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Several restaurants in New York are now opting to hire ‘Zoom Cashiers’ from the Philippines

Several restaurants in New York City are hiring remote staff from the Philippines to greet and take orders via Zoom.

This type of ordering kiosk have been spotted at Sansan Chicken in Manhattan’s East Village. They also have branches in Long Island City and Queens.

What a virtual cashier does is greet customers who appear on camera when they enter the store and take orders during peak hours.

This unconventional setup went viral on social media sparking a debate with regards to staffing and wages.

The staffing firm responsible for this technology is Happy Cashier. They are a New York-based company that is testing its product on different local businesses. According to the company’s founder. Chi Zhang, they want to “empower small businesses by providing exceptional virtual cashier services, as well as operational assistance.”

Aside from Sansan Chicken, this type of setup is also seen in other restaurants such as Sansan Ramen and a couple of branches of Yaso Chicken.

While New York City prides itself for their minimum wage of $16 (935.85 pesos) per hour, the average Filipino worker earns roughly $3.75 (219.34 pesos).

According to the Business Process Association of the Philippines, the country has the largest business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the world, generating an estimate of $35.4 billion (approximately 2 million pesos) in revenue as of 2023.

A professor of management at the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University, Mohammad Rahman, said to Fortune that hiring virtual workers, counting those from the Philippines would cost restaurants only 10% of what they would pay in-person cashiers.

Rahman argued that while they are using this tactic to save on labor costs, they give the troubleshooting ability and warmth that automated self-service kiosks lack.

“Customers expect better services, so if you can bring in that person who is basically virtually there, this person can do all your customer service, just as if the server was just standing there,” he stated. “As long as that experience is the same, the customer probably doesn’t care.”

The professor also said that it is inevitable to lean into virtual workers, “What we’re seeing right now is just a natural evolution of the future work.”

There’s no denying that virtual work is gaining attention in the Philippines, primarily due to salary considerations. With all of this unfolding, are we already glimpsing into the future?

 

Other POP! stories that you might like:

Filipinos poke fun at American singer Chappell Roan’s photos for ‘giving Recto energy’

Revelations involving famous mukbanger Tzuyang spark outrage among viewers and social media users

Two planes in New York caught on camera almost colliding mid-air

Cara Delevingne gets candid on her sobriety journey: ‘I thought drugs and alcohol helped me cope’

Filipinos react as DOH considers ‘Mukbang ban’ following vlogger’s death from stroke

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