I will say, there is a Wendy’s near me that is piloting an AI drive-thru experience, and I prefer it 10-to-1 to the human version. It had a clear voice, it didn’t disappear randomly, it understood what I meant the first time (even though I was speaking naturally - I didn’t know at first it was AI), and it asked me for feedback (“what sort of sauce?”) in a very understandable way. Drive-thrus are famously a bad experience - I’m happy to see improvement here.
I've had two interactions with Wendy's AI drive-through, and the first time I was pleasantly surprised, but the second time it would not stop suggesting add-ons after every single thing I said. It was comically pushy.
A human would have pretty quickly picked up on my increasingly exasperated "no, thanks" and stopped doing it, but the AI was completely blind to my growing frustration, following the upsell directive without any thought.
It reminded me of when I worked in retail as a kid and we were required to ask if they needed any batteries at checkout, even if they were just buying batteries. I learned pretty quickly to ignore that mandate in appropriate situations (unless the manager was around).
Makes me wonder how often employees are smart enough to ignore hard rules mandated by far-off management that would hurt the company's reputation if they were actually followed rigidly. AI isn't going to have that kind of sensitivity to subtle clues in human interaction for some time, I suspect.
It's the speed limit problem.
Everyone who's detached from reality whether an MBA in HQ or some two bit in the internet comment section who fancies themselves a central planner thinks that the problem is the people on the ground not following "the rules" when in reality "the rules", in just about any situation where there are rules are crap if followed and often themselves are knowingly crap written in response to other crap ("government says you need to tell you wear this PPE, no exception, yes we know you'll get heat stroke in some conditions, we're not checking <wink>" type stuff).
So the solution is more AI: to replace c-suit.
It most certainly would be a very interesting experiment... Alas, the real powers-be would never let such an experiment off the ground... EVER!
That is indeed a great solution that will never happen.
Let's make sure we're living in a somewhat egalitarian society and our systems are aligned with that, shall we?
you've hit the nail on the head here. AI rollout has this hilarious consequence where "lower" departments have for a long time insultated the c-suite against their worst excesses and worst mistakes. Now that barrier is slowly crumbling due to AI-first, giving the c-suite an incredibly rare opportunity to discover how bad some of its ideas are in practice and there's less opportunity to blame those outcomes on others.
I am pretty certain that if you are in an org where c-suite shifts reasons for negative results to external sources, they will find a way to do the same in the age of AI.
I've always thought of this as the reality grease problem.
We need rules. Yet the infinite variety of reality creates infinite situations in which the rules are counterproductive.
Previously: the ground folks had a brain and bent/ignored certain rules in the interest of getting their job done.
The principle peril of creating a more end-to-end automated, lights-out business is that there is no longer a brain to grease the interface between c-level and reality.
And c-level is never going to admit their own mistakes.
Ergo, you're going to get a lot of command-heavy companies that plow themselves into the ground over the next 10-20 years, because the low-level people they're going to fire were performing an essential function.
(Note: the easiest escape, inasmuch as I can see one, in radically data-driven management, with frequent random shifts between analogous but independent metrics)
That was my first thought as well. Every customer-facing job has ridiculous requirements from corporate that any employee with half a brain knows to skip. I wonder how much more exasperating customer service experiences will get with the proliferation of language models that don't know how to soft-pedal this stuff.
Big box retail here.
One of my line managers described the corporate management style as "Asking for an unreasonably excessive goal in order to motivate people to work towards a reasonable outcome".
That, and the CYA safety stuff, which corporate orders us to follow but does not in all cases actually expect us to follow; If they did they would have taken their regulations written in blood and asked somebody "How many more people do we need to hire to implement this?" So the management that needs to actually deliver on hard, visible cleanliness & sale-related metrics relaxes enforcement until barely anybody actually knows that the policy exists. Part of their job is to be ritually fired when that goes wrong.
seems they took Dude, Where's My Car as an inspiration?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdyU_eUm1U
aaaand then?
No and then.
I'm optimistic that the ease of enforcing rules like this and better customer data (maybe via the apps) will lead to a better format. The annoyance grows from the rules causing us to be prompted to do or respond to things we don't want or need. When the taco bell guy asks if I want to add sour cream for the third time, I am getting pretty annoyed. I don't like sour cream, period. But every time they hit me with "would you like to double the chicken", even if I wasn't a yes upon driving to the window, I cave when they ask and both parties are probably happier for it. Management isn't totally wrong here because there are upsells that all of us would take when presented at the right time. It's a bit like ad targeting. Its just happening in realtime at the window.
