If we are talking restaurants, human costs are around 1/3 of the total expense- the rest being rent and food.
I don't see how splurging on massive capital investments like machines winds up being cheaper than having a human do the food prep- humans are remarkably efficient at quality control, repetitive but flexible tasks (I.e. dealing with imperfect non-manufactured things like food items) and require little capital to get going (just basic training).
The only thing machines beat humans at in food is volume of high precision, highly controlled tasks- think producing bags of chips rather than prepared meals.
It seems like food startups are trying to jump straight to scale, hoping to prove out that eliminating some human jobs works- saving maybe 1/6 of their costs at best, rather than proving that a market exists for whatever product they are selling.
I don't see how splurging on massive capital investments like machines winds up being cheaper than having a human do the food prep- humans are remarkably efficient at quality control, repetitive but flexible tasks (I.e. dealing with imperfect non-manufactured things like food items) and require little capital to get going (just basic training).
The only thing machines beat humans at in food is volume of high precision, highly controlled tasks- think producing bags of chips rather than prepared meals.
It seems like food startups are trying to jump straight to scale, hoping to prove out that eliminating some human jobs works- saving maybe 1/6 of their costs at best, rather than proving that a market exists for whatever product they are selling.