Robot cooks were on Labor pick’s menu

When Andy Puzder, the likely Labor secretary pick of President-elect Donald Trump talks about replacing employees with robots, it is not an idle thought.

Puzder, the chief executive of the parent of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fastfood chains, held meetings this summer about replacing some of the cooks in the restaurants’ kitchens with robots, The Post has learned.

The robot plan was aimed at cutting costs when odds increased that Hillary Clinton would become the next president and a move to raise the national minimum wage would follow.

“We’ve discussed it,” Troi Wierdsma, of TWM Industries, which owns 180 Carl’s Jr. restaurants, all in California, told The Post.

“It was a very serious discussion when the federal minimum wage was going to be raised to $15 an hour,” she said of the idea to cut costs with robots.

Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restau- rants, parent of Carl’s and Hardee’s, since 2000, dropped the idea after Trump won the election.

“Now we are sleeping easier,” Wierdsma said.

In California, the minimum wage will be raised on Jan. 1 to $10.50 an hour, and then to $11 the following year.

“We’re OK with $10.50, we just can’t do $15,” Wierdsma said. “We can still function (at $10.50).”

Puzder was never going to replace the front of the restaurants with ro- bots, Wierdsma said, but the back of the store was a different matter.

Presently, she said non-managerial workers make between $8 and $10 an hour depending on the location. When California raises the minimum wage to $10.50, it will force her to just hire skilled workers (those with two to three years of experience) and fewer high-school kids, Wierdsma said.

Puzder did not returns calls for comment.