McDonald’s set the industry pace after acquiring the conversational AI startup Apprente in 2019 and partnering with IBM to refine the technology. The goal is straightforward: increase order accuracy and push higher-margin upsells without human intervention. By 2022, Checkers and Rally’s had integrated Presto’s chatbot across its corporate-owned drive-thrus, aiming to reallocate staff to more complex kitchen tasks.
Fast food chains bet on automated drive-thrus
A robotic voice taking your order is no longer a futuristic experiment but a standardized feature of the American fast-food landscape. Following McDonald’s initial 2021 Chicago pilot, major chains including Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Checkers and Rally’s are aggressively scaling voice-based AI to handle customer interactions at thousands of locations.
Wendy’s took a highly technical approach by collaborating with Google to build "FreshAI." This system was custom-trained on specific franchise jargon, successfully translating customer shorthand like "JBC" into "junior bacon cheeseburger." The company reported that the system finalized orders without human oversight 86 percent of the time during its initial trials in Columbus, Ohio. Taco Bell is now following this trajectory, with plans to deploy voice AI across hundreds of US restaurants by the end of 2024.
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