The initial reaction for most businesses, when hit with a $15/hour minimum wage, has been to let go employees and implement robots or ordering kiosks.
Alternative food giant Whole Foods is jumping onto the bandwagon - from Breitbart:
Whole Foods’ 365: Where Kiosks Replace Workers
Whole Foods may still be seen by shoppers as an alternative to corporate grocery chains, but the highly-profitable corporation just opened its first “365 by Whole Foods” in Los Angeles in an effort to use kiosks and robots to cut 60 percent of staffing costs and maximize profitability.
Promoted as a “chain for millennials,” the new “365” stores use about one-third less square footage than the company’s traditional 41,000-square-foot Whole Foods stores, but they also slash almost two-thirds of workers with robots and computerized kiosks.
It should not be surprising that the first “automated” WF store is being located in Los Angeles, where state and local governments have passed minimum wage laws that will push wages up by 50 percent in a series of steps to $15 an hour in 2022.
Feeling the Bern
