- Yum! Brands officially advertise partnership with NVIDIA
- 500 New Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and Habit Burger Locations get AI-Drive-Thrus at the end of 2025
- AI is expected to make fast food restaurants more efficient, but is that a good thing?
Last year, yum! Brands, the company behind Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, introduced AI to some drives through locations. Now the company is planning to roll AI ordering at 500 different restaurants later this year.
If you’ve already been to one of the more than 100 AI-run restaurants in 13 US states, you may have already ordered a crunchwrap Supreme by talking to AI. For the rest of us who have not yet experienced an AI server, your nearest Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC or Habit Burger may offer the service soon.
In a press release, Yum! Brands advertised the new AI Partnership with Nvidia, which will see artificial intelligence implemented in some of the company’s 61,000 restaurants across the globe. In fact, the company is “Nvidia’s first AI restaurant partner.”
“Yum! And Nvidia plans to transform the future of eating by unlocking scalable AI applications quickly, reliable and affordable.” But what exactly does that mean?
Well, restaurants selected for this AI Escape will receive voice-automated order-tag-IA agents, as the company says, will “promote drive-thru and call center operations with conversation AI.”
Elsewhere, the operating side of the restaurants will be improved by AI with Yum! To specify AI will help with analyzes to ensure better results.
Ai Drive-Thrus, yes please (under certain circumstances)
Now I love fast food as much as the next person. And in fact, I hate drift-thrus because I often get a sense of fear when I roll down my window to talk to someone over an intercom.
Will Replacing Drive-Thru employees with AI make the fast food experience better for me? I guess it depends on whether you think human understanding is better than artificial intelligence.
Personally, I’m all for more effective fast food restaurants as long as the use of AI does not replace human workers. If this partnership with Nvidia allows Yum! To dismiss thousands of employees, I fear the mass restaurant Exodus we are experiencing over the next few years.
As always, use AI to compliment and facilitate your employee’s job and you are on a winner. Use AI to replace people and it is the dangerous territory that gives the reason for the AI skeptics out there.
One thing with certainty if you hate AI, you might just have an epic fitness shack. For now, there is a chance that you will never order at your local KFC again.