So the problem in my mind is the format. How do you not ask 3 questions with every dish? Maybe the screens can help. Now that you have an AI that can follow the rules always and likely follow more complex decision trees quickly "at the window", it reasonable chains could start to dial in how this works to be more targeted and active vs passive at the right times.
I wish I was optimistic that data and compliant robots will be used to make things better for customers.
I think it's far more likely that they will, at best, be used to do whatever horrible and unpleasant things that temporarily juice sales numbers. Across our economy we'll see this play out in every customer service interaction. And a wave of perniciously persistent upselling attempts will wash over us all.
After a while, we won't stop noticing that the simple process of buying a soda requires saying no to 15 different requests to subscribe to a service, put our credit card on file, sign up for notifications, and consider buying cookies, a burger, and some fries. But our lives will be worse for it.
I would hope you can actually skip that automatically by ignoring the follow-up and immediately driving off to the next stage.
If it knows what you asked for + sees you drove to the next stage, it should automatically finalize the order.
I'm very curious as to whether it'd listen or it's design even let's it listen to you if you tell it to stop upselling at the onset.
I’ve always wondered if that battery spiel paid off. Do you have any stats? I never once was at Radio Shack and was like “yeah let me get some of your batteries” when they asked. Maybe I’m a fringe case.
Their battery business was strong even towards the end though, the "even if you're only buying batteries" part of the GP post subtly telling
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I've had minimal contact with drive-thrus in the past decade, because ordering ahead online is superior in every way.
It's also parallelized instead of having a single queue.
Works when you actually have that option. Usually the only time I ever go to fast food places are late at night when everything else is closed. Most open-late fast food joints in smaller cities and towns will only have the drive through open, not the restaurant area.
In no way does this refute the usefulness of ordering online relative to voice. Maybe those food places don't have online ordering, but that isn't a fundamental limitation.
if you have the computing infrastructure to run AI in the drive through, at night, when everything else is closed, then you probably have the infrastructure to do online orders via an app.
Of course you do - and some do (McDonalds, Chick-fil-A). But not all of them.
I've used the Tacbo Bel AI drive-thru and came away with the same thought. I kind of groaned at first but it was very accurate, even when making adjustments.
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I have never heard someone describe drive-thrus as a “famously bad experience.”
There’s a StarBucks near me that takes about 3-4 minutes per car at the drive thru. Frequently there would be 3-6 cars in line. Yes, people literally wait 15-20 minutes in line before they can even order, much less get their order.
Sure, maybe they’re just inefficient and shouldn’t be rewarded. However the people there are indeed working feverishly (and paid poorly).
Going inside and ordering isn’t any faster.
I’d put this in the “famously bad experience” category.
I've always been puzzled that Starbucks drive through is a thing, and even has long queues. It's coffee, do people really drive there just to get a cup? I understand if it's along the highway but otherwise. You pay the premium of the brand without getting to see or enjoy the facilities. Just my feeling as european, maybe just a cultural thing.
The US has very few coffee chains and StarBucks dominates. Not like the European cities that seem to have a bakery on every block!
A lot of people say StarBucks coffee is bad, but it’s far better than the burnt motor oil sold at fast food places, gas stations, and donut shops. The upscale coffee competitors are even more expensive and never have a drive-thru.
Worse, donuts shops and gas stations never have real milk creamer — only the extremely artificial powdered stuff (not made from milk). Or they’ll sell a bad cappuccino for $5.
Some people stop every day on the way in to work rather than make coffee at home in the morning. They’re often ordering some caffeine concoction rather than drip coffee. I have known people with $100+ per month Starbucks habits.
They make the dessert-coffee drinks that some folks like. Those can be kind of a pain to clean up after, with all the frothed milk and sugar…
Of course, probably shouldn’t have one every day anyway!
Coffee-to-go can make sense if the place already has a pot going, I guess.
Yeah it’s this, Starbucks isn’t a coffee place; it’s a caffeinated drink place. Their brewed coffee (outside of their higher end tasting room stores) is deliberately undrinkable to push you to their espresso drinks or their sugary concoctions.
