Many QSR executives and franchise owners have been understandably reluctant to commit to a drive-thru AI Order solution. AI technology is still relatively new, after all. Questions such as “Can this solution scale?” and “Is AI technology  mature enough that we can trust it with our guest experience?”

Here’s the good news: Recent developments in the industry demonstrate clearly that the answer to both of these questions is yes. And if your restaurants would benefit from the automation at scale that a Voice AI solution can deliver, we believe this news could be relevant to you.

What 100 Million Yearly Orders Means for the Industry

Hi Auto and our QSR customers recently celebrated a new milestone: surpassing 100 million drive-thru orders per year, for the QSR owners and operators employing our Voice AI across nearly 1,000 stores worldwide.

The significance of this operation’s scale has industry-wide implications, we believe, because it demonstrates restaurants can now deploy AI Order Taking technology across their network while maintaining extremely high accuracy and completion rates at every location. Hi Auto’s Voice AI consistently handles our customers’ 100 million yearly orders with 93% completion and 96% accuracy.

If you’ve been interested in supporting your restaurants’ drive-thrus with Voice AI but worry that scaling up could undermine consistency, quality, or the guest experience, you now have real-world evidence that you don’t need to sacrifice any of those benefits for an organization-wide Voice AI implementation.

So, how did we do it? How have Hi Auto and our QSR customers reached a consistent 100 million yearly orders without suffering massive quality problems?

The Key Ingredient is Focus. Hi Auto is Purpose-Built for Drive-Thrus.

Unlike other Voice AI technologies, Hi Auto’s solution is specifically and exclusively trained for the drive-thru use case. That’s our company’s entire focus: to help QSR owners and operators improve efficiencies, increase check size, save money, grow their businesses, and consistently give their guests a world-class drive-thru experience.

So, are we delivering on those promises? Our new 100-million-yearly-order achievement wouldn’t have happened if our QSR customers were facing accuracy challenges similar to those experienced by the franchise owners in the McDonald’s test. What truly matters in an operation of such scale is whether the Voice AI Order Taker is contributing to these restaurants’ efficiencies, sales, and guest experience.

And to answer those questions, here’s what our customers have said about their experience with Hi Auto.

High Accuracy

“Hi Auto has been about 95% to 97% accurate with all of our orders, which is a great improvement for us.” — Mike Rosania, Rally’s franchise owner

“I’ve been extremely impressed with Hi Auto, how accurate it is in picking up even dialects and slang.” — Jason Amell, executive for Michigan’s largest Checkers & Rally’s franchise firm

“In my opinion, [Hi Auto] is a best-in-class product which just handles that order-taking process for the drive-thru consistently with very high accuracy metrics.” — Ryan Weaver, CEO of Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken

 Sales Increases

“We’ve seen a healthy increase in average check as well, because [BoLinda, Bojangles’ custom-branded Voice AI] is one of the best salespeople on the team with order taking or suggestive selling.” — Jose Armario, CEO of Bojangles

“With Hi Auto, they are 100% consistent. You will never miss a beat on the upselling.” — Alisha Burton, GM of Rally’s location

Labor Savings

“The technology pays for itself with the labor hours we are able to take out of our budget every week… and that’s before we even add in the sales lifts. — Ryan Weaver, CEO of Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken

“We’ve taken employees that were doing three tasks before, order taking, fulfilling, and cashiering, and taken 33% of the work of the tasks away, but probably 50% of the work.” — Richard Del Valle, CIO and COS at Bojangles.

Improving the Guest Experience

Of course, even if you can solve the accuracy and completion-rate challenges, you still need to know that your drive-thru AI Order Taker will deliver a positive guest experience that’s consistent with your brand. And here, again, Hi Auto’s solution has proven itself at scale.

Here’s how Jose Armario, CEO of Bojangles, describes the drive-thru experience he’s been able to create for guests after customizing Hi Auto’s Voice AI as BoLinda: “The beauty of this technology is that we haven’t missed a beat when it comes down to the ability for this technology to interact as friendly, as efficiently, as a human.”

Smooth Scaling

All of which brings us back to the scalability question. Hi Auto’s Voice AI solution gives our QSR customers so much confidence that the brand owners and executives have in every case rolled it out to more of their drive-thrus. That’s how we’ve reached 100 million yearly orders.

As Jose Armario himself said, “By the end of the year (2025), over 50% of all 850+ Bojangles locations will have our BoLinda AI system at the drive-thru, thanks to Hi Auto.”

No Y-Lanes: Partner with an AI Order Taker That Stays in its Lane

If you’ve begun researching Voice AI options for your restaurants, you’ve probably found many vendors in this space. And some of them have indeed developed smart AI technologies.

But there’s a reason Hi Auto is deployed at more locations around the world than any of our competitors. It’s the same reason we maintain the industry’s highest completion and accuracy rates. It’s also the same reason we’re the only AI Order Taker to reach 100 million orders per year. The answer is simple: We never leave the drive-thru and know it by heart, from speed, to guest service to labor. We focus on delivering our customers the highest quality product across every aspect of our service.

When you narrow your vendor search based on proven quality at scale, and you speak with actual customers, we’re confident you’ll find that Hi Auto is the best voice AI partner.

Or we could just skip that part and meet now.

Book a Consult

Let’s talk about your stores, operations, and the specific parameters and business objectives we can help you improve with Hi Auto, just like we’re doing for corporate QSRs and franchisees around the world.

The post What it Takes to Hit 100 Million Drive-Thru Orders Per Year, and Why it Matters for QSRs appeared first on Hi Auto.

It turns out, however, that drive-thru AI Order Takers can do more than merely automate the order taking process. There are many innovative marketing capabilities that can be built into an AI Order Taker. These features enable additional revenue streams and turn the drive-thru into its own marketing channel. Let’s look at some of these capabilities.

AI Upselling

AI solutions for drive-thrus offer QSR owners and operators many benefits: greater check sizes, larger transaction counts, reduced labor costs, and actionable insights. One of the ways they achieve this is through automated, built-in, always-on, algorithmic upselling. This upselling capability, it turns out, can achieve superior conversion rates to human team members. How is this possible?

First, AI-based upselling built into the conversational logic of an AI Order Taker is persistent; it is always on. Human team members actually miss a surprisingly high number of opportunities to upsell, varying with the specific QSR location, specific team member, and even conditions of a given shift. People get distracted, or sick, or busy. AI does not.

Atop AI’s persistence, AI Order Takers can include sophisticated, conditional logic that optimizes revenue through algorithmic consideration of multiple factors. Algorithmic upselling is contextual to the order, of course, but it can also be customized in accordance with specific location and daypart rules. A special promotion run locally featuring add-on items in a given town or at a given time can be offered, as appropriate, per promotional plans. 

