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What I've Been Reading This Week


Quite the busy week kept me on the road and out of the office.  One of the more thought provoking articles I came across dealt with the relationship between President Trump and the fast food industry.  Recall that President Trump's first nominee for Labor Secretary was Andy Puzder (of Hardees/Carl's Jr. "fame").  Of course he did not make it through the entire confirmation process...but that example certainly lends credence to the fact that the President appears to be quite cozy with certain sectors of the fast food industry.  Whether that pays dividends long term for these employers is still up for debate, but at the below article notes, it appears that things are certainly looking up for the time being.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


President Donald Trump: A Friend to Fast Food Employers?

Dave Jamieson over at The Huffington Post muses on the seemingly strong "friendship" shared by President Donald Trump and fast food employers across the country.  Jamieson does a good job providing a concise overview of steps the Obama Administration took which angered the fast food industry...compared to what President Trump has done over the past 7 or so months:  taking steps to undo the Obama Administration's attempt to raise the overtime threshold, indicating its limited interest in raising the federal minimum wage, and appearing ready to embrace the "joint employer" bill that was recently introduced in Congress which would rewrite the NLRB's definition from Browning-Ferris (and you guessed it, make "joint employer" more employer friendly).  At least for the time being, this honeymoon continues...


Little Caesars Introduces Automated Pizza Pickup

As some commentators had suggested, given the increased cost of labor, it was only a matter of time before restaurants introduced automated machines in an effort to cut these rising costs to employ hourly workers.  Recently, Little Caesars began installing machines at some of its locations in which customers order their desired pizza on an app, pay for it, receive a notification when it is ready, punch a code into a machine, and retrieve their pizza from behind a glass window.  As Michelle Maynard at Forbes writes, Little Caesars is not a trailblazer in this case as other chains such as Panera Bread and McDonald's have implemented similar machines.  Unless there is a huge backlash by consumers over the lack of interpersonal communication with an actual human (and these consumers actually take their money elsewhere), I would expect other restaurants to look at implementing similar machines in an effort to cut back on labor costs.

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