OCTOBER 20238IN MY OPINIONBy Geoff Herrera, Director, Operations Services, JambaAUTOMATION IN THE QSR WORLDThe Argument for AutomationThe QSR industry continues to evolve. Processes from as little as five years ago no longer meet requirements. The landscape has changed with cost increases at an accelerated rate that we have not seen in a very long time. Not only variable costs, but fixed costs are also rising beyond predictability. None of this is news to a QSR operator ­ any one of them can speak to these scenarios. But what is different now? It's staffing. The labor equation. For many years, finding processes to reduce labor was about the cost of that labor, but the atmosphere is different now. For brands to continue to grow, they need enough employees in the restaurants to meet demand with at least satisfactory service and facility standards. This is the new struggle ­ finding enough employees to staff for growth. This automa-tion discussion centers around the idea that the intrin-sic drive for automation is to enhance the restaurant's capabilities to meet demands with fewer employees available. Unleashing the Right Team There are many robotics start-ups, consultant groups, and industrial engineers available to tell you what and how to automate your brand. It's important to remem-ber that no one resource has the right answer, the right team must include a team leader who knows the heart of the brand and understands operations intimately. This means that the automation journey must be led by the brand to find success more reliably. Apart from perhaps the largest global restaurant brands, most brands do not have robotics professionals or indus-trial engineers on staff. What they do have though, is a brand fanatic somewhere on their operations team. Restaurant excellence, operations excellence, and operations services, these departments have many different naming conventions in the industry ­ but they all layer up to one consistent capability. The Swiss army knife of the restaurant world. From opera-tions manuals to SOPs to programs to training ­ these operations specialists have a unique perspective of their brands that I believe makes them the most effective automation leaders. They won't know any of the automation capabilities from the start, but they will know what processes make the most sense to become auto-mated. They can apply critical thinking to a production line and all Geoff Herrera
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