WaPo | Crowded. That’s how Ed Rensi remembers what life was like working at
McDonald’s in 1966. There were about double the number of people working
in the store — 70 or 80, as opposed to the 30 or 40 there today —
because preparing the food just took a lot more doing.
“When I
first started at McDonald’s making 85 cents an hour, everything we made
was by hand,” Rensi said — from cutting the shortcakes to stirring
syrups into the milk for shakes. Over the years, though, ingredients
started to arrive packaged and pre-mixed, ready to be heated up, bagged
and handed out the window.
“More and more of the labor was pushed
back up the chain,” said Rensi, who went on to become chief executive
of the company in the 1990s. The company kept employing more grill cooks
and cashiers as it expanded, but each one of them accounted for more of
each store’s revenue as more sophisticated cooking techniques allowed
each to become more productive.
The industry could be ready for
another jolt as a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an
hour nears in the District and as other campaigns to boost wages gain
traction around the country. About 30 percent of the restaurant
industry’s costs come from salaries, so burger-flipping robots — or at
least super-fast ovens that expedite the process — become that much more
cost-competitive if the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour
is doubled.
“The problem with the minimum-wage offensive is that
it throws the accounting of the restaurant industry totally upside
down,” said Harold Miller, vice president of franchise development for
Persona Pizzeria, who also consults for other chains. “My position is:
Pay your people properly, keep them longer, treat them right, and robots
are going to be helpful in doing that, because it will help the
restaurateur survive.”
