McDonald’s had decades ago, white castle. Historians loans As we know this, the hamburger chain by creating a modern fast food industry.
This It goes a legend This White Tower Father Walter “Walt” Anderson began to prepare a hamburger in the mid-1910s, how much he took to cook meatballs until mid-1910s. So one day, Anderson hit a meatballs with a spatula and had a hamburger patty where the boom could cook faster. True, the hugs of Anderson’s husburgers were really part of a search for greater productivity – cook and sell more meat sandwiches over a while.
This annoying story may or may not be fake, but after building a white castle in 1921, the Anderson and co-founder Billy Ingram, many signs of the fast-food industry, and helps to standardize and montage the mounting in chain restaurants. White Castle has suffered a lot of pain to be productive Make a burger square It is a few articles that can increase the number of burgers that can adapt to a gry and restrict its menu, restrict only a few items, prepare, cook and eat. (Listen to this for more history of the White Tower Prevention Planet money collaboration with 99% invisible).
Thus, from the beginning, fast-food restaurants are designed for the epitome of the productivity. About everything about them is aimed at serving customers as soon as possible and effectively.
However, according to a new study, he stopped seeing productivity between 1992 and 2019. Fast-food chains and other restaurants fought to find innovative ways to serve customers in a quick clip.
Research saw why restaurants slow in productivity growth. Maybe after the innovations for many years, fast-food restaurants hit a ceiling and have difficulty finding more efficiency. Apparently, as a mass reception of Internet and smartphones, they could not benefit from great technological changes to serve faster. Or maybe fast food chains arranged working processes with the help of new technologies, but at the same time there were fertility sucking specialists. For example, maybe consumers began to want more different food And fast-food companies diversified menus and slow preparing the food preparation. Whatever the reason, this research, fast food and other restaurants have stopped seeing the increase in productivity for about 30 years.
However, according to this new study, Covid-19 has changed sharply during the pandemia. Fast-food and other restaurants “astonishing surgery” in the productivity – and have been more productive since then.
What is this “curious Art” in productivity? Today as well Planet money Bulletin.
What is behind the productivity increase
Name of the study “An interesting increase in productivity in US restaurants“And it is economists by Astan Goolsbee, Chad Syverson, Rebecca Goldgof and Joe Tatarka.
When the pandemic was shot in 2020, economists were found, the restaurant industry saw a short but steep reduction in productivity. Lockdowns and social removations have tone violations for work and bring damage to the ability of restaurants to serve customers.
But after a while, but noteworthy something began to happen
Economists, after 2020, the restaurant industry is 15% higher than a previously stable stable situation in decades. Put another way, the average restaurant has seen 15% more sales to every employee.
Why did this happen? Economists pass various explanations for productivity growth and then destroy the majority.
This is probably a fluke related to the odd, covid in the data? Nope. They found a continuous change in more than one database.
This maybe many restaurants died during the pandemic, and this helped to push right restaurant? In particular, restaurants in restaurants saved and effectiveness found – Econospeak, “Scale Economies” – Because there was less competition and potentially a larger customer pool? No, they found economists. Information does not support this hypothesis.
To find the answers to the restaurant to be more productive, economists turned “Microwather” from smartphones. This information offers systematic information about how much time and money the customer spends in restaurants. This information is said more comprehensive to the fast-food (aka “limited service”), so they payed attention to this sector of the market. Their information covers visits for “more than 100,000 restaurants in the United States” until January 2019, 2019, sales of about $ 24 billion.
Why did fast food restaurants become more productive? Economists found a large clue in the information: The average length of time spent in the restaurants has fallen and skyoked the percentage of customers spent less than 10 minutes. Who is spending less than 10 minutes in a restaurant? Tug and delivery clients! Since the pandemic, customers wanted more money and delivery than before. And economists say this change in consumer behavior allows restaurants to restore business and labor processes in innovative ways.
