How conversational artificial intelligence is becoming a quick-service gamechanger
By Sara Shaw • August 14, 2019
At Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard in Denver, customers entering the drive thru are greeted by Holly. Holly is an AI voice assistant taking drive-thru orders during the breakfast, lunch and dinner shifts all day. She processes orders without a break, never forgets to upsell and is the key reason why Good Times has seen check averages rise since hiring her earlier this year.
McDonald’s has been testing AI-powered menu boards and voice assistants in the drive thru for a few months and has seen throughput improvement and an increase in average check size. They are expanding the test from 700 to 8,000 restaurants in August.
“Every 10 second delay in the drive thru equates to a 1% loss in comp sales,” said said Sue Pittacora, former senior director of global business insights and analytics at McDonald’s.
Pittacora, gave Rob Carpenter, chief executive at Valyant AI, the Colorado-startup that created Holly, the idea to develop conversational AI at the drive-thru. He initially was developing it for kiosks.