Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. introduce artificial intelligence drive-thrus

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - As part of a new company-wide initiative, the Hardee’s on Golf Road in Eau Claire has introduced a new member of its drive-thru staff.

“Tori” is an artificial intelligence device, brought to Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. in order to boost accuracy, speed, and revenue in the drive-thru ordering process.

“During the pandemic, the majority of our business shifted to what we call off-premises, which is the majority of drive thru, so what we had to do was we had to evaluate our drive-thru business to see how we could become more efficient,” said Vice President of Northland Management Services Sam Munger.

By using “Tori” as the order taker, Munger says human employees can focus on greater needs for the restaurant.

“We were really looking for ways to make that drive-thru more efficient, and the best way we can do that is by freeing up our management to do other things,” said Munger. “Things like training, things like, you know, making sure accuracy of orders, food quality, things like that. By having Tori take all of the orders, it essentially freed up the management team to be able to go and assess other parts of the restaurant.”

One of “Tori’s” most efficient qualities is her ability to upsell, something noted by one of the service’s providers OpenCity.

“We actually ran our distribution center out of apple pies the first week because Tori never misses an upsell opportunity,” Munger commented. “With upselling, she’s spot on every time. She’s extremely accurate, and you know it kind of depends on the vendor, but our particular one Tori is extremely personable, and Tori is very friendly.”

For those concerned about AI’s taking jobs away from humans, Munger assures that won’t be the case.

“We’re still hiring, you know, we’re still not fully staffed, so we’re not overly concerned that that’s going to be an issue at this particular time,” said Munger.

Looking ahead, Munger is confident in the future of AI drive-thrus.

“We would love to grow it,” Munger stated. “Like I said before we’re somewhat in the early stages of this test, but if the preliminary results are indicative of some of the longer-term results, our plan is to start to try to roll this out in more locations.”

If future rollouts occur, Munger says the AI will be placed in high traffic locations, likely in larger urban environments.

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