How AI employee assistants could reshape restaurant labor
When Burger King first announced its new AI-powered virtual assistant dubbed Patty last week, the new technology tool sparked a surprising amount of debate.
On paper, the voice AI assistant is designed to help employees with real-time support, like updating staff when menu items are out of stock or reminding them about specific item preparation instructions. This type of technology is not new to the industry, as Yum Brands, McDonald’s, and Starbucks have experimented with similar employee-facing AI assistants designed for automated back-end support.
However, Burger King’s Patty — which is currently being tested in 500 restaurants — also offers “coaching insights,” such as monitoring whether employees are saying “please” and “thank you” to guests. This particular feature has drawn negative reactions from both restaurant technology experts and the general public, with critics viewing it as a step toward excessive workplace surveillance.
While some of these tools – like Burger King’s Patty and Yum’s Byte Coach — seem designed to improve restaurant-level and individual employee performance, other similar AI labor tools are designed to help make employees’ jobs easier.
Last year, McDonald’s for example, began testing out “Boost,” which CEO Chris Kempczinski said is a shift manager AI-enabled capability. The generative AI-virtual managers will be designed to streamline operations and reduce employee stress, though there has been no further update on this technology since Kempczinski made the announcement last year.
Last June, Starbucks announced the launch of Green Dot Assist, a generative AI-powered chatbot that baristas can communicate with in real time to ask questions about making drinks or offering swaps and customizations to customers.
As this type of technology becomes more mainstream, the restaurant industry will find itself at a crossroads: is the purpose of a virtual AI assistant to make employees’ jobs easier, or is it a tool to help managers monitor their employees with an extra set of (virtual) eyes and ears?
“Workers may choose not to work for any employers who use these tools,” Kaelani said. “The technology itself is not the primary concern, but how it’s being utilized by businesses; either to enhance support for team members, or replace the human management who should be delivering value to those same team members.”
Contact Joanna at [email protected]
