Watsonx Orders Helps Restaurant Operators Maximize Revenue With AI-Powered Order Taker For Drive-Thrus
IBM News, Wednesday, October 18,2023
We're pleased to announce IBM watsonx Orders, an AI-powered voice agent for drive-thrus of quick-service restaurants. Powered by the latest technology from IBM Research, watsonx Orders is designed to help restaurant owners solve persistent labor challenges by handling almost all orders and interactions without the help of human cashiers, while delighting restaurant guests with quick service and accurate orders.
Watsonx Orders joins IBM's watsonx family of AI Assistants that help you easily deploy and scale conversational AI to maximize revenue and lower costs. It's finely tuned to understand fast food menu items, customization options, limited time offers and promotions. Integrated into the corporate and restaurant-level points of sale, watsonx Orders can tell customers what's available-and what's not-at that moment. And it routes final orders to the cash register and screens and printers in the kitchen.
Across the industry, more than 70 percent of the revenue for quick-service restaurants comes through drive-thrus. Operators consider the drive-thru the most important sales channel by far, even more so than sales inside the restaurant. What's more, the order taker position in the drive-thru is one of the most difficult and stressful among the crew-which is why it's also one of the most difficult positions to fill for every shift. So when restaurant owners can't find someone to fill the order-taker position, either because of unfilled job opening or absenteeism, they face disastrous revenue drops for shifts or whole days.