We have seen AI take the world by a storm already in the new year. It’s to no one’s surprise that we finally see the emergence of AI in the fast food industry. Most everybody has been to a fast food restaurant before in their lives and seen how understaffed and overworked the employees are at these establishments. I once waited in line at a Mcdonalds at 11 pm for 40 minutes just to learn it was cash only, not my best moment. Several of your favorite fast food chain restaurants such as Wingstop, Chipotle, and Taco Bell are utilizing AI bots to take customer orders, rely on robotic fry cooks, and add mobile-order express lanes.
For the people who have anxiety while ordering food, this may be the news you’ve heard in a while. Mcdonalds in partnership with Presto plans to install the AI-based voice assistant in 267 restaurants. As of right now, only corporate owned restaurants will have the new technology. Presto is an automation company overlaying next-gen solutions onto the physical world. They have enterprise-grade voice, vision, and touch technology to help hospitality businesses. Presto’s AI voice assistant automates speech recognition in restaurants and can be used in drive-thrus, kiosks, pay-at-table systems and other places. Presto has an accuracy of over 95% and improves labor productivity by as much as three times.
An early bird to the game, Chipotle began testing AI-powered voice assistants for phone orders in early 2018. Working to also innovate their kitchen, the chain began testing Chippy, a tortilla chip-making robot by Miso Robotics. Checkers & Rally’s, working in collaboration also with Presto, became one of the first large restaurant companies to implement widespread use of AI-powered voice assistants. Out of the total 803 Checkers and Rally’s restaurants, voice AI is live in 280 of them. The list goes on for these chain restaurants as they begin their journey to bringing AI into their workplace.
There are several pros to companies beginning to automate their system to AI based bots. Throwing it back a couple years, the start of the pandemic led many individuals to start going to drive-thrus to order their food instead. Customers who feared being exposed felt much more comfortable talking to humans that weren’t physically in front of them. Due to large labor shortages everywhere, the productivity rate and customer experience hasn’t been up to par in recent years. In order to fix these issues, restaurants have been turning to AI to replace the need for human labor, increase productivity, and reduce human error. I believe this is a step in the right direction and will make my experience as a customer at one of these establishments more enjoyable overall.
As with anything new, there are cons associated with changing the old ways we do something. Some of these may include high costs for the technology, barriers to hearing impaired individuals, language barriers and the percentage of error for the voice automation assistant. In our case, America is a very diverse country with individuals who speak several different languages and may have an accent that the voice automation assistant doesn’t recognize. As they are still testing the AI based technology, I believe they will create solutions to fix these such as different language options or an option to type their order.
We have read in each other’s post about different ways AI has begun to take over different industries to fix everyday problems. The common saying goes “modern problems require modern solutions” said by yours truly, Dave Chappelle. AI is seemingly becoming the solution to most industry issues. As the technology is still relatively new, it will be interesting to see the differences it will make in the coming years.
Sources:
Wingstop, McDonald’s, Chipotle Add Tech, Robots, AI to Speed up Orders (businessinsider.com)
Will Artificial Intelligence Be Taking Your Next Drive-Thru Order? (forbes.com)