Where AI may have failed?

McDonald’s ends IBM drive-thru voice order test

The fast food chain still sees a future for automated order taking at the drive-thru and expects to make a decision about the tech by year’s end.

Dive Brief:

• McDonald’s will sunset its automated order-taking partnership with IBM this year, the restaurant company confirmed Friday in a statement emailed to Restaurant Dive.
• The burger giant and IBM have worked together since 2021 on tests “using AI technology at restaurant drive-thrus to help improve growing demands on our restaurant teams,” McDonald’s said. Those tests were intended to determine the significance of any operational savings or speed of service improvements.
• While the IBM project is ending, McDonald’s said the test “has given us the confidence that a voice ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants’ future.”

Dive Insight:
McDonald’s said in the statement that it expects to “make an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.” McDonald’s did not clarify whether or not the test had been a success, or by what metrics it determined the performance of IBM’s voice ordering tools.
Restaurant Business reported Friday that the Golden Arches would shut the tech off no later than July 26, but McDonald’s declined to comment to Restaurant Dive on the timing of the shutdown. In 2022, analyst reports suggested the IBM tech was underperforming expectations.
Other major QSR chains have been testing and adding automated drive-thru voice ordering in recent years. Wendy’s, through a partnership with Google, developed a drive-thru AI platform called Wendy’s FreshAI, which it claims yielded a 22-second improvement in speed of service at a test location. Checkers and Rally’s, meanwhile, has deployed voice AI, including a Spanish speaking tool, at hundreds of its locations.
McDonald’s has remained tight-lipped about drive-thru AI on its recent earnings calls, though CEO Chris Kempczinski did say on the company’s Q4 2023 earnings call that “our biggest opportunity to advance and acquire new customers and build more meaningful customer relationships that result in greater frequency and spending is continuing to aggressively invest in digital and technology.” 
A large scale deployment of drive-thru voice AI tech at McDonald’s would mark the technology’s full maturity, and could speed up the adoption of the tech by other companies looking to remain competitive with McDonald’s.

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