Taco Bell has expanded its AI powered drive thru ordering system to nearly 900 restaurants across the United States.

Chris Walton is joined by Shelley Huff and Chris Niesen to discuss whether voice AI has finally reached mainstream adoption. They explore why Yum! Brands has taken a thoughtful approach to implementation and how AI could improve both the customer experience and restaurant operations.

▶️ Watch the full Fast Five episode here: https://youtu.be/-F7f2EFXG9k

Taco Bell is deepening its rollout of Omelia's Voice AI platform at Drive Thru locations now live at more than 890 US restaurants across 38 states, according to ChainStorage.

The platform uses proprietary small language models tuned tuned for the noisy, fast paced acoustics of the Drive Thru lane and adapts in real time to each location's menu, stock levels and limited time offers.

Taco Bell says the system can handle slang, humor, mid order changes and complex customizations without scripted menus or hallucination.

Or hallucination, I can't say hallucinations, hallucinations, thank you very much.

And it's integrated with Yum Brands proprietary Poseidon POS system and the Taco Bell Rewards loyalty program.

Taco Bell reports Drive through transaction times with Voice are on par with or faster than traditional order taking, higher employee retention at AI enabled locations and customer satisfaction complaint rates at parity or better than non AI stores.

Chris, Nissan, Shelley and I have talked about Voice AI ordering at the Drive Thru in the past with Dairy Queen's announcements and Taco Bell now says that it too is approaching 900 stores.

Is this proof that technology has crossed the chasm in QSR?

Or is nearly 900 out of tens of thousands of young locations still around the air?

That should encourage a wait and see approach from others.

What is your take?

I caught your earlier Dairy Queen conversation.

It was clear, Chris, that you had an awesome experience and I remember Shelly saying that it was the perfect application of AI and I'd have to say that's hard to argue with.

So onto your question about crossing the chasm.

We're not talking about nearly 900 stores across 38 states roughly two years later.

I read that as a methodical rollout, not a chasm crossing, and I actually mean that as a compliment.

As you read this press release, you know that there are things that are working well and there are other things that they're still trying to figure out.

They talk about faster than traditional order taking sometimes.

They don't say that this happens all the time.

They do talk about higher retention rate, they talk about things like that.

So you know that there's a foundation that they're building upon here, but they understand that there's things that they still need to improve.

So I understand that.

I look at this and I say they're working to make sure that they do this smartly, not as quickly as possible.

The thing that I'd want to focus on is what this actually means for the in store experience and why I think it's the right thing thing to do.

My experience has been drive thru orders often seem to take priority over that in store experience.

Even people coming in to pick up an order that they might have placed through the app seem to take a priority and it detracts from that in store experience, whether that be service, cleanliness, heck, maybe even a clean restroom.

Like, I think this is the right thing to do and the right approach to take to do it at the right pace and to make sure that you get it right.

Because their press release doesn't say that they're always delivering faster, they're always taking orders faster.

And so I think it's the right approach to move at the pace that they're doing.

It's going to be a win in the long run.

It's already proving to see some benefits.

But why not do it right when you do do it to your roll it out to your entire chain.

All right, you continue to surprise me on this podcast.

So you're saying not we haven't crossed the chasm yet, but you like the application and the use case for its deployment.

Okay, Shelly, I'm curious, like, have you refined your thinking since we last talked about this with Dairy Queen?

Because I got a whole host of nasty grabs on that last one about being a proponent of AI voice ordering at the drive thru.

Yes, it's a very emotional conversation.

I have not changed my mind.

I think it is like a perfect application for AI.

I think what's interesting about this, and this is what Chris just hit on, is with Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen, we were kind of surprised.

We were kind of like, wow, they're deploying AI like faster than a lot of other, you know, franchises or restaurants.

What Chris is bringing up is the main point here is that Yum just does things really well and when they do something, they do it really well and they're, they're measured about it and they hire great people and they have great performance and they know their customers really well.

So when they deploy something, it's very thoughtful.

They're worried about.

This isn't about technology, this is about customer experience, end to end.

And so I just think this is fantastic.

And I think actually they're going to leverage the technology and use the learnings to perfect this over time.

And so I think Chris's point is fantastic.

It's like this is a really great organization deploying technology in a really great way.

And I think that we're going to continue to learn a lot from, from them and from the technology.

Yes.

The word I pulled out from what Chris said was like, it's the pragmatic approach.

And it seems like it's a smart, pragmatic approach.

That's the word I'd use to, to encapsulate it all.

You know, the one thing I'd add here just in closing on this topic would be I actually cannot go to a drive thru that doesn't use this anymore.

I got to go to one recently.

I think it was Dave's hot chicken.

And the experience was so horrible because I can't, I don't know if it's just I'm getting old or what.

I can't hear what they're saying.

And so it's like, and I won't go, I won't use it again.

I force my kids to go into the restaurant, which is, you know, probably to Chris's point, somewhat probably a good thing, depending on how you want to look at it.

But it's more expensive to operate that in some ways too.

So.

So like for me, it's an innovation that can't come fast enough.

And the thing that I do love about it though too, and Shelly, you and I talked about this with the Dairy Queen story too, is they are actively talking about, and Chris, you mentioned as well, they're actively talking about how it makes employees jobs better because they're not having to deal with as many angry customers at the drive through.

Right.

And it's.

And that's important.

I think that's an important factor here that oftentimes gets over, that gets overlooked in these stories.

Although they're probably having to deal with people to get frustrated with the AI too.

So who knows?