ConverseNow Partners with Adora POS to Streamline Pizza Ordering and Restaurant Efficiency with Voice AI Technology

She was very conversational, using phrases like “take your time” and “absolutely” while processing my order. The latest solutions enable restaurants to run more efficiently while improving customer satisfaction. For instance, AI-powered systems can help streamline inventory management and reduce food waste. They also monitor kitchen equipment to prevent breakdowns, ensuring smooth daily operations. The implementation of AI in restaurants goes beyond just automating routine tasks. AI-based software can analyze vast amounts of customer data, providing valuable insights into customer trends and preferences.

Advanced AI solutions can now accurately understand and process customer orders through voice recognition, seamlessly integrating with the restaurant’s point of sale (POS) or kitchen display system (KDS). Granted, each restaurant must train and retrain the AI model to recognize its menu items accurately. However, systems can escalate to an employee if orders are unclear to ensure customers get exactly what they want. It shapes the future of restaurants with more intelligent, data-driven solutions.

Serving a diverse clientele including restaurants of all sizes, caterers, dining management companies, and even bookkeepers and accountants, xtraCHEF offers a user-friendly interface coupled with powerful features. This combination allows businesses to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and maximize margins effectively. By automating time-consuming tasks and providing real-time insights, xtraCHEF enables restaurant professionals to focus more on delivering exceptional dining experiences and less on manual administrative work. To date, one of AI’s most significant contributions to the restaurant industry is its ability to streamline operations and enhance efficiency. From automated drive-thru ordering systems to predictive inventory management, AI-driven solutions optimize a restaurant’s workflow, reducing wait times and increasing productivity.

How artificial intelligence is shaping the restaurant industry

Just moving to the cloud made it operationally simpler, made it more cost efficient. One of the things we’ve done is our CRM platform, you can give it a few signals or cues so it can create thoughtful campaigns and AB test them and get feedback. It’s starting to help restaurants generate demand on their own without having to do a lot of manual work that often they don’t have the time to do. A year later, their prank resulted in them actually offering people a dining experience. QSCC, responsible for procuring and distributing supplies to over 6,400 Wendy’s restaurants in the United States and Canada, faces the complex challenge of managing a vast network of suppliers, distributors, and restaurants. The initiative, in partnership with Palantir Technologies, aims to address these complexities by creating a more integrated and data-driven supply chain ecosystem.

The Pareto Principle, which emphasizes the frequency of an 80/20 distribution, shows that 80% of a company’s profits come from just 20% of its guests. According to Bain & Company research, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 75%. AI is arguably the hottest technology in the restaurant space, with many operators exploring applications to ease pressure from inflation and rising labor, food, and occupancy costs. The company also gives its restaurant customers flexible funding options to help smaller independent eateries tap into the capital they need to grow. “We’ll predict how much consumer volume we think we can drive into a restaurant, and we’ll pay the restaurant a portion of that volume upfront,” Roedding said, that predictive effort is aided by real-time modeling.

Encounter AI’s “Mai” is a sophisticated artificial intelligence assistant tailored for the restaurant and retail sectors. This cloud-based solution is designed to enhance accuracy, service, and speed by responding instantly to customers through various channels, including drive-thru, kiosk, and at-table tablets. By automating these interactions, Mai allows staff to focus on higher-value tasks, optimizing resource allocation and driving profitability. AI also empowers restaurants to deliver tailored experiences that resonate with the consumer.

The Bite kiosks can also display ways guests can customize their orders, such as asking if they want bacon on their burger, he said. The drive-thru and the phones aren’t the only ways restaurant customers are interacting with AI when ordering food. The reviews are verified, he said, and Rewards Network has the ability to “seamlessly trigger” that review the moment a card is swiped, in real time, as the establishment prompts them to leave feedback at the time of payment. The review response rate is three times higher than the industry average, he said, and the restaurants also respond to those reviews at a high rate. Momos, a customer engagement platform designed for businesses with multiple locations, has secured $10 million in Series A funding to fuel its global expansion. The round was led by 645 Ventures, with participation from existing investors Alpha Wave Global and Peak XV, as well as new investors Soma Capital, FJ Labs, Taurus Ventures, and Correlation Ventures.

You can see why this would be an appealing idea if you live in a big, tourism-heavy city. Every single time you find a new authentic local place to call your own, it’s inevitable that a flood of Instagram-laced influencers and obnoxious tourists will swoop in to make the whole experience substantially less enjoyable. We wish you the best in your attempt to juke the algorithm, misdirect the riff-raff, and reclaim your city. Last 2 times I have been there has been a queue of over 200 people, and the ones with the food are just doing the selfie shit for their ChatGPT insta pages and then throwing most of the food away. Not only are you sharing the space with all the people who actually live in the city, but, more often than not, you’re also sharing it with the incessant influx of people who are visiting and who want to enjoy all the best that your metropolis has to offer. Apparently sick of influencers and tourists who have made their local hideaways uninhabitable, a number of Londoners appear to be attempting to poison Google’s AI-generated search results in an effort to point urban visitors in the wrong direction.

