Restaurant Chain Replaced Human Dishwashers With Machines After Minimum Wage Increase

One restaurant chain has a solution to help deal with mandated wage increases. It's replacing human workers with machines.

California-based Dave's Hot Chicken has dozens of restaurants in California, where the minimum wage increased to $20 an hour for fast food workers in 2024.

The company started studying every expense to limit cost increases to cover the added wages.

The company convinced most of its franchises to switch to dishwashing machines rather than clean dishes by hand, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The company also added self-ordering kiosks in stores to reduce the time workers spent outside of the kitchen.

It's now testing a robotic fry-cooking machine in some restaurants.

Dave's also suggested that franchisees contract out restaurant cleaning to limit the amount of time its workers spend on the task.