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Yum! Brands, the parent of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, announced a partnership with NVIDIA that will enable AI agents to soon take drive-thru orders at 500 Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC locations.
At NVIDIA’s GTC conference, the chipmaker’s annual developer conference, Joe Park, chief digital and technology officer of Yum! Brands, said AI promises to improve order accuracy while ensuring consistent and positive interactions. According to the Los Angeles Times, Park said AI could improve the customer experience because “the voice AI is always positive, has the right tone of voice, has the right word selection, [and] can upsell consistently.”
AI also has the potential to reduce wait times. Park told Axios that AI can help count the number of cars and send alerts to staff. He said, “If our restaurant knows that there are four or five cars in line, they can then possibly suggest different items to customers that have a quicker turnaround time so that we could speed up the line."
A 2024 drive-thru study by Intouch Insight found that, on average, customers spend 5 minutes and 29 seconds completing their orders in a drive-thru. The research, which analyzed shoppers' experiences at fast-food drive-thrus, revealed that AI technology was used in just 4% of visits. However, those AI-assisted orders were completed 29 seconds faster than the overall average.
Digital sales last year represented over half of Yum! Brands’ sales in 2024, up from only 19% in 2019.
Other fast-food chains are ramping up experiments with conversational AI.
McDonald's, in partnership with Google, will introduce AI across all stores, aiming to improve order accuracy, staff efficiency, and customer satisfaction, according to The Wall Street Journal. McDonald's ended a pilot AI program last July after videos of drive-thru customers struggling to use the restaurant’s Automated Order Taker went viral online. Under Google’s setup, computer vision will use in-store cameras to verify the accuracy of orders before they reach the customer.
During a Feb. 13 earnings call, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the burger chain will deploy its voice-enabled AI — called FreshAI — to take orders at up to 600 restaurants nationwide after a test at nearly 100 locations. Tanner said that FreshAI "improves the customer experience and enables some labor efficiencies in our restaurants."
Todd Kelly, COO of Diversified Restaurant Group, one of Taco Bell’s largest franchise partners, told QSR Magazine last year that one of the biggest benefits of voice AI is delivering a consistent experience.
“The voice AI doesn’t have a bad day,” said Kelly. “They’re not in a bad mood when they come to work. They don’t get hungry. They don’t need a cigarette break or whatever. They keep plugging away.”
Similar to responses after Wendy’s announced plans to expand AI-voice usage, Yum! Brands’ announcement led to negative comments on social media about the loss of human jobs and impatience around having to engage with robots, according to USA Today.