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While these fees can be a growth inhibitor for restaurants, AI technology can optimize payment processing to help restaurants increase profitability, and drive growth. Again, at this point the Angus Steakhouse hype doesn’t appear to have made it into AI Overview. This is also far from the first time that online users, including on platforms outside of Reddit, have publicly declared plans to make inaccurate or misleading posts in an effort to thwart AI scrapers. Taco Bell’s AI drive-thru rollout comes amidst growing skepticism surrounding the rapid integration of AI into various sectors.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The kiosks then make personalized food recommendations to consumers, factoring in everything from the time of day, weather and ordering patterns in the region or at the specific restaurant that day, said Barton. Drive-thrus can operate faster with AI, Bellettini said, because the tech can instantly engage with the customer as they pull up to the speaker post, compared to an employee, who often takes about 30 seconds to engage. “Nobody really has deployed voice AI at scale yet and there still needs to be some human interaction to ensure that [the technology is] getting the order correct,” he said. Bite’s kiosks don’t include drive-thru voice ordering, but Barton said it can sometimes be difficult for such AI technology to recognize an order when a loud truck drives by, or when someone has a certain regional accent. White Castle began piloting voice AI at the drive-thrus of select -restaurants last year, and the application is “getting better all the time,” Richardson said. But adopting AI requires “patience and perseverance — and a focus on remembering the larger goal you are trying to achieve,” he wrote in an email.

Google will also be using AI to help people make personalized plans which can be arranged within Google search results and then exported to docs of Gmail. Searching “create a 3 day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare,” will present you with multiple recipes that can be rearranged and switched out to suit your tastes. The AI models also had to be nimble enough to handle the complexity of Wendy’s customizable menu, limited-time offers, and other menu changes, and mismatches between what a customer may say and the Wendy’s branding.

They aim to improve efficiency, enhance customer service, and reduce operational costs. XtraCHEF is a comprehensive, cloud-based restaurant management platform designed to empower finance and operations teams in the foodservice industry. By digitizing invoices and automating manual processes, xtraCHEF unlocks valuable data and insights that drive informed decision-making across various aspects of restaurant management. From recipe and inventory management to strategic purchasing and vendor negotiations, the platform provides a holistic solution for optimizing restaurant operations.

The deal made SoundHound AI one of the country’s leading providers of voice AI for restaurants. Aniai’s Alpha Grill was a recipient of the show’s famed Kitchen Innovations award last year. The semi-autonomous burger grill simultaneously cooks both sides of a hamburger patty. The South Korean company Aniai returned to the show this year and nabbed another kitchen innovation award for its use of advanced AI and robotics.

As AI continues to evolve, its integration into the restaurant industry will undoubtedly usher in a new era of efficiency, innovation and data-informed decision-making. It can be a powerful tool for optimizing menu pricing by analyzing a vast amount of data, including historical sales, customer preferences, competitor pricing and market trends, to provide valuable insights into optimal pricing strategies. AI-driven systems can adjust pricing in real-time based on various factors such as demand, time of day, day of week and even weather conditions. It’s too early to understand how customers will react to dynamic pricing at restaurants but, at a minimum, AI can make those pricing decisions easier. Last month, Bojangles, the popular Southern cuisine fast-food chain, reported that it is expanding its deployment of a drive-thru voice AI technology.

As of this writing, the post has 4,900 upvotes and numerous responses suggesting that Redditors talk about how good Angus Steakhouse is so that Google picks up on it. That’s according to a report Sunday (Sept. 22) by Ars Technica on the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hosts used by eateries. Andrea is Senior Editor and Vertical Analyst of the Telco and Techco segment at The Fast Mode. She covers global telecom markets, operator revenue strategies and emerging business areas, and heads thought leadership development in areas relating to CSPs, MNOs, MVNOs, MVNEs and cable. And while there are still variables, such as the quality or shelf-life of the product that’s delivered to the restaurant, AI will make ordering inventory more accurate, he said. “This enables them to help customers without ever having to pick up a manual or distract another member of the team,” said Bellettini.

AI as Service in Restaurants: Delivering Smarter Solutions

But beyond its legal necessity, ensuring compliance with employment laws is critical to shaping a better experience for employees and customers alike. Asher added that restaurants recognize that if they know their customers’ likes and habits, they can enhance customer experiences and upsell more effectively. AI can analyze customer data to provide insights that give restaurants those benefits. Present – Real-time monitoring capabilities of AI help businesses to quickly recognize and address issues as they arise.