AI Order Takers also know when to back off – literally. Ensuring maximal throughput of the drive-thru lane is critical during busy times, and there is little point in offering multiple upsells at multiple points during ordering if it means extending wait times for cars in line to the point that some customers decide not to queue up at all and instead drive to a competitor’s location. Drive-thru AI Order Takers can speed up the ordering process, too, using shorter sentences, and offering fewer opportunities for guests to pause to consider offers. During busy times, getting everyone processed quickly is critical both for guest satisfaction and for revenue optimization.

Brand Voice

“Voice” can be thought of to refer not just to audio-based data, but to the attributes of a brand. Every brand has their own brand voice. All the emotional associations and attributes of a QSR’s brand make up its voice. Sophisticated voice AI technologies in AI Order Takers offer the brands and franchise owners a chance to really leverage the best of their “voice” at the drive-thru lane.

First, the language that an AI Order Taker constructs – its word choice, rhythms, sentence structure, timing, delivery – can all be customized to conform to and extend the QSR’s brand. When a drive-thru guest speaks with an AI Order Taker, that guest doesn’t interact with the voice of a given team member, the guest interacts with the voice of the QSR brand, in a very literal sense. The specific words, phrases and sentences that an AI Order Taker generates in conversation with guests all sound very much like a part of the brand they represent. 

Cloned Voices

Beyond seeming to use the words and phrasing associated with a brand, some AI Order Takers offer a feature called Cloned Voices. Clones Voices allow a QSR to sample a particular, actual voice, and use that during Order Taking conversations at the drive-thru.

Combined with national celebrity spokespeople, this can be very powerful. Imagine having a famous actor or sports figure in a national campaign for a QSR brand, and, as part of that promotion, using that actor’s voice to take orders. Local celebrities also, in many cases, make terrific voices for the drive-thru. These cloned voices can be used perpetually, or rotated in and out seasonally in accordance with various promotional and marketing campaign phases.

Testing and Optimization

What upsell works better with burgers, french fries or onion rings? Or is it better to offer both options? Does this vary with the time of day, or location – or the type of burger?

AI Order Takers offer the ability to run A/B and multivariate testing at a very sophisticated and automated level. By offering different options and seeing which overall performs best, QSRs can learn what promotions and limited time offers work best. This is a capability even the best human teams couldn’t match. 

The Future of AI-Powered Drive-Thrus 

Drive-thru AI Order Takers do more than merely take orders in a more cost-effective way than human team members. They provide a new marketing channel for franchise owners and brands to drive revenue, build loyalty, and increase guest satisfaction. If you are considering AI Order Taker solutions for your drive-thru locations, we encourage you to download our Buyer’s Guide to help you frame what technologies, capabilities, and features to look out for. The Guide also offers an Evaluation Matrix that you can adapt to score various vendors’ offerings. 

You can download your Buyer’s Guide here.

The post The Marketing Power of Drive-Thru AI Order Takers appeared first on Hi Auto.

The reasons for this are as plain as its benefits. For QSR brands and franchise owners, AI Order Takers can improve throughput, increase average check size, and reduce labor costs. Team members working to service drive-thru lanes experience a reduction in stress and improved job satisfaction, since they can multitask less and focus more on getting the actual orders ready. This translates back to lower employee turnover and less hiring and train-up time – critical benefits given the realities of the labor market.

Most significantly, using AI to automate order taking at the drive-thru provides a number of key benefits for the guest. Ordering is easier – easier to understand what is being said, easier to be understood. Experiences become more consistent; driving through any lane of a franchisee’s or brand’s locations will yield not just the same voice but the same experience. With human workers, in addition to different voices and accents and levels of clarity, conversation flows themselves will vary. AI Order Takers can even offer opportunities to join a loyalty program. 

Buying the Right Solution

Okay, so you’re convinced! This is a good idea. How, though, to find the right solution? As with any emerging technology – especially one that will need to scale to tens and hundreds of locations in a complex enterprise – making the right choice is critical, and not necessarily obvious. Not to worry! We have your back!. 

Our Buyer’s Guide for QSRs leaders looking for an AI solution for their drive-thru details all the key features and technology attributes that should be considered. Features that benefit brands and franchise owners, managers and operators, as well as the team members themselves, are all detailed in the Buyer’s Guide. The Guide also includes an Evaluation Matrix at the end that can be used as a template for your research into solutions.

Let’s take a look at some of the key things a buyer should look for.

Technology: Enabling Natural Conversations in Noisy Drive-Thrus

The first consideration a buyer needs to look at is the strength of the underlying technology. Large language models have dramatically improved the ability for users to engage in natural, real-time conversations; solutions based on LLMs will benefit from the rapid evolution of the technology happening in that space. Applying that technology to the uniquely noisy environment of the drive-thru, however, is another matter entirely. The sound of a car idling while a driver talks through an open window at a microphone presents unique acoustic challenges for an AI Order Taker’s ability to process those words. Filtering signal from noise is critical here, and not something all systems do with equal ability.

Guests, moreover, don’t tend to speak at drive-thrus with the same clarity and precision they use when navigating the automated voice systems of a customer service call. It’s not uncommon for natural speech to be recursive, with guests repeating themselves several times, using different words in succession for the same item. Multiply this by 2 or 3 or more passengers in a car, all participating to varying degrees in the ordering process, and you can see how the environment really creates quite a challenge for an AI system. 

The Buyer’s Guide unpacks all this. It details why successful systems must achieve both a sufficient completion rate, and an appropriate threshold of accuracy, all while operating in this noisy milieu. 

Key Terms

#1 – Completion Rate – The percentage of orders sent to the POS without staff intervention. It shows how often the system completes an order from start to finish, independently. A high rate reduces labor reliance and unlocks the true value of automation.

An AI order taker must be able to complete at least 90% of orders without having to hand off to a human team member, or else it will fail to achieve sufficient returns.

#2 – Accuracy – The percentage of orders sent to the POS with every item and customization exactly right. It shows how reliably the system understands guest intent and prevents costly mistakes such as remakes, delays, and customer dissatisfaction.

Human operators typically run at about 95% accuracy, and AI Order Takers must meet or exceed this threshold.

Accuracy and Completion Rate at Scale

Maintaining the optimal level of both accuracy and completion rate is critical if an AI Order Taker is going to prove successful in meeting your aims for improved revenues and decreased costs. A fully automated system – one that uses AI exclusively, with no human supervision – may be less expensive, but will make (ultimately more costly) errors.

