Raphael John-Lall

Ro­bot­ics and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) will con­tin­ue to trans­form the way busi­ness­es op­er­ate and it is in­evitable that soon they will im­pact T&T.

AI is al­ready chang­ing the world as con­vey­or belts are al­ready de­liv­er­ing cus­tomers’ ham­burg­ers at Mc­Don­ald’s, ro­bots are de­liv­er­ing tow­els to guests at the Mar­riott Ho­tel and ro­bots are re­plac­ing se­cu­ri­ty guards on the com­pounds of com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed States.

This is the view of sev­er­al restau­rant own­ers who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian on how au­toma­tion is chang­ing the way their in­dus­try op­er­ates.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Chuck E Cheese T&T, Joan­na Ros­tant said lo­cal busi­ness­es will be im­pact­ed very soon.

“I think this mod­el will work very well for the busi­ness­es that have an ex­ist­ing strong brand eq­ui­ty and pres­ence in the mar­ket. I am talk­ing about a restau­rant where cus­tomers ful­ly know and un­der­stand the menu and do not need hu­man in­ter­ac­tion to make a pur­chase/or­der de­ci­sion. I would say in Trinidad, Food Drop is our clos­est ex­am­ple of this, and their ser­vice is ex­cep­tion­al. Domi­noes has a very good app too,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

While she ex­pects some de­gree of au­toma­tion in busi­ness­es lo­cal­ly, she be­lieves that it may not be to the ex­tent in larg­er, more de­vel­oped coun­tries.

“I think there will be a de­gree of au­toma­tion but not ful­ly. Chuck E Cheese is in the busi­ness of fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment, bring­ing smiles and good times to fam­i­lies, of­ten in cel­e­bra­tion of birth­days, good re­ports and oth­er mile­stones. This is an emo­tion­al de­ci­sion and ex­pe­ri­ence for a fam­i­ly and as such, the choice of pack­age (games/food/drink) re­quires hu­man in­ter­ac­tion and con­ver­sa­tion to en­sure that the de­sired ex­pe­ri­ence is the one that is de­liv­ered. But we cur­rent­ly have a de­gree of au­toma­tion in stores by means of our pager sys­tem (for food pick­up), un­lim­it­ed drinks via guest-served dis­pensers.”

She ad­mits that there would be job loss as busi­ness­es in­clude more AI and ro­bot­ics in their op­er­a­tions.

“The im­pact would be a smoother and more en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence for the guests. In terms of job loss, we have not re­duced our staff count with au­toma­tion. But I would imag­ine that ful­ly au­to­mat­ed restau­rants would re­duce the need for staff. Re­cent­ly, I was on a Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus on which there was a ful­ly au­to­mat­ed (ro­bot-dri­ven) piz­za restau­rant. It worked per­fect­ly for busy stu­dents. Au­toma­tion should be used where it is pos­si­ble to make the guest ex­pe­ri­ence bet­ter.”

In Jan­u­ary, US fast food gi­ant Mc­Don­ald’s opened its first ful­ly au­to­mat­ed restau­rant in Texas, giv­ing cus­tomers a first look at the po­ten­tial fu­ture of fast food and the restau­rant in­dus­try as a whole.

In­stead of plac­ing an or­der via the mo­bile app and then ei­ther go­ing in­to the restau­rant or wait­ing in a dri­ve-thru lane or curb­side park­ing spot to get their food, cus­tomers can pick it up at the store’s ded­i­cat­ed Dri­ve-Thru Ex­press Lane, where it will be de­liv­ered via con­vey­or belt.

Apart from restau­rants, oth­er com­pa­nies are al­so mov­ing to­wards au­toma­tion with US re­tail gi­ant Wal­mart in ear­ly April say­ing it ex­pects about 65 per cent of its stores to be ser­viced by au­toma­tion by the end of its fis­cal year 2026, just days af­ter re­veal­ing plans to lay off more than 2,000 peo­ple at fa­cil­i­ties that ful­fill on­line or­ders.

In­evitable au­toma­tion

Busi­ness­man and own­er of Movi­etowne, Derek Chin be­lieves that au­toma­tion is in­evitable not on­ly in T&T’s restau­rants but in oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my as well.

Chin al­so owns the Texas de Brazil Restau­rant at Movi­eTowne.

Movi­eTowne is al­so home to a num­ber of fast food as well as oth­er fine din­ing restau­rants.

