ConverseNow Acquires Valyant AI, Consolidating the Drive Towards Voice AI Drive-Thru Restaurant Technology

We see AI as a powerful tool to address waste in the restaurant industry, which is ultimately a drag on margins. Predictive AI could one day equip operators with demand forecasts, helping them adjust purchasing and inventory management to prevent over-ordering and spoilage. They may potentially also include decreasing the risk of enduring governmental fines (there are some local governments enforcing fines for not disposing of food waste properly) and lessening the environmental impact of wasted ingredients.

Are you an industry thought leader with a point of view on restaurant technology that you would like to share with our readers? If so, we invite you to review our editorial guidelines and submit your article for publishing consideration. Conceptualised by Zomato’s in-house creative team and brought to life by visionary directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, these ads feature Zomato’s brand ambassador Ranveer Singh, alongside the beloved Samantha Prabhu and cricketer Cheteshwar Pujara.

Business Technology Overview

CEO Kirk Tanner initially stated that the $20 million investment in these boards would allow for price adjustments based on demand, similar to Uber’s surge pricing model. This sparked concern among consumers and industry experts, who fear unpredictable price fluctuations for essential food items. Following the backlash, Wendy’s quickly clarified its position, stating that they have no intention of implementing surge pricing and will not raise prices during peak hours.

This granular level of detail allows for proactive identification of potential issues, such as spoilage or damage, enabling quicker intervention and reducing waste. Chipotle Mexican Grill is taking a significant step towards enhancing its supply chain transparency and efficiency with a minority investment in Lumachain, an AI-powered supply chain platform. The investment, made through Chipotle’s $100 million Cultivate Next venture fund, established in 2022 to support strategically aligned companies, highlights the company’s commitment to leveraging technology for operational improvement and growth.

Financial Services & Investing Overview

In the near term, both companies will continue to operate under their respective brands, ensuring continuity of service for existing clients. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. This approach allows both entities to leverage their combined resources and expertise while integrating their technologies. It seems that the anticipated wave of job losses due to generative AI has not yet materialized in the restaurant industry, as evidenced by McDonald’s recent decision to discontinue its AI order-taking technology. The fast-food giant announced that it is removing the AI system from over 100 drive-thrus, concluding a test period conducted in partnership with IBM. With this tool called Sous Chef [an AI chat assistant], we give them really easy insights on three, four or five things you should really consider or pay attention to, or change or factor in as you think about your operations.

• As McDonald’s continues to explore technological advancements, the company remains committed to finding scalable solutions that enhance both operational efficiency and the customer experience.
• AI is also a great tool to help restauranteurs develop content tailored to their business.
• “I got my first taste of Wendy’s and have been enjoying [it] ever since,” says Spessard, who joined Wendy’s in 2020 as vice president of restaurant technology and has served as chief information officer since February.
• While there are a host of compelling use cases for AI in the restaurant industry, many restaurant operators today are leveraging AI to transform back-of-house operations.

Chipotle Mexican Grill job applicants better get used to conversing with AI — their first interview could be with an artificial intellgence-powered system named “Ava Cado” rather than a human hiring manager. Earlier this year, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board increased its stake in Chipotle by 11.8%, bringing its total holdings to 2,955 shares valued at approximately $5.4 million, as reported in the SEC filing at the time. This move reflects a trend among institutional investors, with Norges Bank and Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC also making substantial investments, highlighting growing confidence in Chipotle’s future. When diving deeper into the demographics, again, we see the generational gap in AI acceptance, with 32 percent of respondents aged reporting “not liking the idea of it,” compared to 49 percent of those aged 45 and above.