It is critical that buyers construct their investigation process in a way that ensures optimal accuracy and completion rate are achieved not just in pilots, but when scaled out, as well. As is true with performance metrics generally of complex systems, what a given solution can do at one scale versus 10x or 100x that size can be very different. Performance metrics advertised in vendor literature and even achieved in small pilots at one or two locations can appear adequate, but then degrade precipitously as locations are added. Achieving and sustaining both accuracy and completion rate across dozens and hundreds of locations, over time, is a major technical and operational hurdle for AI Order Taking. Vendors need to look closely at technologies, and proceed with their investigations critically.

The best approaches today are hybrid approaches, AI systems that leverage a small amount of human intervention. In such an approach, human assistance is summoned by the system automatically through the cloud, all invisible to the QSR and to the guest, in real time. This adds a bit of cost, but ultimately proves to have a higher return on investment, achieving the optimal balance of accuracy and completion rate.

The wisdom of this approach can be seen from an independent 2025 study done by Intouch Insights, who sent 120 secret shoppers to three different national QSR brands deploying conversational voice AI solutions at over 100 different drive-thru locations. InTouch found that at Wendy’s and Taco Bell, which both used entirely automated AI solutions, completion rates were only 67% and 70%, respectively. Bojangles, contrarily, using a hybrid solution, achieved a 97% completion rate.

Source: Intouch Insights, 2025 (pages 5-17)

Understanding these key metrics and how various vendors and technologies achieve them is critical in any evaluation of AI Order Taker solutions. 

Enterprise-Grade Capabilities

There are other key attributes a buyer of drive-thru AI Order Taking solutions should consider when looking at different vendors’ technologies, and the Buyer’s Guide covers these as well. 

Franchise Support. Large franchises often require per-location customization capabilities, and a truly enterprise-ready AI Order Taker will enable this. The ability to customize menu options or price by time of day or location, for example, is critical to large franchises. Custom prompts, flexible event support, automated onboarding processes: these are some of the features that separate truly robust systems.

Integration and Compatibility. Support for a QSR’s technology stack is key. An AI Order Taker has to work with many existing installed solutions, including POS systems, Order Confirmation Boards (OCBs), Digital Menu Boards (DMBs), and various QSR audio systems. An enterprise-grade solution must be able to integrate with all installed technologies.

Data. An AI Order Taker must provide a wide array of data features, including dashboards with different views, access control, conditional alerts, and the provision of aggregate insights in a cogent manner.

Other Vendors Considerations

Beyond the technology, its scalability, and the feature set of a solution, a prospective buyer of an AI Order Taker should look closely at the track record and credibility of the vendors behind those solutions. Are they dedicated to this industry, with deep expertise not just in the technology but in the operations of AI Order taking at drive-thrus? Who are their customers, and what do those customers say about the vendor? Do they work with a QSR’s existing technology stack? What is their vision for the future of their product? Do they offer planning, integration, and ongoing support? 

Your drive-thru AI vendor partner will literally function as your voice, at the interface with your customer. Make sure this is a company you will want to work closely with, one with an excellent track record of success getting QSRs up and running.

Drive-Thru AI Order Takers: How to Evaluate Them

Drive-Thru AI Order Taking solutions offer great promise for QSR brands, franchise owners, and operators. Beyond the technology, its scalability, and its feature set – today and in the vendor’s roadmap – is the vendor themselves. Are they the right partner for you? 

QSRs have a huge array of systems and processes that can be automated, and many solutions from many vendors with which to achieve this. But some systems are even more critical than others. If a piece of software powering a machine that makes apple pies goes down, you can’t sell apple pies until it is fixed. But AI Order Takers work right at the interface with the guest, car after car, order after order. They aren’t just used by your business, but are, in a very real sense, the voice of your business. Whether a guest drives away delighted or annoyed rides entirely on the performance of your AI Order Taker. 

We hope our Buyer’s Guide will help you understand the technologies, enterprise capabilities, and features critical to a successful deployment at scale. You can download our Guide here.

The post Drive-Thru AI Order Takers: Introducing Hi Auto’s Buyer’s Guide for QSRs appeared first on Hi Auto.

Machine, or Friendly Team Member?

There’s no doubt: efficiency and accuracy are essential to success in AI Order Taking at the drive thru. One reason Hi Auto has become the global leader in this space, with our solution operating in nearly 1,000 stores, is that we’ve designed (and continually refine and improve) the industry’s best purpose-built AI for drive-thru ordering. Our QSR partners consistently enjoy more than 93% order completion and 96% accuracy using our solution. 

But if their guests felt like they were communicating with a machine at the drive thru—the voice equivalent of typing in their order at an automated kiosk—those QSR restaurants would be missing a massive opportunity to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

When an AI Order Taker can successfully assume the voice of a restaurant, a few special things happen all at once. Guests hear warmth, friendliness, and the familiar language of the restaurant they know and love. They feel as though they’re not just yelling orders into a software application—they’re speaking to a member of the team. This gives employees some breathing room to focus on food and hospitality. And best of all, every drive-thru interaction captures and reinforces the brand’s unique personality.

In our rigorous rebranding discussions, we determined that it’s these win-win interactions for our QSR partners and their drive-thru guests—made possible thanks to our purpose-built AI Order Taker—that set Hi Auto apart as the world leader in this space.

A Rebrand with Purpose

While most company rebrands amount to little more than a change in aesthetics (Look! We have a cool new logo!), Hi Auto conducted a companywide strategic process to make sure every element of our brand story (including our newly redesigned website) reflects the company Hi Auto has become. We wanted to challenge ourselves and be certain that everyone on the team could clearly articulate what unique attributes we bring to this industry and why QSRs all over the world are increasingly turning to our AI Order Taker.

As CMO Maya Dror Melamed says, “This wasn’t an aesthetic touch-up; it was about aligning our brand identity with our business and product strategy. We began with a deep positioning effort to define the core of who we are, what we do best, and why it matters. That strategy shaped a brand and website that speak with clarity, purpose, and warmth, built to earn trust and drive adoption.”

Long story short: Hi Auto is winning with clarity, friendliness, and accessibility. And those values, which we hope our new brand identity clearly captures, are true for both our drive-thru order-taking solution and our team of very responsive human beings.

Introducing Auto: an AI Creating Very Human Experiences

That’s why the star of Hi Auto’s new brand identity is “Auto,” a friendly mascot who embodies the intelligence and consistency of Hi Auto’s technology as well as the warmth, comfort, and approachability of our QSR partners’ own brands. As our CEO Roy Baharav says, “Trust, friendliness, and ease-of-use are just as essential [as order efficiency and accuracy]. That’s why we built Auto, not just a voice assistant, but the voice of the brand at the drive-thru.”

Auto, the cute little headset-wearing fellow you see here along with a couple of his helpful friends, is designed to be as friendly and accessible for our QSR franchisees and corporate partners as he is for their guests as they place orders at the drive thru.

