Roboter können die britische Wirtschaft vor der alternden Bevölkerung retten

Entrepreneur Maurice Abboudi knows all too well that the cost of workers can make or break a business. His Japanese takeaway chain K10 has five sites across the City of London.

“We had 52 people working pre-Budget. We’ve now got 38. The costs of the National Insurance and business rates increases were over £160,000 for us and we’re a small business. So our profit for the year was absolutely decimated,” he says.

“We haven’t made anyone redundant. But anyone who’s left, we haven’t replaced. What we’ve done is install ordering kiosks, similar to the ones in McDonald’s. You go in and you order on the kiosk, so that saves people on the till.”

It’s a tale that will be familiar to many firms desperately looking for ways to manage the cost of Rachel Reeves’s maiden Budget last year, [which hit employers with a £25bn tax bill](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/31/employers-warn-crisis-rachel-reeves-national-insurance/).

Yet it is not just Labour driving bosses to embrace robotics. Britain’s greying future means employers must find ways to make do with fewer workers in a society with more pensioners and fewer working-age adults.

Abboudi’s shift to ordering kiosks and sophisticated pre-programmed ovens, as well as a decision to outsource vegetable chopping, means the five sites can keep churning out 400 to 500 orders each at lunchtime, despite cutting staff numbers by a quarter.

**Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/25/robots-save-britains-economy-ageing-population/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/25/robots-save-britains-economy-ageing-population/)