Overview
- Patty, the voice layer of Burger King's BK Assistant, is piloting in about 500 U.S. restaurants, with the BK Assistant web and app platform slated to reach all U.S. locations by the end of 2026.
- The assistant listens during drive-thru interactions and tracks keywords such as “welcome,” “please,” and “thank you,” allowing managers to query friendliness by location or shift, according to executives.
- Burger King says the tool is not designed to record all conversations or enforce scripts and is intended to surface aggregated service patterns for coaching.
- Integrated with a new cloud point-of-sale, inventory, and equipment data, the system can alert managers to outages and automatically remove unavailable items from menus across channels in roughly 15 minutes.
- AI-driven drive-thru ordering remains in limited testing at fewer than 100 restaurants as the company takes a cautious approach, while online reaction has raised privacy and workplace monitoring concerns.