One of the keys to Hi Auto’s brand is our insistence on the fact that while our solution is incredibly sophisticated and technical, using it doesn’t need to feel like a complicated science project.

For our QSR partners—including restaurant chains like Bojangles, Popeyes, and Burger King—the team at Hi Auto has worked hard to make sure that both the implementation and the day-to-day operation of our drive-thru order taking are straightforward and intuitive experiences.

So it seems fitting that when our corporate customers think of Hi Auto, they envision our fun, friendly mascot—not a tangle of computer cables and a zillion lines of software code.

Want to Learn More (or Just Meet Auto)?

Contact us to talk about your stores, operations, and the specific parameters and business objectives we can help you improve with Hi Auto, just like we’re doing for corporate QSRs and franchisees around the world.

The post Hi Auto’s Rebrand: Infusing Automation with Warmth and Charm appeared first on Hi Auto.

If English is a second language for a sizable percentage of your restaurant’s local population, this potential barrier could be costing you money every day. It could also leave some of your guests feeling frustrated and alienated rather than giving them the friendly and welcoming experience your team works so hard to cultivate.

Even if your employees learn a few key phrases in Spanish to help them better communicate with your Spanish-speaking guests, they could still have trouble understanding those guests if they use any of a zillion variations of the sentence above to place their order, such as:

• Could I have the 8-piece, the dinner, and a large diet soda?

• Let me get the order of thighs and legs, I think it’s the 8-piece option, right?

• Yeah, I’d like the chicken meal, 8 pieces, plus a diet, the biggest cup you’ve got.

Speaking Every Guest’s Language, with Hi Auto

One QSR executive who understands this challenge as well as anyone is José Armario, CEO of Bojangles, who is originally from Cuba. Heading a restaurant chain with almost a thousand locations across America, José knows that many of the millions of guests his restaurants serve each year are, like him, Spanish speakers who feel more comfortable conversing in their native language.

That’s why Bojangles has taken a bold new step with its longtime AI partner Hi Auto, rolling out a Spanish-speaking version of the restaurant’s AI Order Taker.

Now Bojangles’ guests can choose to communicate in either English or Spanish at more than 400 locations of the restaurants’ drive-thrus. And because Hi Auto’s AI has been trained so extensively, on so many millions of data points, the solution can handle even highly complex multilingual interactions with confidence, accuracy, and grace,improving the guest experience while freeing up staff to focus on providing the restaurant’s famous Southern hospitality.

As Business Insider describes Bojangles’ new multi-language order taking services, “This marks one of the first major bilingual AI rollouts by a US quick-service restaurant, setting a new precedent for inclusive automation at scale.”

An Industry First that Builds on Previous Innovations

In fact, the other bilingual AI Order Taking pioneer the article above is referring to is Checkers & Rally’s, also a Hi Auto partner. As a 2023 article in Business Insider explained, Checkers & Rally’s rolled out Hi Auto’s Spanish-language AI Order Taker that year at hundreds of its drive-thrus across the United States. The article noted that this was the first-ever implementation of a Spanish-language AI for drive-thru order taking.

This new deployment secures Bojangles’ place as an innovator in the industry as well, as one of the first major QSR chains to make AI Order Taking available in multiple languages.

Implementation Friction? None. Nada.

It’s worth noting that while this new Spanish-language AI Order Taking capability represents a major companywide upgrade to Bojangles’ service and its guest experience, the implementation itself required no new hardware and only minimal operational adjustments.

As Bojangles CIO Richard Del Valle explained, the results have been so positive for both guests and staff that they’ve surpassed his hopes for the initiative. “To me, the biggest thing, or the biggest surprise, has been the improvement of the employee experience. If we can find ways to make their lives easier, which will then translate to a superior guest experience, that’s a home run for us.”

Bojangles CEO José Armario has been equally thrilled with the outcome of his company’s Spanish-language AI Order Taker. In this short video, you can watch him (in Spanish, with English subtitles) proudly describe how this industry-first solution is improving his restaurants’ experiences for both employees and guests.

Vamos a Encontrarnos (Let’s Meet)

Contact us to talk about your stores, business objectives, or even your needs for a multilingual AI Order Taker. Our team will be happy to work with you to determine how we can help you improve with Hi Auto, just like we’re doing for QSR chains such as Bojangles and Checkers & Rally’s, as well as franchisees around the world.

The post “Bienvenidos a Bojangles,” Says the Restaurant’s New AI Order Taker appeared first on Hi Auto.

Watch the story >

A Lighthearted Story, with a Real Insight

At Hi Auto, we build AI Order Taker to make drive-thru ordering faster and smoother, and drive better guest experiences. Along the way, we noticed something unexpected: sometimes, customers get a little playful with the AI.
Some of our favorites:
“Are you single?”
“You sound cute.”
“Can I get your number, miss computer?”

The team at FOX reached out to learn more, and our CEO Roy Baharav, joined the segment to share some perspective on why this is happening and what it says about the future of human-AI interaction.

What We’ve Seen and Shared

In the FOX News interview, Roy discussed how Hi Auto’s AI Order Taking system is designed with tone in mind, not to imitate humans, but to feel calm, clear, and conversational. That subtle design choice seems to be making people more relaxed, and occasionally more personal than expected.

Roy noted that these interactions underscore an important insight: the tone and phrasing of the AI Order Taker play a powerful role in how people engage, shaping experiences that feel more natural, personal, and even enjoyable.

Hi Auto’s AI Order Taker is live in hundreds of drive-thru lanes, handling millions of orders per month. These conversations, while sometimes humorous, are helping us understand what builds trust and comfort in automated customer experiences.

Why It Matters

In fast food, speed and accuracy are non-negotiable. That’s why an AI Order Taker must deliver consistent, efficient performance while freeing up staff to focus on hospitality. But there’s more to great service than just getting the order right. Tone matters. When the AI sounds calm, clear, and conversational, people don’t just interact with it, they connect.

What It Reveals About the Future of Human-AI Interaction

The unexpected flirtation isn’t just funny, it’s revealing. It shows that when AI communicates in a way that feels natural, people feel at ease and engage more openly. That’s a powerful signal for the future of automation. Emotional tone, when paired with precision and performance, becomes a force multiplier.
When the AI delivers higher accuracy than human staff, knows exactly when and how to upsell, and provides a consistent guest experience across every location, it stops being just a tool, it becomes a strategic asset. A voice that earns trust doesn’t just improve service, it drives repeat visits, lifts check size, and turns the drive-thru into a branded moment QSRs can count on.

Want to know more?

Contact us to talk about your stores, operations, and the specific parameters and business objectives we can help you improve with Hi Auto, just like we’re doing for corporate QSRs and franchisees around the world.

The post FOX News Covers a Surprisingly Human Twist at the Drive-Thru appeared first on Hi Auto.

