The drive-thru, that iconic American fast-food interface of crackly speakers and garbled orders, is undergoing a quiet revolution. For the past five years, the country's biggest chains have raced to replace the human voice at the ordering box with an artificial intelligence chatbot. The promise: faster, more accurate orders, lower labor costs, and data-driven upselling. The reality has been a messy collision of technological ambition, customer skepticism, and regulatory scrutiny.

How it started

In 2021, McDonald's became one of the first major fast-food chains to greet customers with an AI chatbot at the drive-thru. It started small, deploying the voice-ordering technology at 10 of its locations in Chicago. McDonald's developed its drive-thru tech after acquiring Apprente, a startup focused on voice-based, conversational technology in 2019, and later worked with IBM to scale automated ordering. The move was part of a broader industry push to automate repetitive tasks and reduce reliance on hourly workers, especially as labor shortages intensified during the pandemic.

This was only the beginning of the AI drive-thru. Checkers and Rally's teamed up with the AI company Presto to put a chatbot at all corporate-owned drive-thrus in the US in 2022, with the goal of selling more food and drinks to customers and improving order accuracy. The company also said the tech will “free up staff for more people-dependent areas of their business.” Other chains quickly followed: Wendy's launched “FreshAI” in 2023, trained on its own lingo to understand that a “milkshake” is a “Frosty” and that a “JBC” is a “junior bacon cheeseburger.” Taco Bell tested its Voice AI drive-thru and announced plans to expand to hundreds of locations by end of 2024.

By 2024, AI drive-thrus had spread to Panera Bread, White Castle, Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, Panda Express, and Popeyes. The technology promised to reduce wait times, increase order accuracy, and allow human workers to focus on food preparation and customer service inside the store. Chains like Wendy's reported that their AI got orders right without employee intervention 86 percent of the time, a figure that seemed to justify the investment.

How it’s going

Despite the early enthusiasm, the consumer reaction has been tepid at best. A January 2025 survey conducted by YouGov found that 55 percent of Americans would prefer a human to take their order at the drive-thru, compared to 21 percent who had no preference, and a mere 4 percent who would rather use an AI chatbot. That generally lukewarm response may be having an impact on some franchises. McDonald’s ended its partnership with IBM in 2024 after customers complained about incorrect orders and awkward interactions. One year later, Taco Bell chief digital officer Dane Mathews told The Wall Street Journal that it’s reevaluating its deployment of the AI drive-thru after customers expressed their frustrations on social media and trolled the technology by ordering 18,000 water cups.

Customer frustration isn’t the only snag AI drive-thrus are running into; their credibility is an issue, too. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Presto — the company that powers the AI drive-thrus at Checkers, Rally’s, Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, and now, Dairy Queen — with misleading customers about the capabilities of its technology. In 2023, an SEC filing revealed that human workers in the Philippines stepped in for most orders taken by Presto’s AI system. The SEC alleged that Presto's claims of “fully autonomous” AI ordering were false, and that the company misled investors about the true extent of human intervention. The case highlights the gap between the marketing hype and the reality of AI—many chatbots are actually hybrids, with humans lurking in the background to handle edge cases or when the AI fails.

Personal experiences mirror this pattern. When a reporter tried ordering from a Checkers AI drive-thru, the chatbot initially handled the request but quickly transferred to a human after a sandwich was found to be out of stock. Similarly, a Wall Street Journal test of the Hardee's AI drive-thru found that the system struggled with unusual requests, accents, and background noise. Customers have learned to exploit these weaknesses: some people suggest making similarly outrageous orders or speaking in a different language just to bypass the tech and speak to a human worker.

What happens next

Fast-food chains are taking AI beyond the drive-thru. Though The Wall Street Journal reports that McDonald’s is giving AI-powered drive-thrus a second chance, it’s also exploring other ways to utilize the technology, including a system that predicts when its equipment (like its seemingly always out-of-order ice cream machine) is likely to break down. The company is also using AI-powered scales to compare the target weight of an order versus its actual weight, and then alert employees if something is missing, potentially helping workers remember to pack your to-go bag with fries.

Burger King, which is running a limited test of AI drive-thrus, announced in February that it’s piloting an AI assistant, called “Patty,” that lives inside employees’ headsets. Workers can chat with the AI assistant if they need help preparing food, such as if they forget how many strips of bacon to put on a Texas Double Whopper. At the same time, Patty listens to employees to evaluate them for friendliness. That means tracking whether they say “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.” Burger King also uses AI to inform managers when a machine is down for maintenance or if an item is out of stock, as well as to remove affected items from the digital menu board.

Taco Bell is experimenting with an AI-driven menu board, too. But instead of just using AI to remove items from the menu, it will use the technology to “dynamically change the layout, content, and visuals on a car-by-car basis,” Ranjith Roy, the chief financial officer of Taco Bell parent company Yum!, said during the company’s most recent earnings call. Roy doesn’t expand on this, but it seems like it could allow Taco Bell to adjust what’s on the menu based on the customers pulling up—perhaps pushing higher-margin items or tailoring recommendations based on past orders or time of day.

Other uses of AI are picking up traction as well. Both Culver’s and Zaxbys are working with a company called Berry AI to put camera timers at the drive-thru to capture data about traffic flow, service execution, and more. Berry AI says its tech shortens drive-thru service time by 20 to 40 percent. It seems like more fast-food chains might start deploying AI tech that’s less in-your-face than an AI chatbot at the drive-thru window, whether it’s menu changes you don’t notice, or a scale that measures your food bag before it’s handed to you — at least until these companies perfect their chatbot’s tech.

By the way

• It’s not just fast-food chains that are looking into ways to use AI. Applebee’s and IHOP are exploring a personalization system that could suggest or upsell menu items based on customer data and preferences.
• A survey from the National Restaurant Association found that 26 percent of restaurant operators are now using AI, with most using the tools for marketing and administrative tasks rather than customer-facing roles.
• AI-powered shopping carts are becoming a thing, too. Some grocery stores, like Whole Foods, Wegmans, ShopRite, Kroger, and Sprouts, are trying out the tech in some locations to track purchases and offer real-time discounts.
• Food & Wine has an interesting dive into the restaurants — like Chipotle — that are putting robots inside their kitchens to automate tasks like burrito bowl assembly and tortilla chip cooking.
• Rest of World has a fascinating report about how convenience store robots in Japan are actually operated by humans in the Philippines, revealing the hidden labor behind many "autonomous" systems.

The fast-food industry's flirtation with AI is still in its infancy. While the visible chatbots have faced backlash, the less glamorous applications—predictive maintenance, employee coaching, data collection—are quietly proliferating. The real revolution may not be the talking bot at the window, but the invisible algorithms that reshape everything from menu boards to fry baskets. Whether consumers will ever fully embrace AI ordering remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the drive-thru, like the rest of the economy, is being reshaped by artificial intelligence, one byte at a time.

Source: The Verge News