Dairy Queen drive-thru is rolling out AI

Dairy Queen has become the latest fast-food chain to deploy AI chatbots at its drive-thrus.

The chain started testing an AI chatbot at a handful of its drive-thrus last year with help from technology company Presto, and plans to expand testing to dozens of other stores this week, Kevin Baartman, Dairy Queen’s executive vice president of information technology, told The Wall Street Journal.

Dairy Queen hopes the chatbots will speed up wait times and encourage customers to add more food to their orders.

Tests of the order-taking bots have yielded positive results, Baartman said. The bots were able to improve customer-satisfaction scores by double-digit percentages and were accurate about 90 percent of the time.

The bots also delivered in areas where human workers are more likely to make mistakes, and always read the order back to customers — a step employees sometimes forget, the company told the Journal.

“One of the key things we looked at was its ability to ingest our menu,” Baartman said. “It’s done a good job with it.”

Dairy Queen hopes to utilize the bots to free up staff, allowing human employees to simply review orders before they get sent out.

The restaurant chain, which has some 3,000 franchisees across the U.S. and Canada, saw the chatbots successfully take orders during its annual Free Cone Day, which always comes just before Spring starts. During the promotion, the bots never got crabby over the work, Baartman said.

“It was able to handle everything,” he said.

Dairy Queen joins several other fast food chains in adding chatbots to its drive-thrus.

Presto is also working with Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s on implementing AI in their drive-thrus. Meanwhile, Wendy’s is working with Google to deploy the technology.

Other chains like Taco Bell, Checkers and White Castle have also added AI to some of their drive-thrus.

Chains are also utilizing AI technology in other ways. Burger King made headlines earlier this year after it launched a chatbot that analyzes workers’ friendliness — including whether employees say “please” and “thank you” to customers.

The OpenAI-powered “Patty” will live in employees’ headsets, helping with meal preparation, but also judging their manners.

The chatbot was reportedly being piloted in 500 restaurants, as Burger King plans to launch its BK Assistant web and app platform to all U.S. restaurants by the end of the year.