Its a flavored milk business that also sells coffee
That’s spot on! I really like the chocolate milk at Starbucks. And sometimes I will get one with the optional shot of coffee added.
Getting a coffee, small snack or other beverage might be the only sane thing to order to a car though.
(re: drive-thru) You're going to be waiting aorund in a really long queue for Starbucks regardless.
Might as well wait in line in a comfy/cosy car where a barista will hand you your drink, than walk inside into a hot, loud, crowded environment and stand around awkwardly in a tiny corner, listening for a mangled version of your name to be yelled.
Starbucks in 2025 isn't Starbucks of 2010. There is no 'premium brand facilities' anymore, just premium pricing.
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Standing in line at McDonalds, to pick up an online order, made me think that maybe the drive thru isn't that great of an idea during rush hours. The staff needs to handle orders in a very specific sequence, to get the cars moving, meaning that they'll need to priorities drive thru orders. Wolt/DoorDash impose the same problem to an extend. I've notice that orders from in restaurant customers is frequently seems to be de-prioritized to get the drive thru line moving or to get the deliveries out.
It provides an awful experience for other customers, and the drive thru is still going to be slowed down, if someone has a weird or large order, because they frequently can't move that customer to the side, so now everyone has to wait.
I think the big problem DoorDash and the like have, is they obfuscate the capacity connection between real restaurants.
In the real world, if you drive up to a McDonalds, and there's a line around the building for drive-thru, you can make a decision. (Is it worth the long wait, or not?). In the real world, if you go to a sit-down restaurant, and they're full, they simply turn you away (often with a buzzer or a text callback or whatever, for the 'next available table') and you can make a decision. (is it worth the long wait, or not?).
DoorDash and the like, knows about (but intentionally hides) whether a restaurant can actually handle your incoming order -- they never admit if a restaurant is busy or falling behind, because then a human might use that information to decide not purchase.
So, DoorDash implies to humans that restaurants are open and ready, orders stack up indefinitely far beyond what a real-world restaurant normally would take, and real-world restaurants have to magically 1.5x to 3x their capacity out of thin air.
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It's not a systems-based issue -- no combination of "moving orders" or "separating orders" or "more apps / AI" could solve it. It's a fundamental capacity issue -- restaurants (especially drive-thru places) don't staff enough people to handle making more than a certain number of orders at a time, and shuffling that capacity from window to counter to drive-thru is just obfuscating that fact.
I observed the same thing around the time online ordering became more popular. It used to be that at a lunch spot, cashiers or phone operators could restrict the order flow a bit to keep the kitchen from getting overwhelmed with orders. DoorDash et al. have no interest in that, they only want to take as many orders as possible, as quickly as possible; they have an incentive to obfuscate the real wait time from customers.
Waiting in line to order your lunch is skin in the game. Even the sight of a long line is enough to help load balance lunch orders between restaurants. I do wonder though that if restaurants could feed back to DoorDash and limit the order flow with online-only "surge pricing", if that would help in the same way to forestall kitchen overwhelm.
There is a Starbucks in downtown Chicago that is always empty, but has a 30 minute wait due to online orders.
It is incredibly frustrating cause you have to wait while they fulfill online orders.
They should have priority queues to ensure that certain order types take priority
I don't know how true this is, but I recall hearing many years ago that McDonalds operating model is to anticipate orders during heavy periods as opposed to making on items only on demand.
If this is true, then they don't have to worry about the order in which they process orders.
McDonald's around here have designated wait spaces with numbers. I've had them direct me out of line and an employee then brings the bag out to me when it is ready. So they do seem to have solved that problem.
> Standing in line at McDonalds, to pick up an online order
Oh, mine lets you order online and then pick up in the drive through.
Mine does that as well, but it's like a five minute walk or two minutes on a bike, and I'd feel silly walking through the drive thru.
It's not my impression that online ordering for pick-up is massively popular here. We do it, because out side rush hours we can order, walk straight over and our food will be done a few minutes after we get there.
People are "famously bad" at correctly valuing their time. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone spend $x of their time making a business case to purchase something that costs $y, where x > y.
