A restaurant chain in New York City is reportedly making waitresses welcome guests and assist with check-out on a screen from south-east Asia in lieu of hiring local workers, according to a New York Post story.
The fried chicken and ramen-focused restaurants Sansan Chicken, Sansan Ramen, and Yaso Kitchen—which have locations in Manhattan, Queens, and Jersey City—are profiting from the enormous income disparity between New York City, where the minimum wage is $16 per hour, and the South-eastern Asian region, where the hourly wage is closer to $3.75.
Pie, a 33-year-old hostess from the Philippine city of Subic, recently talked to a Post reporter at Sansan Chicken in Long Island City. Despite not wanting to reveal her salary, Pie claimed she works for a firm called Happy Cashier and that, occasionally, clients leave significant tips even though she isn’t physically present.
Pie claims she has been at the job for nearly six months, and by switching between displays, it looks like she covers three distinct locations at once. It’s unclear if the waitresses are employed by the restaurant or by a different business that contracts with them.
this is insane
cashier is literally zooming into nyc from the philippines pic.twitter.com/opAyS8AYUs
— brett goldstein (@thatguybg) April 6, 2024
The remote workers are a “clear way to cut costs,” according to Brett Goldstein, a 33-year-old internet entrepreneur who wrote about Sansan Chicken on Manhattan’s Mercer Street in a viral 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 wrote.
