New York (CNN) 鈥� Over the past few years, restaurants from . They say it鈥檚 a way to ease the burden placed on overworked employees, and a solution to bogged down drive-thrus .
But customers 鈥� and workers 鈥� may not be thrilled with the technology.
of AI getting their orders wrong, and experts warn the noisy drive-thru is a challenging environment for the technology. And AI may swipe hours or even entire jobs away from fast-food workers.
But restaurants are forging ahead, buoyed by the promise of higher sales and faster drive-thrus, whether we like it or not.
A challenging environment
Some fast-food aficionados may not have noticed AI at their drive-thru lanes yet, but since about 2021 , where an AI rather than a person takes your order at the drive-thru,.
These efforts have ramped up recently, with two announcements in May. CKE Restaurants (owner of Hardee鈥檚 and Carl鈥檚 Jr.) said it will roll out AI ordering capability more broadly after a successful pilot. Soon after, Wendy鈥檚 said it had expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to include an AI ordering tool at the drive-thru. The chain is piloting the program in Columbus, Ohio this month.
Even the suppliers of the tech note the challenges of a fast-food application: 鈥淵ou may think driving by and speaking into a drive-thru is an easy problem for AI, but it鈥檚 actually one of the hardest,鈥� Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in reference to the collaboration.
Speech recognition technology 鈥渋s really challenging,鈥� said Christina McAllister, senior analyst at research agency Forrester, who studies the impact of using AI in call centers.
Accents can throw the system off, and 鈥渋t doesn鈥檛 perform particularly well in noisy areas,鈥� she noted. Shouting an order over a car full of kids arguing or friends laughing may confuse the technology and, in turn, annoy the customer.
鈥淥ne of the things that frustrates customers the most is having to repeat themselves when they shouldn鈥檛 have to,鈥� she said. Those customers may end up unleashing their anger at the next employee they see.
In real-world situations, reactions to AI drive-thrus are still mixed.
Out of ten orders placed by customers at an Indiana White Castle that uses AI in its drive-thru, three people asked to speak with a human employee, because of either an error or a desire to simply talk to a person,.
That said, AI inherently improves as it collects more data. The experience may improve after tools take more orders and learn to better recognize voices.
For companies, a hiccup-y start seems to be well worth the potential boost to sales.
Would you like fries with that?
One of the main benefits of using AI in the drive-thru is that it upsells relentlessly 鈥� leading customers to spend more, according to Presto Automation, an AI company that works with restaurants and has partnered with CKE.
Presto Voice 鈥渦psells in every order,鈥� interim CEO Krishna Gupta said during a May analyst call. 鈥淚t results in higher check sizes.鈥�
Customers, he reasoned, 鈥渨ant faster speed of service. They want better customer satisfaction and they want higher check sizes and they are getting it all with Presto Voice.鈥�
It鈥檚 hard to believe that customers want to spend more 鈥� but restaurant operators certainly want them to. On its website, Presto describes 鈥渢he perfect upsell鈥� as one that may be tailored to the weather, time of day, the order itself or the customer鈥檚 order history.
Some analysts are similarly bullish. 鈥淲e believe that AI voice recognition and digital only lanes could speed up the average drive through service time by at least 20-30%,鈥� analysts wrote in a Bernstein Research note published in March. 鈥淲e expect AI to augment the competitive advantages of restaurants with digital culture.鈥�
Short-staffed restaurants may see AI as a way to fill in the gaps. While restaurants and bars in recent months, employment in the leisure and hospitality sector in May compared to February 2020. Some .
Meanwhile, . The pandemic sent customers to drive-thrus in droves and some have kept the habit, .
At Wendy鈥檚, the 鈥渟lowest point in the whole drive-thru is that order station,鈥� CEO Todd Penegor said on an analyst call.
With the AI, Wendy鈥檚 is 鈥渢rying to make our lives a little bit better for our employees and a heck of a lot better for our customers,鈥� Penegor added. Instead of taking orders, he said, workers can focus on making food and sending it out more quickly.
The adoption of new technology could mean fewer jobs or part-time work for employees, said Yong Suk Lee, assistant professor of technology, economy and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame, where he focuses on AI鈥檚 impact on labor.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a labor-cutting exercise,鈥� he said, adding that from his perspective, 鈥渋t鈥檚 directly replacing workers.鈥�
Ultimately, customers may end up missing a human touch 鈥� even if it slows them down.
In a survey last year Chick-fil-A, along with Carl鈥檚 Jr., nabbed the top spot for satisfaction with service. Yet Chick-fil-A failed to make the top five for order accuracy, according to the 2022 annual drive-thru survey by Intouch Insight and QSR magazine that tracks drive-thru experiences at hundreds of locations across ten major chains.
How did the chicken chain manage to stay beloved despite the order screwups? With the help of a system it refers to as , in which employees walk down the line of cars to take orders with a tablet.
For now, it remains to be seen what customers actually want.
鈥淭here aren鈥檛 enough at-scale examples of voice AI in action, especially in this use case,鈥� to say that people would prefer AI to an employee, said McAllister.
By the time those examples exist, AI in drive-thrus may already be the norm.
The-CNN-Wire
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