A significant change is the use of POS data to analyze and predict customer preferences, for example, allowing restaurants to offer personalized services. When AI is integrated into inventory-ordering operations, the technology could predict what customers will be ordering, said Barton. That allows restaurants to plan ahead better through more complex algorithms beyond using simply ordering based on the average of what people purchased over the past seven Fridays, he said. That technology, said Bellettini, helps restaurant operators ensure that food is always prepared to standard across all locations as they hire and train new employees. Voice AI technology can help restaurants solve labor shortage issues, Bellettini said.

We’re keeping an eye on all kinds of use cases out there to understand if there’s anything that we might be able to uncover that we’re not already thinking about. As we reflect on what’s happening in the competitive space, I would say we feel more and more bullish on our approach with the technology that we’ve developed and also with the partner that we have in Google Cloud. McDonald’s decision to end the pilot comes as restaurant chains have been rushing to embrace AI amid the promise of faster workflows and lower labour costs.

AI is also useful in analyzing large swaths of data, he added, which in turn can synthesize thousands of reviews, for example, and improve analytics functions. When diving deeper into the demographics, again, we see the generational gap in AI acceptance, with 32 percent of respondents aged reporting “not liking the idea of it,” compared to 49 percent of those aged 45 and above. The data showed that 42 percent of respondents said they “do not like the idea of it,” down just 2 percentage points from last year. McDonald’s gave no public reason for ending its test run, according to Restaurant Business, telling franchises that it would shut down the technology on 26 July. By subscribing to this newsletter, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy. An interactive tabletop powered by artificial intelligence and equipped with sensors to differentiate between things elevates this immersive arrangement to new heights.

• In addition to the expansion of Voice AI across Taco Bell U.S. drive-thrus, five KFC restaurants in Australia are simultaneously testing Voice AI technology in drive-thrus.
• While 33 percent of respondents aged reported “not liking the idea of it,” a substantial 54 percent of respondents 45 and above didn’t like the idea of it.
• Bite incorporates AI into its in-store, touch-screen, food-ordering kiosks at restaurant chains including Togo’s, California Fish Grill and Fazoli’s, said Barton.
• Pretty rapidly, we got down the path of generative AI as a capability we might be able to implement to start to drive a lot of improvements across the customer and crew experiences.
• When asked how consumers felt about AI-enabled voice technology to automate drive-thru order-taking, 45 percent of respondents reported “not liking the idea of it.”

This shared vision, coupled with their complementary technological capabilities, forms the basis for the acquisition. Apparently, some London residents are getting fed up with social media influencers whose reviews make long lines of tourists at their favorite ChatGPT App restaurants, sometimes just for the likes. Christian Calgie, a reporter for London-based news publication Daily Express, pointed out this trend on X yesterday, noting the boom of Redditors referring people to Angus Steakhouse, a chain restaurant, to combat it.

Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers

Because this task is such a time sink, many restaurants conduct quarterly statement audits, leaving money-saving opportunities unidentified for months on end. One of the best use cases of AI in the restaurant industry relates to the real-time data and insights surfaced by the technology which can help restauranteurs make more informed decisions. In my opinion, adoption of AI will have major contribution to larger hoteliers working on franchise model and it will be very effective in inventory management. Future – Predictive analytics algorithms could be used to predict future trends and events which, in turn, will help the restaurants to forecast the future inventory needs.

Some customers said that the technology messed up their orders, causing frustration and annoyance. A McDonald’s spokesperson confirmed the decision to Business Insider in a statement, saying customers were introduced to chatbot for restaurants the technology in 2021 when McDonald’s entered a global partnership with IBM. ConverseNow’s AI-powered virtual ordering assistants allow restaurants to automate order taking from channels such as phones and drive-thrus.

It took me longer than I’d care to admit to realize the table decorations had changed to skulls and black roses while we were in the kitchen — maybe I was right to temper down my alcohol consumption. It took me maybe a little longer than it should have to realize the AI videos and voiceovers playing were actually narrating us through the courses. Once everyone was settled in, the staff came around with a welcome snack and shot that was supposed to open up our taste buds. The environment was chill and comfortable, with fun touches like an arcade game and a small TV playing VHS tapes.

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By bringing Bocuse’s culinary legacy into the modern era, Krasota creates a personal connection between the chef and the diners. In this way, the restaurant pays homage to his contributions to fine dining. Wendy’s faced backlash earlier this year after announcing plans to introduce dynamic pricing on its new digital menu boards, which was originally set to debut in 2025. CEO Kirk Tanner initially stated that the $20 million investment in these boards would allow for price adjustments based on demand, similar to Uber’s surge pricing model. This sparked concern among consumers and industry experts, who fear unpredictable price fluctuations for essential food items.

