Unlike the Freshii workers that wrap burritos, these “virtual” workers are nowhere near the store. Instead, at least some of them process orders from a Nicaraguan call centre nearly 6,000 km away, where they earn much less than Ontario’s minimum wage.
The video-calling device is attached to cash registers at a select few Freshii locations across Ontario, and it lights up when customers approach the counter.
Freshii, a franchise with 343 restaurants across North America, declined to provide details to the Star about its virtual cashier technology, but in a statement, Freshii’s chief business development officer Paul Hughes said Percy is operated by a third-party company. In North America, Freshii typically hires for server positions that pay between $12 to $16 an hour, according to data collected by Glassdoor, an American jobs search website. In Ontario, where the minimum wage is $15 , Freshii’s virtual cashier program could potentially save the company $10 or more an hour.
“Shipping jobs to an offshore location to pay less than a third of our minimum wage here is just extremely disappointing, and, quite frankly, I’m disgusted a company like Freshii would take this approach,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.An increase in outsourcing and automation may prove to be one of the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic legacies.
Sector-specific research, meanwhile, has detected a drop in jobs in grocery stores and food retail. A recent report from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University found a 15 per cent drop in full-time positions at grocery stores between 2006 and 2016 — mostly from customer-facing roles.
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