The article is oddly silent on food truck competition. Food trucks avoid real estate costs, most employees, and are given free rein to compete with brick-and-mortar restaurants, even to the point of being allocated parking right on the same block in some cases. The result was easily predictable.
I would never want to open a brick and mortar shop of any type, but I have this weird desire to build an automated food truck. A tablet on the side with big plexiglass windows so you can see the simple process internally building your food (sandwiches or burgers). Maybe I've been spending too much time here in Japan :-)
Open a food truck! It's a relatively low risk thing compared to opening a restaurant. Still a lot of work though your idea reduces that quite a bit. :-)
Food trucks would be the lower end though. The article focused on the medium end that the average person might go to for a good dinner with a decent ambience without breaking the bank. That's a reasonable thing that most people do to relax at least occasionally. Sure, OK, it's a first world problem but that's not sufficient reason to dismiss a problem as trivial. It's not the biggest problem that needs to be solved, either. :-)
