Fast-food giant Yum! Brands said it will begin rolling out AI at hundreds of its locations starting in April. Other fast-food chains have tried the new tech out with mixed results.
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Artificial Intelligence will soon take fast-food orders at 500 major chains including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.
Through a partnership with technology company Nvidia, fast-food giant Yum! Brands said it will begin rolling out AI at hundreds of its locations starting in April and continuing through June. That includes using the company’s voice-ordering tech, which will handle complex menu orders and navigate customer speech patterns, according to a news release this week.
“Looking ahead, Yum! is expanding AI to help team members manage complex tasks, including AI agents that plan, reason and act to assist across restaurants,” the parent company said in the release.
The rollout will incorporate more advanced AI capable of language models, emotional comprehension and personalized customer reactions, according to Yum! Brands.
Nvidia’s AI technology has already been used at select Taco Bell and Pizza Hut restaurants during “a successful pilot” stage, Yum! Brands said. The technology is expected to “optimize drive-thru efficiency and back-of-house labor management through real-time analytics and alerts.”
Wendy’s, McDonald’s have also used AI for drive-thru orders
Yum! Brands joins other fast-food companies, like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, that have experimented with AI at its locations.
During a Feb. 13 earnings call, Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said the company will deploy voice-enabled AI to take orders at up to 600 restaurants nationwide after executives “really liked” the results of the pilot program, which incorporated the technology at nearly 100 locations.
Tanner added that FreshAI “improves the customer experience and enables some labor efficiencies in our restaurants.”
Meanwhile, McDonald’s ended a pilot AI program last July after customers reported the tool got orders wrong. In 2021, the fast food giant partnered with IBM to test-run the AI ordering technology at over 100 locations, according to CNBC and Fox Business.
“While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly,” Smoot’s memo said, per CNBC. “After thoughtful review, McDonald’s has decided to end our current partnership with IBM on AOT … IBM remains a trusted partner and we will continue to utilize many of their other products across our system.”
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Contributing: Amaris Encinas and Jonathan Limehouse, USA TODAY
