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BREWING – some 200,000 – comes in the accommodation and food service sectors. Given the combination of a labor shortage and rising wages, it should come as no surprise that the quick-service industry is increasingly experimenting with automation. However, it’s important to not buy into all the hype related to automation. To read some tech zealots, quick-service restaurants will be filled tomorrow with robots taking orders, boxing donuts and pouring coffee.
Wiederhorn tells Forbes that ordering tablets and kiosks haven’t worked out as smoothly as expected. And he calls the idea of robots flipping burgers “gimmicky.” But the restaurant chain chief does see big potential in automation as it relates to third-party delivery services, which Fat Brands is turning to as it looks to reach customers at home. By going the thirdparty route, Fat Brands is gaining the technological edge without the headaches of running the delivery app itself. “Delivery services have taken on the whole technology headache because they host your menu and keep the app current and all of the programming burdens have been transferred to app providers,” Wiederhorn tells the business magazine. “There is a tremendous amount of automation that restaurant delivery services are taking on.”
Predictive scheduling Philadelphia became the latest major city to pass a “fair workweek” law. Mayor Jim Kenny signed legislation on Dec. 20 that requires employers with more than 30 locations and 250 workers to post schedules two weeks in advance, pay more if the shift is changed within that two-week window, and offer additional shifts to current workers before hiring. The new law, which kicks off in 2020, comes after a nearly year-long campaign by local unions and affiliated organizations.
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One quick service chief executive who seems to be pushing the envelope with automation while also keeping a grip on reality is Andy Wiederhorn of Fat Brands, which includes Fatburgers and Buffalo’s Cafe. Philadelphia is now the second-largest city in the country with a fair scheduling law, behind only New York, which passed predictive scheduling regulations in 2017. In early December, three restaurant industry groups went to state court in a bid to scrap the New York law, which requires that employers schedule employee shifts two-weeks in advance and pay fines ranging from $10 to $75 if they make changes within that window, Nation’s Restaurant News reports. The lawsuit by the New York State Restaurant Association, the National Restaurant Law Center and the International Franchise Association (IFA) contends the new law has forced quickservice restaurants in the Big Apple to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in “premiums” to employees after making changes to their shifts, the restaurant publication reports. “This policy makes it prohibitively expensive for businesses to quickly adapt their staffing to fit changes in market demand, unexpected employee absences, or myriad other staffing issues,” the IFA said in a statement. Chicago may be the next major city to pass scheduling regulations. The nation’s third largest city has been
INDEPENDENT JOE • DECEMBER 2018/JANUARY 2019
mulling a “Fair Workweek Ordinance” for more than a year and recently created an Office of Labor Standards to enforce a newly-raised minimum wage – rising to $13 an hour next summer – and a new paid sick-leave law. The scheduling law being debated in the Windy City includes all the standard provisions – two weeks’ notice and premium pay for changes made within that window – as well as a “right to rest” rule that gives employees the ability to reject a new shift that begins less than 11 hours after they were last on duty, according to The National Law Review. Philly and Chicago, in turn, are following the lead of San Francisco and Seattle, which were the first major cities to pass predictive scheduling laws, followed by the state of Oregon last summer. New Hampshire may have passed the least-taxing predictive scheduling bill, as far as franchise owners are concerned, barring retaliation against employees who request flexible work schedules, with Vermont also having put a similar “right to request” law on its books.
Banning straws the latest activist cause As if Dunkin’ and other franchise owners didn’t have enough to deal with, there is a growing movement, at least in blue states and cities, to ban plastic straws.