The prediction explicitly used a decade‑scale horizon (“over time… within the next decade or so”), made in August 2024. As of November 30, 2025, only about a year has passed, so the time window for judging it has not elapsed.

Current evidence shows increasing automation and AI assistance at chains like Starbucks and McDonald’s, but not the large‑scale elimination of in‑store roles Jason described:

• Starbucks is rolling out “Green Dot Assist,” a generative‑AI assistant meant to help baristas with recipes, troubleshooting, and workflow, with a broad rollout planned for fiscal 2026. Company messaging repeatedly frames this as making baristas’ jobs easier, not as replacing them, and CEO Brian Niccol has publicly said the goal is to assist workers, not substitute them with robots.【2search0】【2search1】【2news13】
• Starbucks has also paused a broader hardware‑automation program (the Siren Craft system) and shifted toward a “people‑first” scheduling and staffing strategy, emphasizing better use of human labor rather than removing it.【1search5】
• McDonald’s is investing heavily in AI and connected equipment (drive‑through tools, predictive maintenance, manager dashboards) to improve speed and reduce stress on staff, but these are positioned as tools that support existing crews.【1search3】【1search4】 The company even ended a specific AI drive‑thru ordering trial with IBM after mixed results, while still exploring future AI solutions.【1search0】【1search1】

Net: automation and AI are expanding, but cashiers, cooks, and baristas remain central in these chains today. Because Jason’s claim is about what will happen over roughly 10 years and we are only ~10–15% into that period, it is too early to determine whether his strong version (“cashiers will be gone, the cooks will be gone, and eventually the baristas will be gone”) will ultimately prove right or wrong.