Innovation is now taking over other areas of modern restaurants. The pandemic forced the food service industry to adopt digital transformation, from touchless payments to digital menus and online delivery, in order to maintain the golden trio of service: Speed, consistency, and accuracy. 

As the digital transformation trend continues, the industry spotlight turns away from delivery and toward the drive-thru.

The Changing Landscape of QSRs

Customers like to move with the times, for better and, sometimes, for worse. Global growth will decelerate from 3% this year to 2.9% in 2024, and it might pull customer spending down with it – 45% of adults say they’re eating out less at fast food restaurants in light of macroeconomic turmoil. 

However, despite financial pressures, 84% of consumers say going out to a restaurant with family and friends is a better use of their leisure time than cooking and cleaning up, and 65% of Americans still consume fast food at least once a week. 

Food spending is expected to rebound through 2024 and into 2025 as the country moves into a recovery phase following a mild recession. Across the pond in Europe, consumer spending in the food service industry has already returned to pre-COVID levels. 

The data shows that, no matter what’s going on with the economy, customers still want to get their hands on delicious fast food. They are just more price-conscious and have higher expectations, so the pressure is on QSRs to make every visit worth diners’ time and money.

The Drive-Thru Resurgence

As the drive-thru rapidly rose in popularity throughout the pandemic at a rate of 30%, the lanes now account for over two-thirds of all fast food purchases and up to 70% of QSRs’ revenue.

The drive-thru has taken on a strategic role over the last few years, helping QSRs navigate the challenges of touchless ordering and in-store restrictions. 

For a short time, the drive-thru was a necessity for customers and QSRs, and it has endured as a preference for customers. In fact, 40% choose the drive-thru every time they visit a fast food restaurant.

Busier lanes put more strain on QSRs – some of which are still working with a skeleton crew following years of intense labor shortages in the food service industry. According to the National Restaurant Association, the industry is still short of 500,000 jobs. But with labor costs hovering around a huge 30% and the California Minimum Wage Bill on the horizon, how can you keep up? The big trend of 2024 has the answer. 

The Biggest QSR Trend for 2024

AI-powered drive-thrus are set to dominate the QSR industry as the number one trend in 2024. 58% of restaurant operators say using tech and automation to alleviate labor shortages will become more common, according to the 2023 State of the Restaurant Industry report by the National Restaurant Association.

Leading brands like Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe and Checkers and Rally’s have already scaled voice AI technology by Auto, with the latter rolling out the tech successfully in 350 stores. 

According to the 2023 QSR© Drive-Thru Report, ‘speed and technology, unsurprisingly, form a symbiotic relationship’ and ‘brands that seamlessly connect their drive-thrus with digital technology […] have an edge.’ Here’s why.

Consistency and Accuracy 

In the 2023 QSR© Drive-Thru Report, accuracy dropped as low as 88% in some establishments. A common misconception is that voice AI can’t handle the heat of a busy drive-thru environment. In reality, the opposite is true. 

Some voice AI, like Hi Auto, can process mid-sentence changes, handle multiple requests, understand accents, provide Spanish language support, and digest forty complex menus. Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe has enjoyed a 94% accuracy rate using Hi Auto – even higher than the accuracy rate of human servers.

The beauty of Hi Auto is that it is friendly, clear, and consistent 100% of the time, 24/7 – and faster than 75% of employees.

Speed

Speed plays a significant role in customer satisfaction rates and repeat business. 47% of people say speed is the biggest reason why they choose the drive-thru, and the reasons for slow speed of service (e.g., staffing shortages, increased workloads, and a lack of technology integration) can be solved with AI. 

Voice AI never needs a break, which is why it is an invaluable tool at the drive-thru – after all, every second counts. Reducing the drive-thru wait time by five seconds in one location can lead to over $8,200 in gains per year (based on the average meal price of $10.35).

Other Trends to Be Aware of in 2024

1. Wage Hikes and the Labor Shortage Loop

While the California Minimum Wage bill might not seem like a ‘trend,’ it will undoubtedly influence your business model in 2024. Investing in automation helps you identify where you can save on labor costs, allowing you to reduce your headcount and delegate a higher workload to never-tired tech at the drive-thru.

2. Omnichannel Experiences

It’s no longer just option A (eat in) or option B (take out). Technology innovations provide quick-service restaurants with various options for ordering, pickup, and drive-thru, which will be a major win for QSRs in 2024. 

In the 2023 QSR© Drive-Thru Report, QSR Magazine noted that by providing choices in how guests interact with brands, QSRs can meet customer needs across various channels, whether it’s through the app, drive-thru, kiosks, curbside, third-party delivery, or dining-in. 

3. Personalized Marketing

The rise of app-based and online ordering presents opportunities for capturing customer data, which you can use to offer customized and personalized marketing experiences. The Starbucks app is a great example – it allows users to save their custom orders for fast and easy re-ordering, and users can enjoy extra loyalty points and perks.

2024: The Year of Digital Transformation

AI technology is just the tip of the iceberg for the drive-thru of the future. Huge brands like McDonald’s and Taco Bell already use it as a competitive advantage. 

Hi Auto is the leader in conversational AI, with the technology used in more QSRs than any other company. Hi Auto offers 94% accuracy to automate your process and eliminate labor shortages, offering a seamless experience to every customer. 

Contact us to give Hi Auto a try.

The post Drive-thru to Delivery: The Biggest QSR Trends for 2024 appeared first on Hi Auto.

The power and possibilities of AI have extended to several sectors and have become second nature to many. 

With the food service industry still facing long-term labor shortages, with just one job seeker for every two open positions, can AI provide a new hope to lift QSRs out of this ongoing tight squeeze?

What is restaurant AI?

Restaurant AI is Artificial Intelligence technology that enhances operational efficiency and customer service in your QSR. It involves improving existing processes using AI-powered technology, such as order-taking and burger flipping. 

Restaurant AI is already commonplace in some of the world’s most famous QSRs:

Checkers and Rally’s

Checkers and Rally’s is collaborating with Hi Auto to deploy conversational AI technology in over 350 restaurants across the US. The two companies recently expanded the partnership to include Spanish-speaking technology, helping Checkers and Rally best serve all customers. The Hi Auto solution shows consistent results at over 96% accuracy. 

Wendy’s

Through its partnership with Google, Wendy’s has developed its own AI chatbot to take orders at the drive-thru. Dubbed ‘FreshAI,’ the AI technology will take orders with the support of a human employee. The solution is currently live at 4 stores and sometimes achieves 90% accuracy levels.  

McDonald’s 

McD Tech Labs was acquired by IBM in 2021. Since then, McDonald’s has dipped its toe into AI technology. It trialed voice AI at ten restaurants in Chicago, but there’s a long road ahead before deployment can happen across all 14,000 of its restaurants. 