Thats only if you can get $x for every minute of your time. On paper, it'd be cheaper for me to hire someone to empty and fill my dishwasher, but in reality the time I spend doing the dishes isn't time I would be spending earning money.
if youve ever been inside to listen to these kinds of orders these people WILL find a way to still take 3-4 minutes to order from an AI. if an AI can get those numbers down i want copies of those transcripts so i can learn how to do this myself
Sadly true.
In theory, you could move both the ordering and payment processing into an app, so there's only a pickup window. That'd let the no-attention-span ditherers take their 15 minutes to order without holding anyone else up. Obvious downsides - electric bill at the AI DC, barrier to new/occasional customers (app required), and the C-suite probably loves holding customers mentally "hostage" in the drive-through line.
Honestly sometimes sitting in my car away from everyone for an extra 20 minutes without actually having to interact with anyone is exactly what I am looking for. No other demands on my attention. While waiting for my over priced sugar coffee concoction I can just relax for a bit.
Some similar experiences here, and not just at Starbucks. Counting heads, I've too-often noticed that the busy-looking employees outnumber the customers, and still the service is dead slow.
Maybe that's part of the experience they're selling? - "you're a VIP, just look at the legion of minions rushing to serve you!" - but I find it a distasteful waste of time, and avoid going back.
I got trapped in a Burger King drive thru for half an hour. Car parked in front of me, cars stuck behind me, concrete barrier on the right keeping me from pulling away.
No clue what they were holding on, no apology once they got to the window, nothing. Emailing RBI got an empty response back on top of refusing to provide a refund for the order or any kind of customer recovery.
At least my bank won the chargeback.
What is the deal with trapping you in anyway?
Most Wendy's without a kiosk have the cashier's chronically ignoring customers at the counter as online orders queue up from the receipt printer. I'm on a personal boycott for this shit tier service.
I find it hilarious how painful starbucks has made the process of ordering coffee. I only drink drip coffee and think we deserve a distinct queue. This phenomenon has, a little distressingly, spread to places like dunkin donuts. People love to drink their sugary milk with a splash of coffee, I guess. I don't begrudge them this but I do question paying $7 a day for what must be a significantly-increased chance of getting diabetes. Curiously, these same people often turn their nose up at equally-sugary soda. You'd think people would just learn to make this at home with a moka pot and a milk skimmer that costs less than what they paid for a single drink...
Between this and the inexplicably high cost of hot black coffee, i've just given up ordering from "coffee shops" and buy it from wendys and mcdonalds instead. The coffee is both cheaper and delivered faster and it could taste a lot worse.
> inexplicably high cost of hot black coffee
My guess: if the prices reflected the marginal costs of the product inputs, amortised machine wear and ingredient storage and handling and the labour to make, black coffee would be so much cheaper that it would attract too many people away from higher-priced, higher-margin options.
Prices are based on analysis of the effect on demand rather then as a representation of the cost of the item to produce relative to other products.
McDonald's for example has cheap black coffee, because it's an incentive to get you to buy some overpriced food at the same time. Whereas a coffee place is primarily just selling the drinks.
They’re usually a lot slower than going inside and people have been cracking jokes about the quality of the speakers since the 80s.
Interesting. I've found going inside to be much slower because the cashiers are so busy with the drive thru. I guess this probably varies from brand to brand, if not store to store.
Definitely "Dunkin" (as it's called now) can fuck right off. (And don't let this old man get started on store employees that allow a caller on the phone to take higher priority than a customer standing in front of them.)
> caller on the phone to take higher priority than a customer standing in front of them
Oh. That triggers one horrific memory.
I was buying some bread at a nice local bakery. I wanted a few items. While three or four of us were in line, someone called in. The in-store employee pulled the last loaf of one variety off the shelf to reserve it for them.
When I complained, the manager told me that that was the correct move and they supported the decision. I suggested that polling the people who were actually in the store - actual, not just potential customers - before giving away the last loaf is probably wiser.
Yeah... that's just not the experience with drive-thrus in Central Ohio.
Maybe they’re less busy there but everywhere I went in California it was faster to park and walk inside if there was anyone in line ahead of you, which was almost always the case. The problem is that you’re limited by the slowest order ahead of you but the same place usually has multiple registers inside and the people who are waiting for pickup don’t block you from ordering. (Head of line blocking in real life)
This used to be worse when everyone was paying cash and you’d be stuck behind someone counting out quarters or dropping their change.
