This piece has been edited since its first appearance, to reflect a math error a sharp-eyed reader spotted – you can read more about that here. Steve asked, in response to my piece about robot restaurants: Let's start with how much money staff would have to be paid in order to remain consistently with a restaurant as a career, how much of a profit a restaurant would have to earn to remain in business for years, etc. Take these as given. Now back out to how much revenue that translates into, and into how much meals need to cost. How much of an increase in prices would we need? … I'm just trying to understand the scope of the problem. Is the problem of restaurant financing completely insoluble within a plausible range of customer prices? Or is it only soluble within a range of prices such that only the wealthy will be able to afford non-robot food?
Target practice
Target practice
Target practice
This piece has been edited since its first appearance, to reflect a math error a sharp-eyed reader spotted – you can read more about that here. Steve asked, in response to my piece about robot restaurants: Let's start with how much money staff would have to be paid in order to remain consistently with a restaurant as a career, how much of a profit a restaurant would have to earn to remain in business for years, etc. Take these as given. Now back out to how much revenue that translates into, and into how much meals need to cost. How much of an increase in prices would we need? … I'm just trying to understand the scope of the problem. Is the problem of restaurant financing completely insoluble within a plausible range of customer prices? Or is it only soluble within a range of prices such that only the wealthy will be able to afford non-robot food?