A Shake Shack In NYC Is Ushering In The Future Of Fast Food

This, ladies and gentleman, is the future. A future where you can stop into your favorite fast food joint and not have to endure human interaction. A place where you simply walk in, type or touch your order, and wait for it to be prepared. Just you, your food, and the machines. If this sounds like something from a sci-fi novel, you can relax, it’s not. At least not yet. However, it could become a reality sooner than later, thanks to a Shake Shack in NYC.

The Astor Place Shake Shack in New York will soon be trialling a human-less ordering system beginning later this month. The location will be cashless, and will allow customers to come in and place their orders via ordering kiosks. These kiosks will be based around the existing Shake Shack app that’s currently available for Android and iOS. The premise is fairly simple, you visit the location, use the kiosk to order and the rest is done on the back-end. We assume payment will be handled via credit card, or Android and Apple pay.

There will be actual staff on location to help customers in need though. These employees will be referred to as “Hospitality Champs” and they will be around to help customers with any questions, and assisting with the ordering process. While this isn’t an entirely new concept, this will be the first time that a location has gone completely cashless. It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out, and whether or not more restaurants will begin to embrace this business model as well.

Throughout all of this, one thing is for certain. If this restaurant in particular does well, there would be nothing stopping similar restaurants, from doing the same thing in an effort to cut costs. The next time you go to order a burger from your favorite spot, you could very well be getting it from a kiosk instead of an actual person.

The future will be weird.