> Now imagine a Starbucks with touchscreen-and-voice enabled ordering, no visible employees (maybe one employee, nominally a store manager, working the fleet of coffee machines behind the screens, and doing some light sweeping in the restaurant, etc) and a communal co-working space that more or less preserves the current experience, just minus the baristas.

Then imagine that the notion that your coffee is "crafted" by a "barista"[1] is part of the brand that distinguishes their coffee from my reasonably adequate free office coffee machine, and the barista costs two cups of coffee and a muffin per hour, and makes a point of asking everyone in line if they'd like anything else with that, and suddenly the savings from touchscreen and voice enabled ordering look less massive.

Now that's a fashion that could change, just like most rich people who could comfortably afford someone to polish their fireplaces and silverware every morning and doff their cap to guests nowadays would think such an idea unthinkably pretentious rather than the hallmark of a respectable house, and many of them have learned to actually enjoy cooking. After all, some people actually prefer impersonal service from a kiosk when buying tickets or packed food these days; more if it offers a better queuing system. But the economics are more complex than simple staff minimisation, otherwise the Automat would have killed the fast food industry rather than vice versa. Let's face it, 90% of these venues providing service jobs wouldn't exist if people were a little more willing to sacrifice perceived food quality/image/freshness for cheaper food and beverages

[1]Yes, of course it's a teenager pressing a button. But brand image is silly like that.