this is exactly how they do it in some restauraunts in Japan- you choose the food you want at what appears to be a vending machine, which spits out a ticket / reciept combo. You tear off half of it and give it to the cook, who gives you your food in return.

This also cuts down the line at some grocery stores too.

My local McDonalds has a readout that shows what the cashier is entering into the system as you place your order. It's right on the post of the drive through, under the speaker.

Having the order entered correctly into the system is only part of the challenge. There's still the problem of making sure that the order is communicated correctly to the kitchen staff, and of making sure that everything is stuffed into the bag correctly and completely.

RFID tags on food containers and a cheap OLED display on the paperbag displaying bag contents will completely solve this problem, but we're still some years away from this solution becoming financially viable. In the interim, completely transparent plastic bags would solve this problem, though at the cost of environmental unfriendliness.

Let’s not try to think up more ideas for eliminating jobs.

I have a far more elegent solution:

Stop eating that garbage!

Slow your life down so you can eat quality slow food. Fast food is junk.

Eaters of garbage deserve to be punished from time to time

With license-plate number recognition software, the drive through could remember your last order on-screen, or for that matter, the last time your wife used the car with her lover.. ha!

With SMS, and mobile telecoms, there is no reason that you should not be able to order from your car/voice mobile phone with an in-car touch screen before you ever arrive at the queue, that the food is instantly ready for pickup. I get kind of tired of repeating the same ordering process, when in fact, i pretty much have narrowed the fast food menu's i requent down to a repeatable set i select from.... i'd much rather be able to simply say, "the usual".

Don't worry, arr, garbage eaters usually get punished eventually.

Disclaimer: I do not wish any harm to people who get fat and nasty diseases because of poor food habits, neither do I think they deserve it. However, we must face the thruth: they do get punished.

Would it be too much to ask for alittle competence from the people that work there. We don't need more tech involved in fast food the stupid intercom system works so well anyway. There is a local takeout place that has one person take your order on one side on the drive thru and another person give you your order. I've never had a wrong order there. Technology is not a replacement for ability and job ethic.

Some of you are being unfair. If you don't like/eat fast food then obviously this idea is not going to jive with you. I think this is a very good idea. The second part especially and it already works at Sheetz and Wawa.

Eliminate jobs??? They wouldn't have to fire the cashiers because there will always be people who prefer to order from a living person rather than a machine, they simply need to install ordering kiosks to the side of the registers. I mean ATMs did not eliminate the position of the live bank teller!

I have some additional ideas that could make this really great:

1) Option to save your eating profile at restaurant (link to credit card) so that you swipe to begin and the system recalls your favorite items into a part of the menu.

2) Advertisement revenue will fund the cost of the machines, a portion of the screen will display an ad and maybe a coupon prints with your receipt.

If I pay with a credit card, and my last three orders were the same...

McDonalds' have picture menus on the keypads for the cashiers 'cause they're too dumb (since to work there your IQ < your shoe size) to know what to press