Domino’s

Domino’s has joined forces with Microsoft to build smarter stores through the use of AI. The pizza chain will turn to Azure OpenAI technology to help its employees streamline the processes of pizza ordering, delivery, and food preparation. 

What are the benefits of using restaurant AI?

Here are some of the top benefits of using restaurant AI.

• Data-driven decisions: Rather than thinking with your head or your heart, use data analytics to guide you with the best decision-making. 
• Less pressure on employees: The ongoing labor shortage puts your existing staff under pressure, while technology can pick up the slack.  
• Reduced human error: AI helps you avoid human error that wastes time and money caused by wrong orders or incorrectly prepared items.
• Operational efficiency: One investment in AI technology can return thousands of hours of fast, efficient, and consistent work. 
• Speed and convenience: No one wants to get in the way of a hungry diner and their food. 42% of diners say that speed of service is the most critical aspect of a QSR, and solutions like voice AI help you maintain fast and efficient operations. 

9 Ways Restaurants are Leveraging AI

1. Fraud Detection and Security

It’s easy for fraud and theft to fly under the radar, but it’s a more common problem than you might think. 95% of businesses encounter problems with employee theft (internal fraud), and 5% of customers have admitted to leaving without paying the bill (external fraud).

Machine learning and AI algorithms can detect fraud in real time by identifying suspicious transactions, anomalies in transaction data, and data from your POS system. 

For example, US-based restaurant management platform Toast already uses this technology in its POS system.

Voice AI limits fraud as employees don’t influence the actual order taking. 

2. Reduce Food Waste

It’s estimated that over a third of all food produced globally goes to waste, caused by over-preparation, poor inventory management data, and wrong orders. AI helps your QSR collect and analyze sales and inventory data to help you stock only what’s necessary and reduce food waste levels through demand forecasting. 

US-based fast-casual restaurant chain Sweetgreen already uses machine learning algorithms to optimize inventory management by predicting demand and automatically adjusting inventory levels accordingly. 

3. Speed up the Ordering Process at the drive-thru

Only 10% of QSRs successfully manage to serve customers at the drive-thru in under three minutes. For every extra second that passes by, your customers will become increasingly hungry – and impatient. 

Labor shortages, lower immigration levels, and the upcoming California Minimum Wage Bill are just some of the reasons why hiring more staff isn’t a silver bullet. Instead, conversational AI solutions like Auto can work 24/7 without the need for breaks, helping deliver a consistent ordering experience up to four times faster than human cashiers. 

4. Enhance the In-store Customer Experience

AI can enhance customer experience in-store and behind the scenes. Paper menus are so old-school – now, QSRs are replacing them with digital menu boards. Digital signage can increase brand awareness by over 47% and get over 400% more views than static displays. 

Using AI, you can personalize, customize, and update digital menu boards in real time, helping you catch your customers’ eyes and showcase promotions. For example, you can schedule different menu displays at different times of the day and add QR codes for interactive visuals.

5. Ensure Consistently Good Customer Service and Inclusivity

How can AI help your QSR become more inclusive? Hi Auto recently rolled out Spanish-language drive-thru AI at Checkers and Rally’s, bringing long-anticipated Hispanic inclusivity to the QSR industry and enabling more customers to access their favorite foods. 

AI is always awake, alert, and never distracted, so it’s always ready to deliver exceptional and friendly customer service. Hi Auto successfully completes orders for Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe with an impressive 95% accuracy rate, and Hi Auto attempts an upsell in 76% of cases.

6. Improve Menu Creativity

Want to keep things fresh in your QSR? Brands like Coca-Cola and Shake Shack have used AI to design new flavors and menu options. AI came up with an exciting and undisclosed flavor of Coke called the Y3000, and Shake Shack rolled out new plant-based menu items designed by AI. 

AI is an excellent tool for keeping customers engaged with your brand online. For example, Dallas-based chain Velvet Taco recently launched the ‘ChatGPTaco,’ a hugely successful new item on their weekly specials menu. 

7. Streamline Food Preparation

Behind the scenes, kitchen departments use AI-powered robots to automate repetitive tasks like frying, flipping burgers, and preparing salads. AI brings a new level of service consistency that far exceeds the capabilities of human staff, and the robots are capable of much more complex tasks than you may expect. 

Domino’s recently launched a pizza delivery robot that zips around with autonomous driving capabilities. 

8. Guarantee Product Perfection/Consistency

Miso Robotics is a leading name in restaurant robotics technology, and its products are a perfect example of how automation is changing food production for the better. The Flippy 2 robot uses AI-powered vision technology and a dextrous arm to manage high volumes of fries. 

Panera Bread uses Miso Robotics’ new automated coffee brewing technology to ensure quality control and boost efficiency. Other brands like Chipotle are also testing Miso Robotics’ automated kitchen assistants for making tortilla chips. 

9. Personalization for Every Customer 

66% of customers expect brands to understand their wants and needs, and delivering personalized marketing communications is only possible with AI. The algorithms analyze customer preferences and ordering history to offer personalized menu suggestions and promotions, which increases customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. 

Some personalization strategies include:

• Facial recognition: AI technology identifies customers’ faces at the drive-thru or in-store. 
• Location detection: AI detects customers who enter a geographic perimeter around your QSR so you can send them alerts and offers.
• Vehicle detection: AI identifies customers based on their license plate. 
• Predictive analytics: AI uses customers’ mobile phones, loyalty accounts, or app data to recommend menu items and promos based on info like their past ordering behavior. 

The Age of QSR AI is Just Beginning

It’s an incredibly exciting time for the QSR industry. New technology like food preparation robots and conversational AI is just beginning to sweep stores worldwide – with the global AI market expected to grow by 36% by 2030. 

Many businesses, like Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe and Checkers and Rally’s, are gaining a competitive advantage by staying ahead of the AI adoption curve. 

Hi Auto is the market leader in conversational AI, with 10X more stores than any other solution. 

Hi Auto ensures you get the best out of AI – upgrading your drive-thru experience with the built-in upsell playbook, with a 94% accuracy rate and multilingual capabilities. 

Contact us to get started today. 

The post Restaurant AI: 9 Surprising Ways Restaurants are Leveraging AI appeared first on Hi Auto.

The market is challenging. 55% of diners say they now select cheaper items on the menu, and 45% of adults are eating out less at fast food restaurants. So, how can you break this cycle of tentative spending and ensure your QSR still brings home the bacon?

Understanding Average Check Size

The average check size is the average amount each customer spends at your QSR. It’s really useful for sales forecasting, creating an action plan to increase revenue, and identifying where you might be losing money. There is no magic number – it will vary depending on your business and customers. To get a ballpark target figure, look at the average check size of competitor restaurants in your area. 

