As of November 30, 2025, it’s too early to definitively judge a prediction framed as happening “in the very near future” and normalized as within a few years of August 2024.

Evidence so far:

• Sweetgreen has clearly moved toward substantial in-store automation. Its “Infinite Kitchen” robotic makeline is being rolled out aggressively: 12 locations were operating by the end of 2024, with plans to dedicate roughly half of 2025 new builds to this format and expand to around 33+ automated stores, citing large labor and margin advantages.(convenience.org) A November 2025 report notes about 20 Infinite Kitchen units in operation and a plan for 10 more by year-end, reinforcing that automation is a core part of Sweetgreen’s strategy to cut labor and improve unit economics.(restauranttechnologynews.com)
• Across quick‑service and fast‑casual broadly, more chains are experimenting with robotics, kiosks, and AI-driven tools (e.g., Chipotle’s automated bowl/salad lines and avocado-prep robots), largely to address labor costs and productivity.(barrons.com) This supports the direction of the prediction at an industry level.
• Starbucks, however, has recently pulled back on its major automation push. The company is scaling down the rollout of its Siren equipment system and instead increasing staffing, with CEO Brian Niccol explicitly acknowledging that earlier assumptions about equipment replacing labor did not pan out. The Siren system is now being reserved for a relatively small set of high‑volume stores, and the company is leaning into a “staffing‑first” model to improve the customer experience.(reuters.com) This runs against the idea that Starbucks itself will heavily automate in the near term specifically to cut labor and real‑estate costs.

Why the verdict is ‘inconclusive’:

• The prediction’s horizon is “within a few years of August 2024.” As of late 2025, only about a year and a quarter has elapsed, so the full time window has not passed.
• Some core examples (Sweetgreen and several peers) are clearly moving toward more robotics and automation in line with the claim, while Starbucks—the other named example—is moving in the opposite direction, at least for now.

Given that the relevant time period is still in progress and the evidence is mixed (strong confirmation at some chains, active retrenchment at Starbucks), the fairest assessment at this point is that the prediction’s ultimate accuracy is not yet knowable, hence “inconclusive.”