AI in drive-thrus—how McDonald's and others are trying to boost marketing and sales

Fast food restaurants have long relied on celebrities to promote their brands. But what if they borrowed celebrities' voices and put them to work in the drive-thru?

The concept is possible today through the artificial intelligence units now powering more fast food drive-thru lanes nationwide. Systems today can train any voice needing only a few lines, making it possible for restaurants to virtually greet and take orders from drive-in customers using the voice of a mascot or a celebrity (a similar practice has been used by bad actors running recent AI phone scams).

“It allows us to present a voice in any way we like after we’ve done some training. For example, you could have Christopher Walken come to a studio, say 20 lines into a microphone, then use those 20 lines to train on a menu of a brand. Then you do a promotion with Christopher Walken, where he could say ‘thanks for ordering the spicy chicken sandwich,’” explained Rajat Suri, CEO of Presto, a restaurant technology provider. “We think this is very powerful,” he added. “You see Taco Bell partnering with Pete Davidson. How much more powerful could it be if you heard his voice at the drive-thru?”

While celebrity-voiced drive-thrus hold promise, most chains are more immediately focused on using AI for more practical uses, as they battle wage inflation and a tight labor market. For instance, AI-powered automated order-taking technology can be used to upsell orders more reliably than humans, while making drive-thru lanes faster and the overall customer experience more “frictionless,” say advocates—even if the automated voice does not belong to a celebrity.

But not everyone’s on board. Some experts worry that AI systems can be costly, glitchy and unsettling—and could wear away at what little “hospitality” exists in a transaction between a driver and a menu board speaker.

Marketing potential

A Presto spokesperson said the company is in talks with multiple customers on a custom voice offering but declined to disclose names. Suri said the technology would transform a transactional experience into an entertaining one and encourage return visits.

“The potential for celebrity voices taking our guests’ order is a whole new opportunity to deliver a more fun, memorable, and certainly shareable experience,” said Tim Hackbardt, chief marketing officer of Del Taco, which has a small array of restaurants now utilizing Presto’s automated drive-thrus—none yet offering celebrity voices.

“The ideas and use cases create almost endless partnering possibilities including naturals like film and television premiere promotions, celebrity personal brands, celebrity wellness partnerships, animated character voices for kids’ meal programs,” Hackbardt added. “Maybe you could even have a choice of which celebrity you would like to take your order when you get to the speaker box? Batman or Joker? Kermit or Miss Piggy?”

But Brian Barthelt, managing director, Americas and global martech for The Marketing Store, urges restaurants to first be focused on order accuracy at the drive-thru or risk losing customers.  “[Quick service restaurant] customers are not loyal. Generally speaking, they typically have a decent-sized list of QSR [brands] that they like, and they spread their spend around. If you give someone a bad experience in the drive-thru, you may lose them for a little while. Two bad experiences, you may lose them for a long while.”

As for celebrity voices, restaurants will have to be certain they resonate with the wide group of demographics they serve and still be entertaining, Barthelt said. “That’s pretty tough. Done wrong, you’ll end up with the lowest common denominator, and it won't land.”

For now, the move to AI has been primarily driven by concerns over labor costs, said RJ Hottovy, head of analytic research for Placer.ai, a software firm that analyzes retail foot traffic.

“If you ask most restaurant operators now what the biggest issue facing them, labor cost and availability is the number one issue, along with keeping their workforces intact and reducing turnover,” Hottovy said. “Every time you bring on someone new it costs several thousand dollars to train them,” he added, noting that drive-thrus are one of many functions that restaurant operators see that can be automated that will free up employees to do other things.

Slow adaptation

The move to voice AI has been relatively slow as restaurants tackle other technology imperatives around delivery and digital ordering that came along with the pandemic. But just about every chain—including McDonald’s, Popeyes, Wendy’s and Taco Bell—is testing voice AI units, reports indicate. Similar technology is also revolutionizing orders at restaurants that get phone-in orders such as pizza shops—and big rollouts could be just a matter of time, some say.

“There are 200,000 restaurants in the U.S. and less than 1,000 are automated today,” said Suri of Presto. “We think within two years, tens of thousands will be automated. And in five years, it will be hard to find a single drive-thru that’s not automated.

“If you think of the fact that drive-thrus have been around for 70 years and they’ve barely changed, I don’t think two years of having tens of thousands of automated drive-thrus is slow,” Suri added. “That’s actually pretty fast.”