When I worked at McDonald's in high school, the drive thru times were tracked (for manager shift bonuses) and the in store orders were not. Drive thru was always prioritized over in store if there was a possible wait on anything.
The only time management gave any priority to in store would be the case where a bus load of kids would show up before or after a school trip. That was just to get them out as quickly as possible before they can make a mess.
Starbucks allows you to order from home, and drive to the store. The ones I go to usually have my Americano waiting for me when I get there.
Starbucks also seems to allow store managers to shut down app orders if the store is too busy.
McDonald’s—-I’m a connoisseur—-allows you to order through their app, but they clearly don’t start orders until the customer speaks their order code to one of the outdoor kiosks. The only parallelism is between the customer waiting for the order and them making the order.
I like McDonald’s vanilla lattes but I hate McDonald’s Americanos.
Regardless, I'm not gong to eat out of my lap in a car. Or sit there needlessly running the car engine while waiting to move 10 feet forward.
I suppose the best thing about drive-thru is that there is plenty of parking now at these "restaurants" when I run in to eat.
It’s worse now because fast food isn’t fast, and you end up committed with online ordering. You need to online order or pay a big premium, then you discover the drive through line is a trip to narnia only when you arrive.
people rather sit in their car for 15 minutes than walk for 1 to save 10
Or because their kid or dog is in the car. Or because they have difficulty walking. Or because they just want to decompress and scroll their phone or listen to the news for 10 minutes. Or they hate crowds. Or they are immune compromised and don't want to be mingling with a bunch of people around a counter. Or they have social anxiety. Or they have a cold and just don't feel like getting out of their car. Or they are expecting a call from the baby sitter. Or they are having a fight with their spouse which they don't want to export into the public.
IMO, drive throughs are great, I hate crowds and queues (yes, the car line is a queue, you know what I mean), and it is much kinder to my bad discs in my back (transitions from sitting/standing is just murder, steady state is much better). It would take a egregious queue to get me to go in in most cases. But sure, I'm lazy or just reaaally bad at math. edit: I also find it hard to hear in high volume rooms with lots of reflections (like an in-n-out), and yes, the drive through can have it's own sonic issues, but it is generally smoother for me.
Sorry, but I get tired when people take the most uncharitable read, especially when they blanket apply it to everyone.
people are allowed to make broad generalizations without listing caveats for every exception, this kind of pedantry is exhausting
people on the whole are lazy and bad at math, yes some people are not... that's not who we're talking about
I think your parent made a perfectly good point. Going into the store is a whole lot less pleasant than staying in my car and waiting a couple extra minutes in an environment I enjoy.
If I’m in a hurry then yes maybe I can shave a few minutes by going in, but if I’m getting fast food I probably don’t feel like interacting with people, and listening to crappy piped music while standing in an artificially lit corporate chain restaurant waiting for my order.
Don't disagree with your generalization of the interiors of fast food restaurants, but I can't say I prefer the interior of my car either.
oh central ohio, well in that case it's definitely everyone else that is wrong
Or maybe you and everyone else is of a certain age that y'all need to get your hearing checked more frequently.
right again! logically we all need hearing aids specifically for drive-thrus
Do I win a prize?!
The poor quality of drive through communication is a common joke because it’s such a universal experience.
Hasn’t been the case since the 80s. Speaker tech works really well these days.
Speakers work well if they're set up well, maintained well and used correctly. Most drive thrus sound like shit because none of those are true.
So the ai here isn’t what’s improving anything, it’s the companies forcing themselves to upgrade.
But all of the chains around me have upgraded their drive throughs years ago and they’ve been great, outside of the recorded pre-sell they do. That’s caused me to just go inside and pick up my mobile orders.
Never mind background noise of traffic, etc. Location of the drive-thru, time of day, is important as well.
I disagree. First, there’s a 40-year chasm between the 80s and “these days”. Next - anecdata? I have found horrible drive thru audio systems in the past decade, let alone in the last millennium.
I usually prefer to park the car, go and order to go inside.
This is a crazy claim. I still routinely get bad speakers or mics, 40 years after your claimed cutoff. Where do you live? I expect you must have really great drive throughs pretty much everywhere near you in order to make this bold of a refutation of the comment above.
Do you not know anyone who has been through an American drive-thru?
I drive through them at least once a week. Ordering is not hard. Talking the order is a lot harder -- I've done that too.