Additional Coverage:
- Burger King’s new AI agent will listen to orders and ‘coach’ workers on being ‘hospitable’ (nbcnews.com)
Burger King’s New AI Assistant, “Patty,” Aims to Boost Drive-Thru Friendliness
Fast-food giant Burger King is rolling out a new artificial intelligence assistant named “Patty” to its drive-thru operations. Powered by an OpenAI base model, this AI voice will reside in employee headsets, aiming to streamline workflow and gather data on “friendliness” during customer interactions.
Patty is a core component of the new BK Assistant web and app platform, designed to offer training and operational support to restaurant staff. Its capabilities range from alerting managers about out-of-stock items to helping employees recall ingredients for limited-time offers. A key function will be analyzing conversations between employees and customers at the drive-thru.
Burger King clarified to NBC News that BK Assistant will not record all employee conversations, emphasizing that the goal isn’t to “score” individuals or enforce rigid scripts. However, the system will monitor interactions from the moment a customer arrives to place an order until their vehicle departs.
The AI will collect data points from employee-customer exchanges, focusing on keywords such as “welcome,” “please,” and “thank you.” The company states these keywords are signals to help managers understand overall service patterns.
Thibault Roux, Burger King’s chief digital officer, explained the system’s development, stating, “One of the ways that we started this was, you know, picking certain keywords… but it’s one mechanism that was used to iterate on how to define friendliness.” He further described the tool as a “coaching tool” designed to help employees enhance hospitality and address operational complexities.
The voice-enabled headset system is currently undergoing a pilot program in 500 Burger King restaurants. Both the web and app versions of BK Assistant are slated for a nationwide rollout to all U.S. Burger King locations by the close of the year.