After announcing its latest acquisition, it’s clear that the McDonald’s restaurant franchise has a plan in place – and it probably involves hiring more engineers and fewer drive-thru attendants.
The Golden Arches has taken a company called Apprente into the fold, and it’s a startup that specializes in artificial intelligence tech that can understand voice – in this case, orders being relayed in different languages and accents.
McDonald’s has reportedly been testing the Apprente technology at select locations and promises that it will allow for "faster, simpler, and more accurate order taking” via the drive-thru.
But the team at Apprente will do more than just integrate a solution. They will form the founding members of a new Silicon Valley group McDonald’s will use to build out its tech capabilities. It’s being called McD Tech Labs, and it will support what McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook calls the company’s “culture of innovation.” The company is reportedly expanding the Lab’s team by hiring additional engineers and data scientists.
There’s one thing for certain: if McDonald’s can get the AI drive-thru to function in a way that still attracts customers, it will likely embolden the fast-food giant to invest more and more in tech and, as a result, cut the size of its human workforce.
And it’s not exactly trying to hide that strategy. In 2017, McDonald’s unveiled what it’s calling the “Velocity Growth Plan,” and it focuses on encouraging customers to use kiosks and mobile apps for their own convenience. The plan is for every U.S. McDonald’s location to be equipped with kiosks by 2020, and this latest acquisition may even help them be more effective.
Not to mention, McDonald’s has made a few other tech acquisitions over the past year, including a company called Dynamic Yield which can offer drive-thru menus that customize the user’s view based on things like time-of-day or trending menu items.
