More Taco Bell drive-thrus will get voice-activated AI. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.
Taco Bell plans to expand the use of voice-activated AI in the drive-thru to hundreds of restaurants around the country by the end of this year, parent company Yum Brands said on Wednesday.
Taco Bell has been working on the technology for the past two years, using a third-party vendor and Yum’s own in-house options. It currently has voice AI in more than 100 drive-thrus in 13 states.
That technology has taken hold in the fast-food business in recent years as higher labor costs have created profit headaches for a lot of operators.
Drive-thru AI takes on “mundane tasks,” enabling workers to devote more energy to customer experience. By adding voice-activated AI, workers have fewer tasks to perform during the day.
The company also says that drive-thru AI leads to better order accuracy, reduced wait times and a more “consistent, friendly experience.”
“It’s really about the team members,” Dane Mathews, chief digital and technology officer for Taco Bell, said in an interview. “The team member’s experience is difficult. It’s a really hard job. This technology makes their job easier at the end of the day, and might even add a little bit more fun to the experience.”
Yet it’s also one of the few technologies that could theoretically take the place of a person, and many franchisees and other operators hope AI can lead to restaurants operated with fewer workers.
Mathews, however, said the company is not seeing lower labor costs from the early tests.
“We’re actually seeing some of the real benefits in terms of the mundane tasks being taken away from our team members,” he said. “That’s actually proving to provide different longer-term benefits. For example, the ability to retain our team members longer, because they actually have a better experience.”
Taco Bell is the nation’s fourth-largest restaurant chain, with more than 7,400 locations and system sales of $15 billion. The expansion this year will take it further than any of the 10 largest chains when it comes to AI.
But many of them are working on it. Some smaller chains, like Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Krystal and Checkers and Rally’s, have adopted it in some fashion. But bigger chains like Wendy’s and Dunkin’ are testing the technology.
Those bigger chains have been more deliberate. McDonald’s, for instance, ended a years-long partnership with IBM on a drive-thru, voice-activated AI test and is removing that technology from the restaurants testing it, though it still believes in the technology generally.
The issue for the large chains is the size of the U.S. and the number of dialects and ordering habits, which can make the technology more complicated. “Voice AI is a tough piece of technology,” Mathews said.
As such, despite the expansion planned for this year, Taco Bell can’t quite put a date on when the chain, and Yum Brands overall, plans to add AI to drive-thrus around the world.
“It’s very, very new technology,” Mathews said. “You want to make sure it’s right. And we want to make sure we’re positioned for the long-term growth of the business. And at the end of the day, that’s about ensuring our team members can deliver a better experience.”
The Taco Bell test also gives parent Yum Brands the perfect testing ground. Taco Bell has a major drive-thru ecosystem with digital menu boards along with Yum’s point-of-sale system, called Poseidon.
The goal for the test is to get feedback from Taco Bell and its operators to ensure the technology works for the company and its customers, the company said.
In addition to Taco Bell U.S., Yum is testing drive-thru AI at five KFC restaurants in Australia.
“With over two years of fine-tuning and testing the drive-thru voice AI technology, we’re confident in its effectiveness in optimizing operations and enhancing customer satisfaction,” Lawrence Kim, chief innovation officer for Yum, said in a statement.
Maybe the most important question, however, is this: Is it accurate?
“It’s getting better,” Matthews said. “I would say it’s accurate enough to give us real confidence that this is going to deliver real benefits to the system. But we still have a ways to go.”
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Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants.
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