“It’s on­ly a mat­ter of time, pri­mar­i­ly for us in the fast food are­na. There is a prob­lem with labour in T&T and we are low when it comes to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Ob­vi­ous­ly, in the Unit­ed States the same things hap­pen. I ex­pe­ri­enced au­toma­tion in Or­lan­do in the US when I walked in­to a restau­rant and there was a menu board and a dig­i­tal set­up and I was look­ing for where to buy my ham­burg­er. I was told I had to press a but­ton on a dig­i­tal board and lo and be­hold my ham­burg­er came out.”

Chin said he sup­ports the in­cor­po­ra­tion of AI and ro­bot­ics in busi­ness­es and oth­er spheres of life.

“In Japan, you have ro­bots com­ing to your ta­ble. I was at the Mar­riott Ho­tel in Los An­ge­les and I called for a tow­el and when the door­bell rang, there was a ro­bot on wheels with my tow­els.

“In terms of T&T this may be less like­ly, right off but even­tu­al­ly in restau­rants ro­bots could be­come your wait­ers, your bar­tenders, every­thing. There will still be some hu­man in­ter­ac­tion, but if busi­ness own­ers have is­sues with hu­man labour, this will be im­por­tant,” the busi­ness­man said.

Chin re­ferred to Amer­i­can busi­ness­man Elon Musk who has said that one of the biggest chal­lenges over the next few years will be what will be done with un­em­ployed peo­ple when AI and ro­bot­ics take over tra­di­tion­al jobs.

“Peo­ple will even­tu­al­ly lose their jobs and that day will come. There must be stud­ies on how this will af­fect the labour force. When busi­ness own­ers see the ef­fi­cien­cy and costs come down, it will be the way to go. But what do we do with the peo­ple who are dis­placed? Will there be al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment?” Musk asked.

Chin who al­so owns a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny pre­dicts that even in­dus­tries like that will be af­fect­ed by ro­bot­ics.

“Ro­bots don’t fall asleep. They have sen­sors that pick up any move­ment. Maybe soon, they can ap­pre­hend hu­man bur­glars. So, I can see them be­ing used in se­cu­ri­ty busi­ness­es. In my se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, we al­ways have man­pow­er is­sues. So, there are ma­jor ad­van­tages to ro­bot­ics and AI. In the Unit­ed States, you have se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies us­ing ro­bots. Hav­ing po­lice or se­cu­ri­ty guards at some lo­ca­tions is not very ef­fi­cient and a ro­bot can do the job so eas­i­ly.”

Mass un­em­ploy­ment

But man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Grande Food Hub, Dami­an Chow, who spent 30 years in the Unit­ed States, warns that there could be high lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment not on­ly in the restau­rant in­dus­try but in all sec­tors once au­toma­tion be­comes com­mon­place in T&T’s busi­ness­es.

“Yes, I do be­lieve it would be com­ing to Trinidad in places such as fran­chise fast food restau­rants, movie the­aters, en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try and even gov­ern­men­tal of­fices. This has been grow­ing steadi­ly through­out the US in the fast food and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try for some time. It’s been the norm now es­pe­cial­ly with the in­crease in the US min­i­mum wage struc­ture.”

He added that an­oth­er fac­tor is the US gov­ern­ment start­ed to fund high­er “stay-home” wel­fare pay­ments since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This con­tributes to high­er wage costs for the restau­rant own­ers as the busi­ness own­ers must raise wages to com­pete against Gov­ern­ment cheques that low-in­come Amer­i­cans re­ceive. So, au­toma­tion is one so­lu­tion for busi­ness own­ers to sta­bilise prof­its.

“One can say it makes it very dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial­ly for restau­rants to pay high­er wages. As it will ob­vi­ous­ly im­pact their net prof­its. So, you get rid of one of your biggest ex­pens­es, which is wages.”

When busi­ness­es be­come ful­ly au­to­mat­ed in a few years, Chow pre­dicts many min­i­mum wage earn­ers will be­come un­em­ployed.

“But make no mis­take it will af­fect one of the largest work­ing forces in our coun­try, the dai­ly paid (min­i­mum wage) earn­ers. They will be out of a job. In­stead of hav­ing 12 em­ploy­ees on a shift. Up to a half will be ob­so­lete. In terms of the so­cio-psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact, we will be head­ing to­wards a very im­per­son­al busi­ness mod­el. No longer will we in­ter­act with hu­mans in our day-to-day trans­ac­tions. And we could be holed up in our own vir­tu­al life dis­en­gaged from so­ci­ety.”