Miami, FL — Burger King Corporation announced today that it plans on replacing its foreign-born and domestic workers in all of its 7400 restaurants with foreign-built robots. The company says that it plans on installing over 60,000 Mexican-engineered and built “automated food service personnel’ to replace workers whose visas have expired and/or are employed illegally.
Given the immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, and the threats of building a large wall along the Mexican border, many businesses decided look elsewhere for labor to staff their enterprises.
“We have been looking for the right time to automate our restaurants,” said Burger King spokesperson Bethany Millbright. “We’re expecting a massive shortage of workers, so now is the time. The best part of this is, Mexico has a vibrant robot industry and has been working with us in our test kitchens with the automated staff. We were able to get them for pennies on the dollar compared to American companies.”
Burger King says that there will be no savings from the robots, as they actually cost more than regular workers.
“The automated staff does cost more than a regular hourly wage worker,” continued Ms. Millbright. “When you add-on the initial cost of the devices, plus maintenance and training for the franchise owners, they cost about $16.00/hour to operate. But we feel we have no other choice.”
Approximately 30,000 robots will be deployed by year’s end, with the balance deployed the following year.
