Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters
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We have apps for that, and they're typically a pita. They certainly take longer than just talking through your order.
Yeah, unlike a human that understands a customer saying "one pizzaburger, that's all", the app doesn't understand the situation that the order is complete, but rather just keeps on asking more obviously unwanted cringey questions like "buy two, you'll save a few cents on the second one?" or "what will you drink with that?" or "is that a big menu?"...
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But are the AI issues cheaper than the corporate infrastructure around hiring and paying employees and losing the occasional customer? If AI is more profitable, they don’t care. The only thing that’s mattered for decades now is what the bottom line says, no matter the cost.
No, but AI kiosks are a resource and employees are a cost. So spending more on AI looks better on paper.
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can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me
I rarely go to McDonald’s but I personally like the kiosk because it gives me time to think and change my mind. But the ai I’ll definitely pass on.
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That's not true. It's developers incapable of using AI responsibly. If my manager told me to use AI, I would be sure to inform them of the limitations professionally.
At which point most managers would say do it anyway or you're fired.
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As for the water order? I would 1000% start making that order.
What a self-own
More like malicious compliance.
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At which point most managers would say do it anyway or you're fired.
If they're that dumb I wouldn't want to work for them anyway.
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To understand this, you have to understand the CEO cult. They ALL hang off every word from SV tech bros, and the appeal of free labor is hard to ignore when you have to find $100M for executive bonuses.
If automated food service was what people wanted, then automats would have never gone out of business 120 years ago.
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This is an American company, their customers would probably react poorly to hearing a foreign accent come through the speakers
"eh? eh? Go back to Canada!"
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Thanks for posting this take. The topic of AI taking jobs seems to garner a lot of emotional response but not much of a technology discussion.
There were people who were negative about using websites to place orders in the 90s in part because e-commerce killed order processing jobs and the need for phone reps at mail order catalogs.
In this case AI is being used as just another e-commerce UX, so it's really just a continuation of what's happening already.
People used to do things like put 18,000, or -1 and all kinds of other garbage in the fields on website order forms as well. That's just a programmers job to fix with reasonable input validation.
It wouldn't surprise me if drive-thru like Taco Bell started doing license plate recognition and reputation checking. So if you order and dash more than a couple times they might not take your order from outside in that car anymore.
On the upside they might be able to greet you by name and recall your last order:
Hello Mr Smith... Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?
Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?
"Would you like some Ozempic or insulin with that?"
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Drive through might be a bit more difficult for touch screens. It'd be like trying to reach your parking ticket but for how many clicks it takes to make the order.
Phone app might be easier but not sure it really replaces what drive throughs are for.
Yeah, im not installing a phone app either. Sounds like the best option is to just hire a human being.
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Yeah, im not installing a phone app either. Sounds like the best option is to just hire a human being.
I might be fine with a phone app for very simple orders. I already use an app for fueling my car and for that it's handy. But if you have to stop, think about what you're getting, make up your order and then punch it into the app then it might not suite a drive through that well since it just ruins the "flow".
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I mean there's no point to it, it doesn't speed anything up.
For example this morning I had a client meeting (saturdays, ugh) so I went to the train station cause it has a mcdonalds and it opens at 630am. They have 5 kiosks there and one person manning the til. People who were ordering from the til were getting their orders faster than people who used the kiosks. I had to wait 10 minutes just to get a coffee and muffin simply because I used the kiosk.
And it doesn't even make sense. I would have assumed all the orders go through the same system regardless of where it was placed but apparently not. apparently people who don't use the kiosk get priority?
It's the same ordering system, but different queues for drive-through, tills, and kiosk. Usually there's some priority order, but tills and kiosk shouldn't be different
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can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me
let's get real, when was McDonalds never shitty?
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Eat their refried beans once and that is all you need, ever. Then the whole AI thing is moot. - just my gut feeling
or the McRib, whatever animal it came from went extinct.
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can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me
Don't have to deal with it at all if you simply stop going. That's what I've done, as it doesn't make sense to spend $15 on a fast food meal when the same amount of money buys food from a real restaurant.
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WE WILL DRAIN THE RIVERS DRY TO QUENCH OUR THIRST
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I might be fine with a phone app for very simple orders. I already use an app for fueling my car and for that it's handy. But if you have to stop, think about what you're getting, make up your order and then punch it into the app then it might not suite a drive through that well since it just ruins the "flow".
It's not about how simple it is. I'm not installing separate shit on my phone along with who knows what spyware for every little transaction I need to make.
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It's not about how simple it is. I'm not installing separate shit on my phone along with who knows what spyware for every little transaction I need to make.
No I know, I was just thinking this from both my personal point of view and that of a general consumer.
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No, but AI kiosks are a resource and employees are a cost. So spending more on AI looks better on paper.
You can label it whatever you want. There are going to be API fees or development costs for AI, so whatever box they want to put it under.
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The only real way to order via the AI drive-thru:
