- Kyle Chua
Even Restaurant Cashiers, Security Personnel Can Now Work From Home
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, the world of work has been devising innovative new ways to accommodate remote and contactless operations, allowing employees to do their jobs from the comforts of their own homes. Not only did these innovations keep businesses running with lockdown orders in effect but it also saved them a lot of money on rent and utilities.
A chain of New York City food joints is taking advantage of the cost-saving benefits of remote work to cut labour costs amid rising minimum wages. One of which is Sansan Chicken, a place that serves fried-chicken in the East Village and Long Island City. The restaurant has hostesses from the Philippines on Zoom calls serve as cashiers, instead of in-person employees. These hostesses, who can supposedly speak "perfect English", appear on a screen to greet customers and respond to queries they may have about the menu or the restaurant's self-service kiosk, as well as take delivery orders over phone, as Fortune reports.
By outsourcing the work cashiers, the restaurant is reportedly able to save a significant amount on labour costs, considering it only has to comply with the labour standards of the Philippines, where the minimum wage is much lower than that of the U.S, which could reach as high as US$16 per hour. Despite this, the Filipino hostesses can stand to earn more in these remote cashier jobs than as an in-person cashier in the Philippines.
"We pay 150% more than the average cashier job in the Philippines," said Chi Zhang, the founder of Happy Cashiers, the New York City-based staffing company providing the technology for the restaurants. In the Philippines, the average cashier job pays about P56.69, which equates to about US$1, per hour as base pay. In comparison, Zhang's company, based on what he said, pays about US$2.50 per hour. That amount doesn't include tips, which, depending on the restaurant, are often split between the remote and in-person workers.
Happy Cashier draws from a pool of more than one million Filipino workers who are employed through the country's business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, which is said to be the largest in the world, having generated US$35.4 billion in revenue last year.
Zhang said he got the idea for the company when he was forced to close his own restaurant during the pandemic partly due to how difficult it was to hire workers. He then thought he could leverage technology to create a service that can help growing businesses save on labour costs without compromising customer satisfaction.
"Like the name Happy Cashier, [my goal] is to bring my customer happiness, confidence, and sustainable growth," he said.
Happy Cashier is already operating in food joints like the previously mentioned Sansan Chicken since last October, and is in its pilot stages at Sansan Ramen and a couple Yaso Kitchen locations, along with another New York City chain that was not named. The company's customer base could soon grow, with Zhang saying he plans to bring the service into market by the end of June. He also said he already has a couple dozen prospective customers who heard of the service via word of mouth.
Zhang can probably expect more interested customers soon, with the discovery of the service going viral on social media. The service was brought to attention by Brett Goldstein, a tech entrepreneur who posted about Sansan Chicken in Manhattan on a thread on X.
"Today, this is a Filipino woman behind a screen, controlling a POS system — but it’s not crazy to believe that probably in the next six to twelve months, this could be an AI avatar doing all the same things," he posted.
Some TikTok users also shared that similar services are being used in Uruguay and Argentina. There, however, the remote workers are serving as security personnel instead of cashiers. As to how the workers do their job though is not shown or discussed in the short clip.
A chain of New York City food joints is taking advantage of the cost-saving benefits of remote work to cut labour costs amid rising minimum wages in the U.S.
One restaurant has hostesses from the Philippines on Zoom calls serve as cashiers, appearing on a screen to greet customers and respond to queries about the menu or the self-service kiosk.
Behind the idea is Happy Cashiers, a staffing company that draws from a pool of more than one million Filipino workers, employed through the country's business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, for such remote jobs.