reduce costs, with not only for self -service, but also three robots preparing sushi in each Itsu kitchen. It also describes the restaurant industry as “stunningly inefficient” in the way it is organized and its use of working hours.
“If the Labor becomes more expensive, that’s probably a good thing,” he thinks. He believes in automation behind the scenes: “If the machine can peel the potatoes faster than three people, then get it.” But although the ordering of self -serving is the second nature of some gene z handle, many customers still prefer human help.
It’s hard to blame them. Many retail technology of the front house requires a customer to try, a tradition that returns to customers who have to put goods in their baskets when supermarkets are invented. “They are not actually automated: they just make us do the job for them,” says Greg Thwaites, director of a resolution fund.
Metcalfe is not alone in rethinking self -service. Morrison, a supermarket chain, removed some self -control after finding that they were bulky for customers with a lot of items. There is no point in reducing costs if customers buy less or buy elsewhere: one study They found that people had ordered less than a kiosk restaurant for self -service, if there was a line behind them.
But the costs of the costs push traders without food to follow chains such as Uniqlo in the introduction of self-jam. Harvir Dhillon, an economist in a British retail consortium, says that although supermarkets “reach the point of reduction of” self -service, there is a “great shift” according to the use of technology in the trade elsewhere.
There is also less inhibiting investment in technology and replacement of low -salary work forces behind the scenes, where customers are not directly affected. These include kitchen robots on ITSU and greater automation in warehouses and logistics centers for merchants. One effect can be forced to increase productivity in some low -salary sectors.
Thwaites say that it will be more difficult for employers to absorb an increase in employment costs than when the previous Government increased its employment rates in the early 2000s, as the Great Britain’s economy grew faster. This move will result in a combination of higher prices, increased productivity and reduced retail sector, which “slowly starving from low paid workers”.
The burden will be the hardest in small businesses, including shops and cafes, which cannot compensate for an increase in operating with automation costs. But as the unauthorized facing ITU shows, even those who use technology will in a sophisticated way face a difficult election. Robots can do some tasks faster than people, without stopping, but they lack human touch.
“Human beings are immensely sophisticated, so we should treat them well,” Metcalfe says. This is true, but it is harder to spend in practice in retail and catering than the industry with better margins and payments (the initial ITSU rate is £ 12.75 per hour, including bonus). It will be even harder soon.