The Formula for Calculating the Average Check Size

Average check size = Total sales revenue / Total number of customers

For example, if you make $5,000 in one day and serve 85 guests, the average check size is $58.82. This metric can be a guiding light to helping you achieve a higher average check size of $65. 

You can calculate the average check size over a certain period, such as three weeks or a whole year. 

12 Ways to Improve Average Check Size

No one said that improving your average check size is easy, but it’s certainly achievable using these twelve tips.

1. Understand Your Customers 

The first step is understanding what customers really want. This information is invaluable for deciphering their spending habits and identifying effective strategies for boosting the average check size. 

For example, do they spend more during certain times of the day or year? What is their preferred method of ordering? Invest time into gathering and implementing customer feedback, and you’ll reap the benefits of higher checks.

If you’re looking to get started as soon as possible with this, keep track of what customers are currently ordering and what’s selling out, and highlight any patterns you notice.

2. Train Employees to Upsell

The goal of upselling is to increase the average check size by identifying subtle ways to upgrade the diner’s purchase. Training staff in sales best practices, confidence, and building their menu knowledge helps engrain upselling techniques into their day-to-day activities. You can check in with your servers during weekly meetings to identify areas of improvement or knowledge gaps.

If your employees are reluctant to upsell due to nerves or busyness, you can delegate this job to technology instead. 

For example, Hi Auto’s conversational AI solution attempts an upsell 76% of the time (compared to employees’ 4%), resulting in an awesome average ticket increase of 10%.

3. Implement a Loyalty Program

43% of customers said a loyalty program or points would convince them to eat out more often. There are a few different types of loyalty programs, including:

• Tiered: Rewards are split into different levels. 
• Subscription-based: Customers pay a subscription and enjoy benefits as part of the scheme. 
• Points-based: Customers collect points with every purchase and redeem them for perks. 

Loyalty programs are effective for boosting customer retention and increasing brand recognition, which is a win-win for improving your average check size while attracting more diners at the same time. 

4. Offer Combo Meals or Bundles

54% of diners say promotional deals would convince them to eat out more frequently. 

Combo meals and bundles encourage your customers to level up their meals instead of ordering one or two items, therefore increasing the average check size. 

Good cross-sell and upsell opportunities include family discounts, ‘fries included,’ and online-only bundle options. 

5. Change the Layout of the Current Menu

74% of customers say an effective menu display is the most important factor when selecting a QSR to visit. 

You can engineer your menu by replacing well-thumbed paper with digital menu boards, enabling you to customize them on the fly with promotions and graphics. 

Think big and bold: Choose large LED screens in strategic positions to catch diners’ eyes. Tactics like logical item grouping, color psychology, and visual aids like photography help with subtle upselling to increase ticket value.

6. Offer Seasonal or Daily Specials

Seasonal and daily specials keep your menu fresh and exciting, and you can easily integrate these offers with other marketing strategies.

Launching special menu items through cross-brand partnerships can hugely benefit brand awareness by expanding your reach to new audiences. For example, you could offer double loyalty points when customers purchase specific items from your Christmas specials. Promoting limited edition items creates a sense of urgency to buy, which is positive for your average check size.

7. Boost Your Online Presence

40% of customers prefer to place delivery and takeout orders via mobile app from the comfort of their own home, and online ordering now accounts for roughly 40% of all restaurant sales. 

With online ordering, you can offer a contactless and seamless customer experience while promoting high-margin items based on data from their in-app behavioral preferences.

8. Enhance the Ambiance and Atmosphere

A unique restaurant experience goes a long way, such as offering vegan alternatives or an ultra-modern customer experience using conversational AI at the drive-thru. 

But don’t forget the basics: keeping your QSR clean and tidy is non-negotiable for the atmosphere, and don’t underestimate the value of a great table layout and a well-designed floor plan. These simple tips will make customers want to stay longer – and buy more.

9. Increase Prices

Price anchoring is a strategy to help you squeeze extra pennies into each check. It involves increasing prices incrementally and starting with the cheapest items first. Therefore, they’ll still look a lot more affordable compared to high-priced items, and customers will feel like they’re getting bang for their buck.

10. Implement Tech Solutions

79% of diners say they will likely return to a restaurant that uses automated voice systems at the drive-thru, and an enormous 146 million US customers used voice assistant technology in 2023. 

Food production robots and contactless payments are also staple features in modern QSRs. Automation technology takes the strain off your employees’ workloads – a critical benefit in light of rising costs and labor shortages, both of which can take a slice out of your average check size.

Source

11. Stand Out via Social Media Marketing

41% of diners use social media to decide whether to visit a restaurant, as the Internet is a hub for customer reviews and recommendations. 

Every click, like, and share makes a difference in building a positive reputation for your QSR, cultivating your brand’s personality, and helping you attract more business. 

You can also harness the power of influencer marketing to encourage user-generated content (UCG). Set up a guest feedback system and ask customers to share photos and videos of their dining experiences online in exchange for perks.

12. Integrate Geofence Location Capture

Geofencing creates a digital boundary around your QSR. When customers’ mobile devices enter this virtual parameter, you can send them automated marketing messages to tempt them in and get more revenue. 

For example: ‘The best fried chicken in the city is only fifteen meters away. Stop by and get a large drink for only $1 – hurry, the offer ends at 5PM today’.

How Automation Can Increase Your Restaurant Revenue

While operational and labor cost hikes will undoubtedly create headwinds for QSRs in the near future, automation technology provides significant support to ease the pressures.

A one-time investment in automation technology, such as food preparation robots or conversational AI, provides a workforce that performs 24/7. 

Hi Auto prioritizes upsell opportunities to increase the average check size, and it always maintains consistently high-quality service to ensure you serve as many customers as possible through your lanes. 

Learn more about upgrading your drive-thru experience today.

The post Average Check Size: 12 Proven Tips to Increase Restaurant Revenue appeared first on Hi Auto.

For QSRs, it’s a constant back-and-forth between employers who want (and need) to maximize profit-making opportunities and employees who expect wage hikes to help with the cost of living. As of 2024, the latter will become a reality. 

Labor costs already hover at around 30% of a QSR’s spending, so the food service industry will have to prepare ahead of the news of a wage increase in California. 

While this presents opportunities for employees to have a better quality of life amongst inflation hikes, it further strains QSRs with limited resources and funds. 

What You Need to Know About the California Minimum Wage 2024

Just as employers are getting used to a $15.50/hr wage, the State of California recently passed a bill to increase the minimum wage to $16 per hour in January 2024. 

Then, QSRs face further challenges as the minimum wage for fast food employees at limited-service restaurants with over sixty locations will increase to $20 per hour on April 1, 2024. 

