“We are currently in 5 test stores, having processed over 1M transactions with about 90% of orders completed without human escalations.”
McDonald’s customers could soon find themselves placing orders with an AI system. The chain is currently piloting an AI-powered drive-thru ordering platform called ArchIQ at five US locations.
The effort falls under a broader brand initiative known as McDonald’s Next, which was unveiled earlier this week. At the launch, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski stated that customers shouldn’t have to choose between “hospitality or speed,” per Fox Business.
An X account representing a McDonald’s franchisee indicated that Google is involved in the project.
“Meet Archy IQ – no, we are not new to AOT. In fact, we have been in this AI field for about 8 years. We sold our in-house model to IBM and moved on as it wasn’t good enough for our needs. As mentioned below, I wanted to hire Google (who uses NVIDIA) to service our AOT 3 years ago and found out today that Google is behind this project,” McFranchisee said.
“We are currently in 5 test stores, having processed over 1M transactions with about 90% of orders completed without human escalations. Impressive for a new test. Every McDonald’s in the US is getting their Google Edge Cloud blades installed in anticipation of this rollout. Archy will not only assist drive-thru orders but act as a master brain to help managers run a better restaurant. It’s like a personal assistant that alerts you to potential bottlenecks or issues,” the X account added.
Many users on the platform reacted negatively to the integration of AI. “No one wants this – we like dealing with smiling faces,” one user said.
“It’s already messing up sales with ‘anything else’ instead of ‘what else’. McDonald’s has fallen,” another user commented.
