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Taco Bell announced an expansion of its artificial intelligence capabilities at drive‑thru locations, including a new strategic partnership with a voice AI provider.
The fast‑food chain revealed on Tuesday that it is expanding its partnership with Omilia, a voice AI platform provider that has been deployed at hundreds of drive‑thru locations nationwide since 2023.
To date, Taco Bell has implemented Omilia’s voice AI technology at more than 890 restaurants across 38 states, the company reported.
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Taco Bell is further expanding its partnership with Omilia, which currently provides a voice AI platform for hundreds of its drive‑thrus. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“Omilia’s Voice AI enables us to reduce team members’ workloads and allows them to engage with customers in more meaningful ways,” said Dane Mathews, global chief digital and technology officer at Taco Bell.
“Omilia’s platform has demonstrated its effectiveness at scale in select U.S. restaurants, and extending this strategic partnership aligns with our long‑term digital and technology strategy,” Mathews added.
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Taco Bell reported that employees at drive‑thru locations using the voice AI platform experienced higher retention rates. (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The Omilia platform automates the drive‑thru ordering process, adapting to each location’s menu, real‑time inventory levels, and limited‑time offers to deliver a more consistent and efficient customer experience.
Dimitris Vassos, CEO and co‑founder of Omilia, noted that “the drive‑thru environment is among the most demanding — real‑time, noisy, and fast‑paced, with menus that vary by location and day.”
The company observed that general‑purpose speech recognition systems often struggle with the unique challenges of fast‑food drive‑thrus, including background noise, regional accents, complex order modifications, and the rapid service pace.
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Omilia’s features, such as advanced noise filtering and real‑time menu adaptation, were engineered to overcome these challenges, the company said.
According to Taco Bell’s data, drive‑thru transactions using voice AI are comparable to, and in many cases faster than, those achieved with traditional ordering methods.
Additionally, Taco Bell locations that have adopted voice AI have observed higher employee retention, which the company believes will enhance the overall guest experience.
