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DoorDash’s announcement Monday that it is building an AI voice bot to take phone orders was somewhat quiet, as these things go.
For one thing, the AI is still under development, and the company didn’t share when it plans to properly launch or even pilot the new technology. Right now, it doesn’t even seem to have a name.
The lack of concrete details might have muted the news a little. But for observers who have been tracking the adoption of AI voice in restaurants, the message was loud and clear: DoorDash wants to capture more restaurant orders, and it views voice technology as a way to do that.
That will start with phone lines. But it could very well be applied to other areas, including the drive-thru, the busiest channel in fast food.
Between restaurants’ labor problems and advances in the technology itself, the use of voice bots to take orders is catching on. I recently wrote about the handful of fast-food chains that are using AI to take drive-thru orders, and how the technology appears to be poised for wider adoption.
That said, there doesn’t appear to be a clear leader in the space. Presto Automation claims to be the most widely used in the drive-thru. But there are plenty of others dedicated to that channel as well as to phone lines. Meanwhile, tech giants like Google and IBM have voice AI products, too. And none of them are perfect: Accents, background noise and the vagaries of human speech have made accuracy an ongoing challenge.
Enter DoorDash into this picture and you have what could be a real disruptor. It has more capital and resources than most of its competitors. It already uses a good deal of AI and machine learning to run its app and its delivery network. And perhaps most importantly, DoorDash has connections to just about every big U.S. restaurant chain, which is where it is focusing its AI voice efforts.
This is all taking place in the context of what appears to be flagging demand for DoorDash’s core product, delivery. To be clear, the company continues to rack up impressive growth. In the second quarter, in fact, it set a new record for total transactions with 532 million. The asterisk there is that DoorDash now delivers more than just restaurant food. And if you listen to what many restaurants are saying, third-party delivery traffic is starting to slow down and even decline.
It’s hard to square those two things. But it’s simply a fact that DoorDash is looking for other ways to grow its business, and AI voice is one of them.
By its own estimation, automating the phones at big chains could be quite lucrative for DoorDash. The company says 1 in 5 customers prefer to order food by calling the restaurant, but about 50% of those calls go unanswered. DoorDash hopes it can collect more of them and earn a small commission on each one. The system will also likely push more orders toward its DoorDash Drive white-label delivery service, which also generates a fee for every delivery.
If you apply that same formula to the drive-thru, the numbers increase exponentially. At restaurants with drive-thrus, the lane can make up 80% of sales or more. Most of the biggest chains in the U.S. have drive-thrus. And others are looking to add them or develop drive-thru-only locations. Anyone aiming for a piece of the fast-food business would be wise to look there.
Now, DoorDash's AI voice announcement did not mention drive-thrus. But the leap from automated phones to automated squawk boxes does not seem all that far, and DoorDash tends to think big. It would make sense to dial in the technology on the phone first before thrusting it onto the front lines.
And regardless of what it ends up doing, the push into AI voice solidifies DoorDash as a force to be reckoned with on more than just delivery.