A pioneer in the fast food industry, Yum! is constantly reinventing the restaurant experience both through innovative new menu offerings (Mexican Pizza, anyone) and cutting-edge digital technology. As a result, they company has been able to weather the COVID-19/supply chain disruption/inflation storm and come out mostly unscaved. 

In part this success is due to the company’s aggressive approach to digital integration. Over the past few years, both Taco Bell and KFC, two of Yum!’s flagship brands, have sought to create a unified experience across all of its digital platforms and customer touchpoints (i.e. mobile app, delivery, e-commerce, pickup, instore, drive-thru). Here’s a look at the face of those efforts, their next-generation restaurants. 

Tech-Enabled Drive-Thrus of the Future

Years in the making, Taco Bell opened its first digitally-enabled restaurant’s doors in June 2022.   

As documented by The Verge, the entire concept revolves around completing customer orders in under two minutes as well as enhance the mobile and third-party delivery experience. For example, out of the four drive-thru lanes, only one is devoted to traditional drive-thru ordering. The rest are allocated towards mobile order pick up and third-party delivery drivers working for services like Door Dash, GrubHub, or Uber Eats. The entire pickup process is contactless, although two-way audio and video technology lets customers interact directly with Taco Bell employees in real time.

KFC has also redesigned its locations, both visually and physically to deliver a “contactless” customer experience. These changes include installing self-service kiosks plus cubbies and special drive-thru lanes for online orders.

But that’s not all. Select locations in China are also using Internet of Things (IoT)-based intelligent restaurant energy management system to effectively reduce energy consumption by about 10% per year. 

While, so far, efforts to automate cooking and kitchen operations have fallen flat, Yum! hasn’t given up on this endeavor. In May 2021, the company acquired Dragontail Systems, a kitchen order management and delivery technology. According to the official press release, Dragontail’s “connected, intelligent, end-to-end AI-based solution automates the kitchen flow combined with the process of dispatching drivers. It helps restaurants sequence and time each order, while planning optimal delivery routes and combining delivery orders by location. The technology also offers consumer-facing capabilities that enable customers to track their order en route. In addition, it can operate with outside food delivery partners.” 

Taco Bell and KFC Embrace Artificial Intelligence

Though Taco Bell and KFC’s resilience in the face of market chaos is due to a number of factors, their access to reliable decision intelligence cannot be overlooked. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of Yum!’s largest franchise operators, Mitra QSR, decided to implement Hypersonix, an enterprise AI platform, across it’s 200+ KFC and Taco Bell locations. 

In a recent interview, Pushpak Patel, CEO of Mitra QSR, explained that the insights Hypersonix generated related to tore operating hours, shift management, supply chain planning, menu optimization and price and promotion management were invaluable. As he put it, “It is a must-have to run our business effectively. What we like most about Hypersonix’s AI solution is that it is very actionable, and it boils down an ocean of data into very tangible sales and profit drivers.”

More specifically, Hypersonix helped Mitra QSR: 

• streamline menu options to increase drive-thru speed after evaluating time to cook versus the popularity of specific items
• obtain location-by-location data for the busiest and slowest hours of business throughout the day which they could use to refine staffing strategies and operating hours

In addition, YUM! also recently acquired Kvantum, Inc., an AI-based consumer insights and marketing performance measurement business.By combining this tool with previous data analytics investments, YUM! hopes to better understand consumer behavior, make more informed media buying decisions and develop/apply “a disciplined marketing sciences program at scale.”