“2023 will be a year where AI will transition from being very novel concept to being an experience that a large number of customers will be very familiarized with, and that’s not to say there won’t be speed bumps,” added Ben Brown, VP of marketing for AI voice provider ConverseNow. “But when people realize the line is moving twice as fast as it normally does, and is half as long as it usually is, people will be very receptive to it.”

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McDonald's seeks speed

McDonald’s has long been focused on voice AI but is proceeding with caution, with systems now in around 100 of its stores. McDonald’s purchased the voice-based ordering system Apprente in 2019 and tested it at a handful of Chicago-area locations. Seeking to further develop and scale the offering, McDonald’s sold the system to IBM in 2021.

“McDonald’s development and testing of AOT [automated order taking] technology in restaurants has shown substantial benefits to customers and the restaurant crew experience,” the chain said in a statement. “Moving forward, IBM’s expertise in building customer care solutions with AI and natural language processing will help scale the AOT technology across markets and tackle integrations including additional languages, dialects, and menu variations.”

The drive-thru—from which McDonald’s generates approximately two-thirds of its sales in the U.S.—is among the areas McDonald’s intends to double down on as part of its Accelerating the Arches strategy. The company declined to answer additional questions about AOT, but pointed to another version of drive-thru automation coming to life in a newly opened restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas that delivers orders via robotic conveyor to a special order-ahead drive-thru lane, saving a pass between employees and customers. 

The Fort Worth store is in “test-and-learn” mode for now, McDonald’s stated. As for automated order taking, McDonald’s is seeking 95% order accuracy before a wider rollout, according to a report from Andrew Charles, an analyst following McDonald’s for TD Cowen. McDonald’s disclosed accuracy was about “80-plus” in early testing, meaning one in five orders required the help of a store employee. In Charles’ estimation, McDonald’s is looking at voice AI primarily with an eye on increasing the speed of its drive-thru lanes, allowing for more volume and higher sales. TD Cowen estimates voice AI could chop 10 seconds off every order, and when combined with suggestive selling, could lift sales by 11.4% per drive-thru hour.

Every second counts

Time is money in the drive-thru, and restaurant chains are trying a variety of ways to save it. Dutch Bros., the drive-thru coffee and beverage chain, invested in a digital payment app called Dutch Pass, which saves about four seconds per visit, CEO Jonathan Ricci said in a recent investor presentation. “I can run all [the] promotions I want to, but if I can … speed the line up, it gives us more opportunities to put more cars through, more people will come into line. We know that's the No. 1 reason why people don't come—the line is too long,” Ricci said.

Barthelt said he sees AI applications beyond voice ordering helping restaurant drive-thru speed. For instance, menus that people encounter in drive-thru lanes could be personalized to fit the tastes of the customer, using data from loyalty programs. 

One reason restaurants may want to move quickly on automation is the prospect of wage inflation through unionization or legislation such as California’s controversial FAST Act. The proposal, which would give an appointed council the ability to regulate wages and working conditions in the fast-food industry, awaits a statewide referendum vote in 2024. McDonald's USA President Joe Erlinger slammed the FAST Act in a recent blog post and warned businesses to be on the lookout for similar legislation in other states.

“If you think about it, it’s really hard for McDonald’s to hire people,” said Rob Thomas, senior VP of IBM Global Markets, speaking at the Credit Suisse Technology Conference in November. “Wages are going up dramatically. And so if you can actually do automated ordering that instead of having to hire four people, you can hire two people, that’s a great application of technology.”

For now, the largest rollout of automated drive-thrus in the industry belongs to Checkers and Rally’s, which outfitted all 260-plus of its company-owned restaurants with Presto’s solution. At least some franchisees selected another provider, Valyant AI.

Russ Romeo, chief marketing officer of Checkers and Rally’s, framed the move as one that was best for employees, who can find working the drive-thru to be a challenging role.

“It’s not the CMO or VP of marketing who have contact with the customer, it’s the team members, so anything we can do to alleviate what they’re going through can make a difference as to what your brand means to those customers,” he said.

Romeo said the accuracy of the system at owned restaurants was 96%. “Our drive-thru is fast-paced and demanding. If you’ve ever worked the drive-thru on certain days it is a challenge and so anything we can do to support that is key.”

