When Heather Neary joined Taco John’s as CEO last March, the chain had already been testing voice AI in the drive-thru for a bit. And she was not so sure about it.
“I'm not gonna lie,” she said during an interview at the Restaurant Leadership Conference this week. “I was skeptical when I got here.”
Neary was not alone. A longtime Taco John’s franchisee wasn’t convinced a robot could handle taking drive-thru orders either. Unbeknownst to management, he went to one of the corporate locations that was testing the technology and tried to strump it. The bot, dubbed Olena after the chain’s famous Potato Oles, was unfazed.
“She rolled with the punches and kept going, and he was like, ‘Darn it. It worked,’” Neary said.
Like that franchisee, Neary has also been won over by Olena during her first year at the 350-unit fast-food taco chain.
“We've got it in one of our restaurants in Minneapolis, and I kept hearing all about it, so I actually went out and worked a shift one day because I wanted to see what it was like,” she said. “And I'll tell you, it made my job boring.”
In this case, boring is good. Olena, which is supplied by Presto Phoenix, can handle 92% to 94% of drive-thru orders on its own, Neary said, so all the CEO had to do was take payments. During her six-hour shift that day, Neary only had to step in two or three times to help the robot.
This has freed drive-thru employees to do other things, like make food or spend more time talking to customers at the window. They can ask if they need extra napkins or sauce packets, for instance, or just see how their day is going.
“For us, it is not so much about labor savings as it is about making sure that our crew members lives are as least complex as possible,” Neary said. Employees love it, and they treat Olena as a member of the team, she said.
But the ROI on the technology is not necessarily coming from labor. Instead, Taco John’s is looking at how the bot can improve speed of service and transactions per labor hour. “We're looking at a lot of different things related to how quickly we can get our drive-thru moving,” Neary said, though she declined to provide specific results.
Another benefit: Taco John’s is seeing better sales in locations using the bot, because Olena is a tireless salesperson.
“We are seeing a higher average check coming through the drive-thru, which is great, at those restaurants that have AI, because the voice is trained to always upsell,” Neary said. Human employees get the same training, of course, but they don’t always follow through.
There are some basic algorithms in place that generate those upsells. If the customer orders X, Olena will ask if they want to add Y, because customers tend to order those things together.
As for customers, they have generally been accepting of Olena. In fact, the voice is so realistic that many of them don’t even realize they are ordering from a robot, Neary said. But there are some who would rather order from a person, and when that happens, an employee will jump in.
“We're here to make our guests happy,” Neary said. “If they're not interested in talking to Olena, it's OK.”
The AI is currently in eight Taco John’s locations, and will come online in a couple more at the end of the month. Neary said she hopes to bring it chainwide eventually.
Meanwhile, Presto is working to make its AI even more dynamic and useful for Taco John’s and other customers, which include Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s and Wienerschnitzel.
“What I really want to be able to do is use voice biometrics or linguistic patterns to be able to effectively identify as much as I can about the customer right?” said Krishna Gupta, Presto co-founder and chairman. “The gender, maybe age, and be able to drive [upsells] based on that.”
The AI could also tie those demographics to what the customer ends up ordering, which would be useful information for the restaurant.
“A lot of brands have a tough time gathering data by, hey, what do men order, what do females order?” he said. “So there's a lot more that we can do on that intelligent upselling, intelligent sales side.”
For Presto, drive-thru AI is just one part of a longer-term vision. It also wants to integrate computer vision and robotics into a system that would enable fully automated restaurants. AI takes the orders, robots make the orders, and cameras ensure accuracy.
That vision will take years to play out, Gupta cautioned. But he said it feels more tangible than it did four years ago, when Presto first laid out plans to combine AI vision and voice. It later dropped its vision product to focus solely on the voice part.
But computer vision has come a long way since then. It now requires fewer cameras to operate, which has brought costs down.
On the robotics side, the big hurdle is the cost of the equipment and maintenance. “I think the cost curve will come down over five years from now,” Gupta said. “But I think that's very much tomorrow's technology.”
So, does Taco John’s see itself using more AI someday?
“I think we'll do it wherever it makes sense,” Neary said. “We're on the bleeding edge. We're at the very beginning of what it looks like, and I think there's a lot of different applications for it.”
She’s less sure about robotics. But she’s not ruling it out.
“I actually talked to some folks this week about some French fry machines and robotics,” she said. “While it's not gonna be tomorrow's project, it's definitely something that we're keeping our eye on.”
Cheyenne, Wyoming-based Taco John’s is one of a number of restaurant chains testing voice AI in the drive-thru. The technology has captured fast-food’s attention with its ability to streamline operations and boost sales. But it has also faced questions about order completion, the customer experience and whether it can operate without human help.
McDonald’s, for instance, abandoned an initial AI drive-thru test and has gone back to the drawing board.
But Taco John’s is a believer. “We've let it play out, and I'm excited about the direction we're heading,” Neary said.