McDonald's Is Testing Automated Drive-Thrus That Would Replace Some Workers

Over the past few months, we've seen multiple instances where fast food restaurants have found themselves either understaffed or not staffed at all due to an apparent exodus of employees.

And while there are various reasons why those employees would no longer consider their jobs worth doing, that does leave chains with thousands of restaurants under their belts wondering how to deal with this "labor shortage."

Although immediate answers to this question seem few and far between, one project that McDonald's is testing out in Chicago could give us a glimpse into the future of drive-thru orders.

Back in 2019, McDonald's acquried several technology firms with the intention of saving on labor costs by automating various aspects of their restaurants.

Although we've already seen this push towards automation in the form of in-store touch screens, CNBC reported that the chain has similar plans in mind for its grills, fryers, and drive-thru windows.

And it's the final of those three considerations that led them to purchase Apprente, which uses artificial intelligence software to take drive-thru orders.

On June 2, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski announced that the company was starting to test this technology at 10 of their locations in Chicago.

According to CNBC, the drive-thru software is voice-activated and is showing an average of about 85% in terms of order accuracy.

This means that in locations where this tech is in use, humans need to intervene in about a fifth of total orders placed.

Given the novelty of its role in the process, employees at these test restaurants have frequently had to stop themselves from jumping in and helping the system take an order.

But while it appears that the software is proving at least functional enough to do 85% of the job, it's still likely going to take more than one or two years before we start seeing automated drive-thrus outside of Chicago.

As Kempczinski put it, "Now there’s a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the U.S., with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather — and on and on and on."

And while McDonald's has shown interest in automating the actual food preparation aspect of its business, we're not likely to see any widespread use of A.I. for this purpose within the next five years.

According to Kempczinski, that's not an issue of the technology being ready, but rather an issue with it being too costly for restaurants to even break even if they implemented all of the options they're looking at.

So at least for the foreseeable future, we're not likely to see a McDonald's location staffed by more robots than people.

h/t: CNBC

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