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Rather than finding workers locally, some fast-food restaurants in the US are paying cashiers on different continents to take orders via video call.
Happy Cashier founder Chi Zhang told Business Insider that its staff — or "Happy Cashiers," as it calls them — take orders on behalf of US restaurants via video call in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Ghana.
Labor is much cheaper in these countries. The New York Times reported in April that Happy Cashier, a restaurant technology company, pays its Filipino workers who take orders for New York City restaurants just $3 an hour, compared to the city's minimum wage of $16 an hour, with a minimum $10.65 cash wage for tipped food service workers.
The workers are also in completely different time zones to the customers they serve. The Philippines and Malaysia are both 12 hours ahead of New York, while Ghana is four hours ahead in summer, or five in winter.
Zhang told BI that people in some Asian countries are "very used to" working the "'graveyard timezone,' so they are OK with that, and sometimes people like it."
He added: "We always make sure we pay our employee enough to support their living and higher than the local wage."
Each restaurant has one or two dedicated screens where workers from Happy Cashier are connected via video call. They take customers' orders, explain allergy information, and send the order to the restaurant's kitchen.
Many of Happy Cashier's clients are based in the US, where it has an office in Manhattan. It's also trademarked in some major English-speaking countries, Zhang said. He said it works with restaurants "of many sizes," but that mainly fast-casual and fast-food restaurants use its video cashier service.
He told CNBC in May that a "few dozen restaurants in New York" were testing the service.
"Most customers have very positive feedback," Zhang told BI.
Happy Cashier hit the headlines in the spring after a post on X about its operations at NYC restaurant Sansan Chicken went viral.
Zhang said that Happy Cashier's customers typically have one or two dedicated cashiers and pay for the labor by the hour.
Happy Cashier did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BI about how many virtual cashiers it has, how it trains them, the amount it pays them, and whether they get a share of the tips.
Lilly Jan, a lecturer at Cornell University's Hotel School, told BI that the pandemic had accelerated the "evolution" of order-taking, with people having no choice but to get to-go and delivery from restaurants during waves of lockdowns.
By introducing video-call cashiers, restaurants that use Happy Cashier could be "bridging the gap" between cutting costs and providing a personal touch, Jan said.
"We like to be seen as customers," she said.
Staff and ingredients are the two biggest expenses for restaurants, and wages have been steadily rising since the pandemic started.
The novelty of placing an order via video call could help attract diners in, too, Jan said. But ultimately, restaurants would need to think about whether using a service like this would make the experience better or faster for staff or customers, she said.
Happy Cashier's workers also help with other tasks, Zhang said. He said that most restaurants "like to use our service for opening to the close because during those off-peak hours at restaurants, our cashiers do a lot of work at the back end" like posting on job sites, managing reviews, and working on SEO.
