If you had asked me at the start of the year which chain I thought would help set the pace for the next decade of restaurant technology, I wouldn’t have guessed Checkers.
But I would have been wrong!
The 850-unit burger chain, which also operates Rally's restaurants, turned heads last week when it revealed that it was adding automated order-taking to its drive-thrus.
The technology from Presto uses artificial intelligence to understand human speech and process orders, freeing up workers to do other things. Checkers will add it to all 267 of its corporate restaurants this year, the largest rollout of its kind in restaurant history.
In doing so, Checkers is leap-frogging big competitors like McDonald’s and Burger King, which have been developing their own AI-powered drive-thrus. It’s also providing a glimpse into the future of fast food.
The drive-thru has long been fast-food’s main sales channel. In the second quarter of 2021, it accounted for nearly a third of all restaurant transactions, according to researcher NPD. But most drive-thrus are still relatively old school. They are labor-intensive, they can generate long lines, and most of the transactions are anonymous. In other words, they’re ripe for digitization, in the same way cashiers are being gradually replaced by online ordering and in-store kiosks.
During the pandemic, “QSR efforts to launch digital stalled because drive-thru was the hottest game in town,” said Noah Glass, CEO of software provider Olo, in an interview. “Now there’s an opportunity for QSR brands to keep that momentum and go digital the right way.”
That digitization will take a variety of forms. One is Checkers' strategy of automating order-taking. Another is Chipotle’s “Chipotlane” approach, which uses the drive-thru as a pickup-only lane for online orders. Still others are developing drive-thrus that integrate with loyalty programs, creating upsell opportunities and better data. Curbside pickup, a channel that originated in casual dining, is also becoming an option at fast-food chains.
The voice ordering approach is the most high-tech, and it will be fascinating to watch how it works at Checkers. The chain has been testing the system for 18 months, and it’s currently in nine locations. Employees now only have to intervene on about 2% of orders that the software can’t understand, said CEO Frances Allen at the ICR Conference last week. That gives the restaurants more flexibility amid the ongoing labor crunch.
Meanwhile, Presto is going public and plans to raise more than $200 million. CEO Rajat Suri told me recently that the company got lots of interest from restaurants after the announcement.
“Labor is a massive, hair-on-fire problem,” he said. “We want to apply capital to areas that really move the needle in major ways.”
Checkers is the first fast-food chain to stake its future to that technology, but it will be far from the last.