“The restaurants have been thinking of how much it will serve the customer, especially there, especially the type,” said Chad Syverson, an economist who praised Chicago’s Booth Business University. “The number of customers who can fulfill orders and less than 10 minutes, they saw a particular increase in the number of customers.”
Although economists do not say exactly what the data is faster than placing customers faster, Syverson points to various examples. For example, restaurants have begun to use smartphone applications in more interface with customers during the pandemic. And they started working as ordering shelves, so clients can order dishes online, and then they can only enter people and get out of the shelf. Another example: some fast-food restaurants doubled the driverless stripes and assigned more employees to get driving orders.
Economists have managed to find restaurants and delivery services that allow you to buy and quotes – the client’s “living time” was the greatest work in its productivity.
And, by definition and delivery, praise, it means that customers should sit in the restaurant and spend less time to do not give food in the restaurant, and this potentially spend less time to clean the table, floor and bathroom. More customers, especially for popular restaurants, more customers who want to eat outside the rooms, allowed to serve the limits of limited physical space within the buildings.
In addition, many enterprises have struggled to hire employees in the intensive labor market during this period, and this gave an additional incentive to enterprises to understand more productive ways to place technology and employees. “The need is the mother of the invention, as they say,” Syverson says.
What does this mean for fast-food employees and consumers?
ECON 101 shows that employees will make more money when employees are more productive and thus creating more value.
But in research between decades Massachusetts Institute of Technology Economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon JohnsonThis shows that it is not an automatic process. Sometimes employees may need to organize or choose policies such as a higher minimum salary to divide the employers to share higher productivity fruits with employees.
“We knew the salary in the restaurant industry that there is a lot of growth in general – above average – goes out of the pandemic,” Syverson says. “Thus, we do not have a restaurant-level salary information, so we have no salary productivity (seen in a large market), I would not think that this productivity was bad news for restaurant workers.”
OK, thus restaurant workers. Maybe good news. What about consumers?
Research, Pascual Restropol and sometimes other cooperation show that companies are using machinery to operate their clients of machinery. Thus, for example, in grocery stores, self-inspection kiosks means that instead of paid employees instead of customers. Can help the sole line of stores, but sometimes there can be a pain in the butt for customers. Achaemoglu and restepo call them SO-SO TECHNOLOGIES because they are definitely killing without increasing productivity or make the consumer experience better.
In the same way, the reception of the technologies that books the restaurants and other themselves may be cheaper than the prospects, but sometimes you want to sit and take care of the consumer perspective. Instead of ordering a paid employee, open your smartphone, and potentially download an app, type your credit card number, shipping address and email and then order your paid employee. In fast food settings, it can be less. In fact, it may be more convenient to order self-orders, especially after you have already downloaded your apps with your payment information. However, a unmanned business process to order food settings in the food parameters, sometimes takes more time and more time for customers.
Syverson thinks that most of the majority of most sitting restaurants have disliked QR codes and other annoying order methods taken during the pandemic.
“I think it’s a pleasant example of something that can create effectiveness in principle in principle (and perhaps a little), but not enough customers.” “As a result, I have the impression that they are mainly back in full service restaurants.”
However, many other changes, food and other restaurants are still with us during the pandemic. Order the smartphone application, fast apples apple shelves, more shipping options and expanded driving strips.
Syverson said that these new technologies and business processes produced by these new technologies and work processes are generally good news for consumers. When enterprises can do and sell more in less and sell, the cost of expenses generally generally reduced. It can recently mask these benefits from inflation. However, the main part of the proof, Syverson says that the productivity earnings are often transferred to consumers at low prices.
For this reason and for more economists, economists generally like productivity growth. They look like this magic sauce, which spilled on the economy, allowing us to be more than less.
“Productivity growth is super important,” Syverson says. “Our economic welfare is the only way to grow continuous and is associated with good things for work, employees, customers and all economies.”
In the coming years, fast food restaurants can be a reason to hope that the productivity growth will see another wave. Many Experience with the use of AI and Robuts To increase productivity, to speed up your order, food preparation and other aspects of their work. Fast food can be even faster.