Beyond Clicks & Conversions: Brands Using Novel Strategies For Holistic Engagement

Many AI voice agents I called asked me to wait as they were conjuring an answer, or simply remained statically silent before replying. They also exhibited nondeterministic behavior; as soon as a conversation veered off script—I changed my mind about a reservation or asked a relatively vague question—the AI assistants stumbled. “Our goal is to deliver access to expert level pairing and recommendation knowledge which usually requires years of experience to master,” said Aimee Arnold, CMO Brown Bacon AI. Roedding noted that Rewards Network, operating as a platform that connects restaurants and consumers, can and does use data to keep track of how frequently both sides of the equation are interacting with one another. Bryan Dean Engledow brings more than three decades of expertise in operations and corporate management within the restaurant and family entertainment industries.

In April, Joe Park, the technology chief at Yum Brands, the owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, told the Wall Street Journal that the group believes an “AI-first mentality works every step of the way”. Looks like a social experiment to test the public’s intuition on AI generated content. Jasmine sounds a little sad as she tells me that unfortunately, the San Francisco–based Vietnamese restaurant doesn’t have outdoor seating.

Van Overstraeten said Alain.AI was created initially to aid in the brand’s development in F&B by compiling historic and current recipes into a closed database, allowing the team to develop new recipes more efficiently. In the second phase, the brand plans to incorporate world trends in F&B into the database to create recipes that reflect global trends. In the third phase, the aim is to create digital twins of consumers, allowing Le Pain ChatGPT App Quotidien to ask them what they would like to eat and drink at the eateries. This latest initiative is part of a broader technology-focused strategy at Wendy’s, which has been actively exploring and implementing innovative solutions to enhance both the customer and employee experience. In a fully controlled digital environment like Beastro, food temperatures and usage are continuously monitored, ensuring consistent and safe preparation.

After being a customer, vendor, and consultant, he has a unique vantage point, which makes him a trusted partner when showing retailers how they can use Legion WFM to optimize labor efficiencies and empower frontline employees. To properly apply an AI strategy to labor compliance, restaurant managers and operators will require a thorough understanding of the various compliance pillars AI can assist, and how. This will give them an informed perspective on how the technology can best benefit their business. Instead, they should see it as an opportunity to start an important conversation about the employee experience. By leveraging compliance as a positive force – rather than simply another box to check – and coupling it with strong employee benefits, they can provide a better place to work. In these discussions, leaders should stress the importance of technology in making compliance easier and more directly intertwined with the employee experience.

Both companies have articulated a shared objective of making AI solutions more accessible to a wider range of restaurants, irrespective of size or existing technological infrastructure. This shared vision, coupled with their complementary technological capabilities, forms the basis for the acquisition. In terms of the front-of-house experience, you see opportunity for technology to create automation in workflows but also create personalization. Restaurants might do happy hour, but you could do more data-driven strategies to drive more demand. Momos was founded in 2021 by Alluri and Andrew Liu, alongside a team from Uber, Grab, Microsoft and Intuit.

From AI-driven chatbots to innovative platforms designed specifically for restaurants, technology continues to revolutionize the recruitment process. However, it’s essential to remember that AI is a tool – not a replacement – for restaurant managers and HR professionals. While this approach can streamlines certain aspects of hiring, human oversight ensures fairness, equity, and effectiveness in candidate selection.

Giving them the tools they need to succeed will minimize risk while maximizing productivity. AI is also helping restaurants to manage an increasingly multigenerational workforce. According to new research, over half of managers noticed changes in the ages of the hourly workers they’re hiring in the past year, whether they’re hiring more minors, more employees 65+, or both. Restaurants and bars face especially unique challenges in hiring minors, as child labor laws around the country are changing in response to shifting labor demands, and teen interest in jobs is rising. New policy developments may further restrict how long these young employees can work, and when – and the laws differ across jurisdictions. For example, a manager in a jurisdiction with a curfew for teens under 18 would need to account for that when scheduling employees, while a manager at the same franchise in a different city might not.

