Fast food companies have been experimenting with integrating artificial intelligence into their restaurants, from Flippy the burger-flipping robot at White Castle to dynamic pricing at Wendy’s. One arena where AI seems to really be struggling, though, is at the drive-thru – and Taco Bell is the latest to experience AI mishaps at the order box. After taking 2 million orders with AI, Taco Bell has reached one conclusion: we still need humans.
Just drop speech, idiots. Make buttons. No need in LLM whatsoever. No need in humans either. Want a taco? Press button 1. Want a beer to that shit? Press button 2. Additional shit to your taco? Press 3.
Taco Bell had automated touch screen kiosks at certain locations in the ’90s. It worked great. The people were not ready for it.
“just” make massive costly changes to every location
brilliant
From a corporate viewpoint, that’s a one time cost with a very small (likely national) ongoing component. People cost only some training up front, but then have a high ongoing cost (wages and everything that entails). Typically they are all over this.
In my area you can’t really order anything in fast food places. You have a screen where you create and pay your order, then a human just assembles it. There are still people involved, but much less than 30 years ago. Clearly they took that trade.
Can you compare the price of 3 buttons and some 1 dollar microcontroller to the price of human salary? No, you can’t :(
McDonald’s already did this years ago, and cut workers taking orders in store. The in store kiosks use the same interface as their mobile app. He’ll it’s probably literally just the mobile app running on a large touchscreen. Half the time you can’t even order with a person.
Half the time you can’t even order with a person.
Pretty sure that is not true. Maybe if they were breaking their own rules at your particular location or something.
You’re surprised that a fast food manager could be cutting corners even more than corporate requires? Or even just that fast food staffing is a clusterfuck of excessive call outs to the point where the location doesn’t actually have enough staff?
I never said I was surprised… I am fully aware that many locations are run poorly.
But I have never once in my life encountered a location where it was impossible to order at the counter from a human and only the kiosks worked. I mean they still have to hand you your food, why would they refuse to take your order at the counter? What if you were blind?
I asked several friends and they all said the same thing. I know that’s a small sample size, but I still doubt your “half the time” number.
I use to experience it often. The only reason I don’t anymore is because I avoid those locations. But I also rarely eat crappy fast food so I imagine most people experience it often
Just another anecdote but I used to travel the country for work and it did feel like more and more McDonalds would not let you place an order with a person inside. I specifically remember this happening in 4 different cities in Florida.
Was the entire inside area closed off to foot traffic completely? Or are you saying the inside kiosks worked (and people would still hand you your food) but they somehow refused to actually take orders manually?
Yeah, I am not interested in fiddling around with their system when I can accomplish the same thing in one sentence with a human.
I leave restaurants that want me to order by kiosk anymore. I mostly frequent smaller family owned establishments anymore and I am totally cool with that. The food and prices are much better.
I just order online ahead of time, at my leisure, or on my way home, and pick it up quicker than it would have taken to place the order and pay in person. Almost all the places that have shot like this also have online ordering.
Capex vs opex
One area?
