Our evolving relationship with self-checkouts and self-service kiosks

Back in July, a survey conducted exclusively for Newsweek found that a majority of Americans wanted self-checkout kiosks to be completely removed from retail stores. At Shake Shack, self-service kiosks help “guarantee that the upsell opportunities” like a milkshake or fries — popular menu options — are suggested to customers upon ordering. In recent years, self-service kiosks have been “threatened as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws,” Meyersohn wrote. Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi said in a 2016 Forbes op-ed that the fight for a $15 minimum wage “has negatively impacted the career prospects of employees who were just getting started in the workforce while extinguishing the businesses that employed them.” “I and others warned that union demands for a much higher minimum wage would force businesses with small profit margins to replace full-service employees with costly investments in self-service alternatives,” he added. Following California’s minimum-wage mandate, state lawmakers have proposed a bill that would require many grocery chains and drug retail stores to have staff members work their self-checkout kiosks.