Given this, genAI is most likely to show up as a new feature in technology restaurant workers already use. Ideally, genAI will make it easier for employees to do their jobs by acting as a virtual assistant; in conversing with the assistant, employees can bypass complicated processes and get instant access to the information that will make them more productive. In all, an AI-powered WFM platform helps to keep compliance at the forefront by automatically accounting for and enforcing various compliance pillars across all teams and locations. Major US fast food giants including Chipotle, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut have rolled out AI-assisted systems in recent years. McDonald’s is scrapping a trial of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted ordering at select drive-through restaurants after videos of order mix-ups went viral online. For deploying the AI technologies, initial investments are significantly high, which seems difficult to come from smaller established restaurants.

Balancing Tech and Tradition

Restaurants are more than just places to work; they’re hubs of culture, camaraderie, and culinary excellence. It’s essential to convey this uniqueness in job ads and throughout the recruitment process. By subscribing to this newsletter, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Wendy’s is piloting an AI-powered drive-thru ordering system called Wendy’s FreshAI, developed in partnership with Google Cloud. This system aims to automate the ordering process, allowing employees to focus on other tasks and potentially improving order accuracy and speed. The success of this pilot will depend on the system’s ability to accurately understand customer orders, handle complex requests, and adapt to varying levels of ambient noise. QSCC, responsible for procuring and distributing supplies to over 6,400 Wendy’s restaurants in the United States and Canada, faces the complex challenge of managing a vast network of suppliers, distributors, and restaurants. The initiative, in partnership with Palantir Technologies, aims to address these complexities by creating a more integrated and data-driven supply chain ecosystem. The company’s Beastro was designed to use AI to create personalized dishes, thereby cutting labor costs and cutting food waste.

Instead of just handling transactions, these systems now play a crucial role in strategic decision-making and customer interaction. A significant change is the use of POS data to analyze and predict customer preferences, for example, allowing restaurants to offer personalized services. Additionally, the company assures that human employees will remain an integral part of the drive-thru experience, ready to assist if the AI encounters difficulties understanding an order.

It gets granular, which is precisely why restaurants need to support their labor experience gatekeepers with the proper technology – that way, they can achieve that granularity with minimal administrative headaches. The most efficient way to automate compliance is through an AI-driven WFM platform, which serves as the nexus for staffing, scheduling, payroll, and other ChatGPT key operations functions influenced by labor laws. Restaurants should adopt WFM technology with AI at the core to maximize the potential for automation. When we talk about the “restaurant of the future,” labor compliance isn’t exactly the flashiest or most exciting topic to include—certainly not when juxtaposed with salad-making robots and personalized digital menus.

Typical callers tend to be last-minute bookers, tourists and visitors, older people, and those who do their errands while driving. In the sea of AI voice assistants, hospitality phone agents haven’t been getting as much attention as consumer-based generative AI tools like Gemini Live and ChatGPT-4o. And yet, the niche is heating up, with multiple emerging startups vying for restaurant accounts across the US.

Large companies like Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Habit Burger Grill, have already integrated “AI-powered” future for its fast-food operations to enhance every aspect of its restaurant operations. Another use case is of IKEA deploying the AI tool restaurant chatbot developed by Winnow across its 23 stores in the UK and Ireland. Food waste is increasingly becoming a problem for restaurants, costly in both financial and environmental terms. First let us understand the challenges with the restaurants business with respect to food wastage.

The voice AI, known as “Bo-Linda” at Bojangles, is designed to streamline the drive-thru experience by automating order taking. The technology reportedly boasts a 95% accuracy rate, comparable to human employees, and aims to alleviate workload pressures on staff, allowing them to focus on food quality, order accuracy, and customer engagement. Momos’ rapid growth and investor confidence reflect the increasing demand for AI-powered customer engagement solutions in the restaurant industry. As restaurants seek to navigate the complexities of managing multiple locations and vast amounts of customer data, platforms like Momos offer a promising solution for enhancing efficiency, personalizing the guest experience, and driving business growth. Momos, which works with thousands of businesses, including Shake Shack, Baskin Robbins and Guzman y Gomez, is live in 10 countries. Its platform includes customer service, customer experience and marketing solutions that enable brands to drive insights and elevate customer experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, all while reducing costs.