In Schofields in western Sydney, 50km from the CBD, locals doing a late-night Macca’s run may have noticed a major change to the drive-thru over the past few weeks.
The fast-food giant has been quietly trialling AI-powered drive thru ordering technology in the early hours of the morning.
Be the first to know when news breaks. Download our new app
MORE: McDonald’s forced into surprise retreat
On Thursday, Macca’s new “dedicated order assistant”, powered by Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, was switched on for the lunch rush for the first time.
“It’s my job to make sure the crew can focus on preparing your order, but bear with me as I’m still learning,” a sign under the speaker reads.
“If you still prefer a crew member, just let me know, my feelings won’t be hurt.”
MORE: Maccas Aus quietly removes common item
Australia is only the second McDonald’s market globally to trial the technology after the US, where it is currently in more than a dozen restaurants.
While McDonald’s says it’s too early to say when and if the feature is rolled out more broadly, the company is adamant it will not have any impact on jobs.
“Absolutely not,” McDonald’s Australia chief restaurant officer David McMullen told news.com.au.
“There is absolutely no plan to reduce jobs in the restaurant.”
McDonald’s currently has more than 1025 locations across the country, around 85 per cent of which are franchised. Overall the company more than 115,000 people in restaurants and corporate offices, and is one of the largest youth employers in Australia.
While AI job cuts sweep through other industries, humans will keep making the food and serving customers at Macca’s for now — Mr McMullen does not expect to see a fully automated restaurant any time soon.
“At this stage, we’re only looking at AI as part of our drive-thru order-taking experience,” he said.
“This is a very, very early test and learn. We’ve got a lot to learn through this process and we’ll see where we go from there.”
Mr McMullen said just as with the rollout of self-service ordering kiosks in-store, the intention was “always around redeployment”.
“With innovation at Macca’s, always the first lens that we look at is, how do we make the lives of our managers and crew easier? And then secondly, how do we make the customer experience even better?” he said.
“That’s what the kiosk was about, and that’s what this is about as well. It’s about how do we redeploy crew throughout the restaurant to make sure we can deliver on that customer experience promise.”
He stressed “our restaurant teams are at the core of our customer experience, so this technology is designed to help our crew, not to replace them”.
“The software is designed to ultimately streamline the ordering process for our customers and allow our crew to focus more on the experiential pieces of drive through — fast and accurate service, great-tasting food, and then the service that’s made Macca’s so famous around the world,” he said.
As part of the trial, the technology will initially operate during specific parts of the day, allowing McDonald’s to “gather feedback, monitor performance and identify further opportunities to enhance the drive-thru experience”, the company said in a press release.
Schofields restaurant manager Kim said the trial was “really exciting”.
“It’s been really fun to test out,” she told news.com.au, adding it makes the job “so much easier”.
“The technology works pretty well in the trials that we’ve done.
“It really helps us improve the customer experience. It’s helped us be able to focus more on giving the customer more attention and take the load off the crew people.”
Kim also said she was not worried about AI coming for people’s jobs.
“No, not at all,” she said.
“I think it’s only helped us out more to give people more time and attention on other areas of the restaurant, like beverage. Providing a good customer experience … more than standing here and taking the cars.”
Among the results McDonald’s will be closely monitoring is response times — how long a customer is left waiting at the order box — a key metric for fast-food operators.
Ultimately it’s hoped the AI assistant will speed up the overall drive-thru experience.
While she’s not perfect — Macca’s insists it’s a “she” — it’s 99 per cent of way there. She can even make small talk, but not too much. And if you confuse her, a human crew member is on the line to quickly take over the order.
Mr McMullen acknowledged that as with any novel AI tech, there would be people wanting to mess with it.
“Oh, with any technology it’s always going to pique people’s interests,” he said.
“But at the moment it’s very much focused on that order-taking experience and how it can streamline that process. And we’ve always got our crew on standby to help any customers who may need some assistance through the process.”
Read related topics:Sydney