AI fails

But not every AI transaction goes well. At some McDonald’s with double drive-thru lanes, customers have complained McDonald’s system “overhears” orders from the adjoining lane.

Others have captured the system being unable to understand orders. According to a survey by QSR, an industry trade journal, 45% of consumers said they dislike hearing an automated voice when ordering.

“Although AI is a sexy topic with a lot of hype, it still does not respond well to anomalies the way a human can,” said Robert Byrne, director of consumer and industry insights for Technomic, a restaurant consultancy. “So it works very well until it doesn’t, and those moments of failure can be very disruptive. It takes time for training data to capture enough anomalous information to minimize disruptions, but there is never a guarantee that it won’t encounter something new. Something as common as wind could distort a voice and cause it to go all ‘Johnny Five is alive,’ get confused and blow a circuit,” he said, referring to the 1986 robot movie “Short Circuit.”

Byrne is skeptical that voice AI can accomplish all it promises. “In essence, a low-trained, quiet-quitting employee is still probably less error-prone given the current circumstances,” he said. “That doesn’t mean [AI] won’t work someday, but today it is still in a development cycle that hasn’t [been] completed and may never be. … Tesla has always seemed to be about two weeks away from fully autonomous vehicles—and then they encounter an anomaly which ends badly.” 

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Upselling stuffed cheesy bread

But supporters of the technology say one advantage of AI is the ability to upsell customers, turning sandwiches into combo meals and small drinks into larger ones, for instance.

For Shane Graham, a Domino's franchisee based in Lexington, North Carolina with three restaurants, turning phone orders over to ConverseNow’s AI saved his workers—mostly part-time teenagers—from taking orders over the phone. It was an aspect of the job they had little interest in, nor performed particularly well at, according to Graham.

“The computer upsells, and it does it every time,” Graham said. “It doesn’t say ‘this customer doesn’t sound like they want a Stuffed Cheesy Bread or an ice-cold Coca-Cola.’ And instead of saying ‘ice-cold Coca-Cola,’ a 16-year-old says, ‘Do you want a Coke?’  There’s a difference. AI can ask whether a customer wants extra cheese on a pizza. A 16-year-old isn’t doing that effectively 100% of the time.”

Graham said the system has helped to “protect” his company’s bottom line. While average order values and profits have increased, higher costs for ingredients and supply chain woes have pressured profits. The system had no upfront costs, but Graham pays a per-order fee to ConverseNow.

Hackbardt of Del Taco said it is still too early to determine the effects of upselling in its automated drive-thru lanes but that it looked promising. “Our initial small tests certainly show significant upsell promise and a consistent upsell delivery well beyond the traditional order-taking method,” he said. “Most importantly, the AI allows our team to be super focused on preparing orders and making sure they are accurate and delivered quickly in the drive-thru which is the convenience and quality experience our guests desire.”

Tablets, not robots

Chick-fil-A is an exception to its fast-food counterparts exploring AI. Its “upstream ordering” utilizes employees with tablets to take orders and payments outside before cars get to the order box.

“If you want a case study in getting things right with the drive-thru, I would suggest looking no further than Chick-fil-A,” Byrne said. “The tech is there with the tablets, but the presence of a person is what makes all the difference, period. To me, the business case for people over tech to bolster the drive-thru is simple in this instance: all that company does is grow sales every year.”

Hottovy of Placer.ai said restaurants are still recovering from the whiplash of COVID’s effects on the drive-thru. New technologies will succeed where they can help make workers more productive, he predicted.

“Pre-pandemic, the industry was almost two-thirds [drive-thru] in the quick service restaurant space, then the pandemic hit and we went to almost 100% take out of drive-thru,” Hottovy said. “Now we’re in a situation where there’s been some return to normal but it’s at a higher level. That’s got a ripple effect, it’s changing how restaurants are designed and how they’re staffed. Satisfaction is still something that’s a work in progress. There are some that do drive-thru well: Raising Caine’s is one of them. Chick Fil-A and Portillo’s are others.

“At the end of the day, the more important thing is making sure this helps by bringing up labor to do other things and improve the customer experience,” Hottovy said. “I don’t know if customers will necessarily show up repeatedly to hear a celebrity take their order. What’s important is to make sure [technology] helps to streamline orders and get people through the line quickly.”