The hourly wage will continue to rise annually until 2029 at a rate tied to the Consumer Price Index, which measures the overall change in consumer prices. Ultimately, the minimum wage in California (especially for fast food workers) is far higher than the US average of $13.43 for fast food workers.

There are over 550,000 fast-food employees across 30,000 California locations, and many could be impacted. Especially as the new law also affects the minimum salary employees can earn to meet the overtime exemption test, which means they don’t get overtime pay if they earn no less than two times the state’s minimum wage for full-time work. Therefore, the white-collar exemption minimum annual salary in California will increase to $66,560 per year.

What Do You Need to Do Now?

1. Check if your QSR is legally classified as a ‘national fast food chain.’ If so, this law will affect you.
2. The $20 wage comes into effect on April 1, 2024. There is no relief or grace period, so now’s the time to get your accounts in order.
3. Make sure you update wage statements to show the new pay and overtime rates, plus issue all hourly employees a new Wage Theft Protection Act Notice.

For QSRs, this is the perfect time to reassess your needs as a business and bring in more efficient operations. 

What Will the California Minimum Wage Mean for Employees?

It is state law to pay workers the minimum wage, even when employees are paid at a piece rate. Anyone who doesn’t receive the right amount can file a wage claim with the Labor Commissioner’s Office.

Of course, employees will likely be happy when they see a higher figure on their wage slips every month. There’s a good reason for this:

• Improved earning potential – With the cost of living crisis afoot, higher wages give employees a better quality of life and may alleviate some financial stress.
• Enhanced job satisfaction – Happy employees are 77% more likely to stay with their employer, helping QSRs create more long-term career opportunities and avoid high turnover costs.
• Flexible or reduced working hours – Some employees might choose to work less if they earn more, which is ideal for people who want to spend more time with their families. 

Challenges and Opportunities for QSRs

While the new law is great news for minimum wage earners, it gives QSR business owners a lot of challenges and opportunities to think about.

Challenges

• Profit margins taking a hit – Labor costs are already sky-high in the QSR industry – at 30%, there isn’t much wiggle room.
• Operational costs – Spending more on wages might mean struggling QSRs make up the difference elsewhere, such as implementing price increases for customers or lowering service quality.
• Wage compression – Increasing the minimum wage means there’s a smaller gap between lower- and higher-income earners, making salary increases less appealing. Therefore, a minimum wage boost can create a ripple effect across all layers of your business. 

Opportunities

• In-house opportunities – The majority of fast food workers are the primary providers in their families, and better wages mean improved working conditions and career prospects.
• The spark of change – Being more efficient with labor costs and usage (for example, reducing your headcount by implementing automation technology) means you can pay higher salaries to your smaller workforce. This provides a chance to implement new solutions and improve the current ways of working.
• Adapt and overcome with technology solutions – Running a successful QSR isn’t a linear journey. You’ll have highs and lows, but ultimately, the new law is another opportunity to adapt to challenges and reap the rewards at the end. This is the time to implement tools to run a more efficient workforce and therefore deliver a highly consistent service for your customers. One of the proven solutions to build efficiency is Voice Ai for order taking from Hi Auto.

Strategies for QSRs to Adapt and Thrive in Preparation of the California Minimum Wage 2024

Here are three essential strategies you can implement now to get ready for the new law in 2024.

Streamlining Operations

Whatever happens, cutting corners is the worst-case scenario. Your customers have high expectations about the consistency, quality, and speed of your service, and cutting corners will undermine your reputation. It is possible to achieve the goal of improving efficiency and consistency while the cost per hour of employees increases. 

Voice AI for automated order-taking is a preferred way by franchisees to add efficiency to their operations and reduce recruiting and training efforts. As automation technology can work 24/7, it allows you to cope better with unexpected increases in the volume of orders by freeing up the person at the drive thru window and re-allocating them to the back of the house while the voice AI takes over. You can customize the tone of voice and wording on a day-by-day basis, meaning you can deliver a consistent service.

When you are understaffed, voice AI helps you better control your scheduling as you can open and close the restaurant with one less person and increase staffing later in the day. For example, instead of adding an employee for every $100 of forecasted sales, you can add someone every $120.

Embracing Technology

57% of hospitality business owners say that bringing in new technology like restaurant automation has been critical to their survival in recent years. 

Although you might be concerned about making further investments when facing imminent labor cost hikes, remember that most technology solutions only require a one-time purchase – a drastic reduction compared to multiple salaries.

Conversational AI solutions, like Hi Auto, can provide fast and accurate service 24/7 at the drive-thru, which completely replaces the need to hire staff members to supervise your lanes. Implementing other technology like food preparation robots and automated table reservations could save your employees time, too.

Incorporating such solutions will allow you to pay higher salaries whilst reaping the benefits of a much more efficient and successful workforce.

Reducing drive-thru headcount will further reduce labor costs and allow you to re-assign your team members to other high-value tasks.

Worried about losing the ‘human touch?’ 58% of people aged 18-38 say they’re more likely to return to restaurants that use automation. 

Basically, human employees aren’t as desirable for your customers as you might think. Of course, customers like to see a friendly face in your restaurant, but what they really care about is the speed, accuracy, and taste of their order – and all these things can be optimized using technology. 

Employee Training and Retention

Staff turnover costs the average restaurant $150,000 annually, partly attributed to the QSR industry’s 75% churn rate. It costs around 50% of an employee’s salary to replace their role when they leave, so it’s much more cost-effective to focus on retention rather than recruitment. 

Learning and development opportunities like comprehensive training programs are a great way to engage staff and prove that you are committed to investing in their long-term future. As you pivot to new technology like AI and automation, make employee training part of the digital transformation journey, too. By training staff on how to work with new tech, not against it, they will have total knowledge and confidence in using new systems to their advantage. 

Stay Ahead of the Game With Technology

Your QSR will inevitably face some turbulent times as you dig deeper into your pockets to prepare for California’s minimum wage increase. Thankfully, the upcoming financial headwinds shouldn’t push you to cut corners and compromise quality. 

Instead, investing in new technology can help you optimize and streamline your QSR operations and identify where you can reduce your headcount and save on labor costs. 

Brands like Checkers and Rally’s have already introduced Hi Auto’s drive-thru AI technology in over 350 restaurants, and Lee’s Famous Chicken Recipe has enjoyed a 94% accuracy rate using Hi Auto – even higher than the accuracy rate of human servers.

The 1st April 2024 is not far away. Get started on your digital transformation journey today and see how technology investment can prepare you for a future that relies less on employees and more on operational efficiencies.

Contact us to give Hi Auto a try.

The post California Minimum Wage 2024: What Will Changes Mean for QSRs appeared first on Hi Auto.