Taco Bell is expanding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at drive-thrus and announced a new strategic partnership with an AI voice provider.
The fast food giant on Tuesday announced the expansion of a partnership with Omilia, a provider of a voice AI platform that the restaurant chain has deployed at hundreds of drive-thru locations around the country since 2023.
Taco Bell has deployed the Omilia voice AI capabilities at over 890 restaurants across 38 states to date, according to the announcement.
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“Omilia’s Voice AI gives us the ability to ease team members’ workloads and provides them the flexibility to engage with customers in more meaningful ways,” said Dane Mathews, global chief digital and technology at Taco Bell.
“Omilia’s platform has proven itself at scale in select U.S. restaurants, and continuing this strategic partnership supports our long-term digital and tech strategy,” Mathews added.
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The Omilia platform helps automate the ordering process when a customer pulls up to a drive-thru speaker and is capable of adapting to an individual location’s menu, real-time stocking levels, as well as limited-time offers that are available, which can make the ordering process more consistent and efficient for customers.
Dimitris Vassos, CEO and co-founder of Omilia, said that the “drive-thru environment is one of the most demanding – real-time, noisy, fast-paced, with menus that change by store and by day.”
The company said that general-purpose speech recognition platforms tend to struggle with various challenges fast food drive-thrus pose, ranging from road noise and regional accents, to potentially complicated order modifications and the fast pace of drive-thru service.
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Omilia’s features, including noise filtering and real-time menu adaptation, were designed to address those challenges, according to the company.
The announcement said that Taco Bell’s data found the transaction time in the drive-thru using voice AI is on par with, and in some cases faster than, traditional ordering methods.
Additionally, Taco Bell locations using voice AI reported higher employee retention compared with those where it hasn’t been deployed, which the company said will help improve the guest experience.
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