Wendy’s Has a Major Drive-Thru Change Coming Soon

With more and more automation entering the fast food landscape, the drive-thru experience is becoming increasingly high-tech. The pros: We get to our hot fries and crispy sandwiches even quicker. The cons: many, many cases of robot-to-person miscommunication. In fact, so many hilarious videos of McDonald’s ordering issues have surfaced online, the company decided to pull the plug on its chatbot ordering systems completely.

However, not all fast food giants are backing away from the challenges posed by AI assistance. Some are leaning into the budding technology, making revolutionary changes to drive-thru operations that will—hopefully—close the communication gaps and get every order right, every time. 

Wendy’s, for example, has been focusing on ways to make an AI operating system that aims to eliminate order errors and make the drive-thru experience more inclusive—and it seems to be working.

Wendy’s Announces a Change in Drive-Thru AI

In 2023, Wendy’s rolled out Wendy’s FreshAI, an advanced AI platform developed in partnership with Google Cloud, in select markets. The goal was to improve operating systems and “[overcome] the challenges traditional AI could not solve in the drive-thru,” according to a brand statement.

One of those challenges? Language barriers. Earlier this year, Wendy’s configured its FreshAI to accept orders in Spanish, the second most common language in America. The update was meant to make the restaurant experience easier and more inclusive for Spanish speakers as well as improve the efficiency of order processing overall, minimizing errors and speeding up service times. 

Wendy’s has been testing this latest upgrade, which allows a customer to pull up to the drive-thru and say “Spanish” or “Español” into the microphone at the start of their order for the AI to switch to Spanish for the rest of the transaction, for months now. And two years after rolling out its AI drive-thru system, the brand has announced it plans to expand the platform even further.

“We are encouraged by the results of testing at select company restaurants, and we will broaden the implementation in 2025 and across more company and franchisee restaurants that will unlock margin expansion opportunities,” Wendy’s President and CEO Kirk Tanner said in a third-quarter earnings call.

Wendy’s has been clear that the interactive technology is being used to assist, not replace, Wendy’s restaurant staff, so the crew can “focus on what matters most: preparing and serving hot and delicious food customized for our fans and building the relationships that bring them back,” a brand statement reads.

The goal for AI-led drive-thru systems is to increase efficiency since the Wendy’s drive-thru sees about 70% of the restaurant’s orders daily, according to Tanner.

FreshAI coming to all Wendy’s drive-thrus has become a question of when, not if. With the 2024 update allowing Spanish-speaking customers to use their preferred language, Wendy’s has already opened doors to a multi-lingual operating system in the not-too-far future—and we don’t think it will stop there.

“Right now, we’re in this continuous improvement, learning, getting our accuracy to a place where we like, and then you’ll see us deployed across the system,” said Tanner.

In the great fast food race to stay modern and relevant, it seems Wendy’s is currently setting the pace.