Why order when you arrive at the place? Just have people talk to their phones, and make sure the order has some sanity checks and orders something similar to what they can order online? There's less noise talking to your phone, and you can do it without being in line.
> Why order when you arrive at the place?
Most of the time if I stop at a fast food place it isn't exactly planned out in advance. I'm usually already on the road or on my way home from some place.
Calling on the phone would also mean taking the time to stop and look up a phone number, and I'm sure most places would rather not take your order over the phone and would push you to use some app that at best will be used to track and spy on you and at worst could be used for discriminatory pricing. They can use the data taken directly from your device to decide what to charge you (iphone users pay 4% extra!) or they can use your phone number/device ID/whatever fingerprinting shit they're using and hand that off to data brokers and consumer reputation services to get detailed info about you like your income level and buying habits and use that to set the prices you'll be charged in real time. Zeta Global says you're rich, so all the menu prices pushed to the app on your phone are 10% more than what they show the guy behind you in line.
Some assumptions it seems you’re making:
* The customer has a phone
* The customer knows how to use the phone to do what you’re expecting
* The customer has cell service in their location
* The customer has the patience or ability to order before arriving at the restaurant
Sadly many restaurants already make same assumptions with QR code menu replacements. And the worst thing is they keep them despite everybody hating them.
Yes, I would like to go to this restaurant that sets higher expectations of its customers.
Well there's a few things that have to go right for that scenario to work. It's not impossible but I'd imagine the number of people that could take advantage of it is small.
If I have a passenger that can use the phone - it will be infinitely easier to have them place an order via app. They can look at the map, set up navigation, read through the menu and handle getting the order in, etc.
The driver needs to know where the restaurant is. A lot of time when I'm getting fast food - I'm on the interstate, I don't really know where I am, I just know I saw a sign saying the next exit has a Taco Bell. If anything asks me to confirm the restaurant location as 123 Main Street or in some city - I have no idea if that's right or not.
Maybe if it integrates with Android Auto and Google Maps so I can place an order and get navigated, that could work.
Another big issue is knowing the menu. I definitely wouldn't want to sit and have a robot read me the whole menu. There are some places where I could order without seeing the menu but - if you don't go very often you probably need to see the menu. And if you're not going very often you probably don't have their app on your phone anyway.
The apps don't take how busy the restaurants are into account. If I get to a place and it's slammed, I'll look around a bit for something else less busy, because I want to get back on the road. So I'm not really all that committed to a particular place anyway.
I also tend to not trust the apps. I can't tell you how many times I've placed an order only to find out they're out of something when I get there. If I order at the speaker I get that feedback immediately and can pick something else (or somewhere else).
Basically you need to have all of the following be true:
* Have nobody else in the car that could operate the phone for you * Know the restaurant location * Know the menu * Have the app * Ready to commit to any wait * Trust the app is correct
a LARGE amount of /drive through specific/ food purchases are impulse purchases /as they're driving down the road/. You /don't/ want someone using an app to do that. It misses the mark of what actual customers are doing in favor of "let's do a cool thing because smartphones/AI exist".
still a significant number of people who can't use phones well enough to do this, and a bunch of other people who wouldn't want to download spyware to do so