Three fast-food giants are replacing counter ordering with self-checkout kiosks at Pilot Co. travel centers across the country, a move that accelerates the industry's push to cut labor costs and speed up service.
Pilot Co., which operates one of the largest networks of travel stops in the United States, has already installed 156 self-order kiosks at 78 Wendy's restaurant locations inside its facilities, The U.S. Sun reported. Arby's locations at Pilot travel centers have been outfitted with the same kiosk technology. Subway locations are next in line, with installations described as currently underway.
The rollout puts three of America's best-known quick-service brands on the same path McDonald's took years ago, swapping human cashiers for touchscreens. For travelers pulling off the highway and looking for a fast meal, the change means fewer people behind the counter and more screens in front of it.
A Pilot Co. press release framed the decision in customer-service terms. The company said its kiosks are ADA-compliant and built to make ordering "accessible and convenient for all guests."
"Today's guests expect speed and flexibility when ordering from their favorite quick-service restaurants. Pilot's restaurant ordering systems are designed to meet those expectations."
That language is corporate boilerplate, but the math underneath it is straightforward. Kiosks don't call in sick, don't require benefits, and don't need shift coverage. They take orders faster, reduce mistakes, and let operators run a location with fewer workers. For a company managing dozens of food-court-style restaurants inside highway travel plazas, the savings compound quickly.
The numbers at Wendy's alone tell the story: two kiosks per location across 78 restaurants. That is 156 machines doing work that human cashiers used to handle. Pilot has not disclosed how many Arby's locations received kiosks or how many Subway installations are planned, but the direction is clear, every brand under the Pilot roof is moving toward the same model.
The trend is not limited to travel centers. California Pizza Kitchen recently announced plans for 1,000 automated kiosks as it restructures around fewer brick-and-mortar locations. The restaurant industry, squeezed by rising labor costs and thinning margins, is betting heavily on machines.
McDonald's remains the most prominent fast-food chain to have made the switch to self-order kiosks. Its early adoption set the template: large touchscreens near the entrance, fewer registers staffed by employees, and a workflow that pushes customers toward digital ordering whether they walk in or drive through.
Wendy's, Arby's, and Subway joining the kiosk wave at Pilot locations signals that the holdouts are disappearing. When three major chains adopt the technology simultaneously through a single travel-center operator, it stops looking like an experiment and starts looking like an industry standard.
That shift has consequences beyond convenience. White Castle has begun deploying automated kiosks at Murphy USA gas stations, bringing the model to fuel stops that never had sit-down food service at all. The kiosk is becoming the default interface between customer and kitchen, not just in cities, but along every interstate corridor in the country.
Self-order kiosks have not arrived without friction. Popeyes drew sharp criticism after some of its kiosk screens began prompting customers to leave tips, even though the machines eliminated the very cashier interaction that traditionally justified a tip.
The company pushed back on the controversy, calling the tipping feature "a limited test for about 12 locations in food courts where competitors encourage tipping for team member retention." It said there were "no nationwide plans to roll this out."
The distinction matters less than the pattern. Once tipping prompts exist on a kiosk platform, expanding them costs nothing. Customers who already feel uneasy about ordering from a screen instead of a person now face the added irritation of a machine asking for gratuity on top of it. The backlash is a preview of the consumer resistance these rollouts will keep generating.
Legislators in several states have already started paying attention to the broader self-checkout trend. Rhode Island became the first state to mandate staffing ratios at self-checkout lanes, requiring retailers to keep a minimum number of human employees on the floor alongside automated systems.
Other jurisdictions are following suit. Several states have moved to regulate self-checkout kiosks at major retailers like Walmart and Target, driven by concerns about job losses, theft, and the erosion of customer service. Whether those regulatory efforts will extend to fast-food kiosks inside travel centers remains an open question, but the political pressure is building from the same direction.
Pilot Co. has not said how many employees, if any, were displaced by the kiosk installations. It has not identified which states or cities house the 78 Wendy's locations that received machines. It has not provided a timeline for completing the Subway rollout or disclosed the total number of Pilot travel centers that operate Wendy's, Arby's, or Subway restaurants.
Those gaps matter. Travelers and workers alike deserve to know the scale of what is changing. A kiosk at a highway Wendy's in rural Tennessee is not the same proposition as one in a staffed suburban restaurant, the travel-center model already runs lean, and automation pushes it leaner.
The fast-food industry has spent years insisting that kiosks supplement workers rather than replace them. That claim gets harder to maintain with every new rollout. When 156 machines go into 78 locations and the company's own press release talks about "speed and flexibility" rather than "supporting our team members," the priority is plain enough.
Americans who work for a living can read a press release. They know what "efficiency" means when a corporation says it, and it rarely means more jobs.