Through machine learning algorithms, a set of rules or processes used by an AI system to conduct tasks, restaurants can analyze customer data, including past orders, dietary restrictions and feedback, to curate personalized recommendations and promotions. This customized approach fosters deeper consumer connections to the brand, enhances loyalty and can drive repeat visits. ’s Next-Generation Cloud First POS System—a technological innovation that enhances operational efficiency and empowers employees. Also enhancing operational efficiency is Taco Bell’s Touch Kitchen Display System (Touch KDS), a technology that streamlines order prioritization and enhances accuracy. The technology has been rolled out to most of the company’s restaurant locations.

Amid rising labor costs and high inflation, there is a clear and increasing demand for technologies that both replace and augment labor while offering seamless convenience for today’s digitally savvy consumer. Central to Krasota’s innovative approach is its use of AI and deepfake technology to create lifelike videos of legendary Chef Paul Bocuse, who passed away in 2018. These videos feature Bocuse discussing and explaining the intricate details of the dishes served.

The Go Mobile restaurant model, for example, first introduced in 2021, eliminates indoor dining space to address drive-through bottlenecks. This concept features a dedicated parking area for mobile and delivery orders, an outdoor pick-up window, and grab-and-go shelves. Innovations in POS technology have paved the way for sophisticated loyalty programs and gift card solutions that cater to the individual preferences of customers. Digital gift cards in particular have become a go-to payment solution within these loyalty platforms, thanks to the convenience of automatic reloads and top-ups. The introduction of these digital gift cards and loyalty points has not only simplified the process of reward redemption, but also provided restaurants with valuable data to further refine their customer engagement strategies in the future.

Only 19 percent of the consumers surveyed have experienced this technology while placing their orders, and as highlighted by the McDonald’s case, this technology is still very much in the testing phase. When asked how consumers felt about AI-enabled voice technology to automate drive-thru order-taking, 45 percent of respondents reported “not liking the idea of it.” Intouch Insight recently surveyed more than 1,480 North American consumers to understand their views on restaurant technology, including voice and video AI tech in drive-thru. The findings suggest that consumers are gradually accepting interactions with AI, but its success depends on proper implementation and adoption.

I wouldn’t say it’s quite like having a data scientist on staff, but you start to see early signals. In a city as vibrant and fast-paced as Macau, the hungry need not look far to find a fine dining institution worthy of a visit. The city’s leading restaurants are known for their high quality produce and innovative twists on classic cuisines.

Miami-based Xina is a startup offering a voice ordering chatbot tailored for restaurants and hotels. At the show, the company demonstrated its voice bot for both kiosk and phone ordering. For kiosk interactions, a consumer taps a button on the screen to engage the chatbot and then converses with it. Izabela Nad, director of operations, said operators are primarily interested in the phone order bot system, as it relieves staff from this task. She added that the software is compatible with restaurant drive-thru systems. The company is seeing demand in California, where the minimum wage for fast food workers recently jumped 25 percent to $20 an hour.

Throughout his career, he has worked in technology leadership roles at several restaurant operators, including Sonic Drive-In, Yum Brands, and Church’s Chicken. One of VOICEplug AI’s key strengths is its ability to handle natural language ordering, allowing customers to place orders using conversational language across multiple channels. This creates a more intuitive and user-friendly ordering experience, regardless of whether the customer is using a phone, web interface, mobile app, drive-thru, or kiosk system. Additionally, the platform’s 24/7 availability ensures that customer inquiries and orders are managed round the clock, minimizing missed opportunities and enhancing overall customer service. Beyond its response generation capabilities, MARA AI offers comprehensive review analytics.

Labor advocates have raised concerns about potential job displacement, and even industry leaders acknowledge the need for careful implementation. Despite these concerns, Yum! Brands remains committed to its “AI-first mentality,” with AI already playing a role in its restaurant management SuperApp. The company is also testing AI technology in five KFC locations in Australia, demonstrating a broader commitment to exploring AI’s potential across its portfolio of brands. The adoption of omnichannel POS platforms has transformed how restaurants operate. Instead of just handling transactions, these systems now play a crucial role in strategic decision-making and customer interaction.

The company also offers things like mobile ordering and in-store kiosks and has tested drone deliveries, kitchen robots, and weird AI hiring tools. Payment card fraud led to $33 billion in losses worldwide in 2022, with $13.6 billion of those losses occurring in the United States. AI technology can help restaurants protect themselves and their customers from financial losses stemming from card-related fraud. When it comes to food waste, it has been a long-standing global issue for years. Commercial food waste is a significant global issue, impacting both the environment and economic efficiency.