How Yum! Brands Is Accelerating Restaurant Innovation With AI

The quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry is being reinvented by AI.

For example, Yum! Brands — the world’s largest restaurant company and parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Habit Burger & Grill — and NVIDIA announced their partnership at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference last month, with the goal of deploying NVIDIA-powered AI solutions in 500 restaurants this year.

Joe Park, chief digital and technology officer at Yum! Brands, Inc. and president of Byte by Yum!, joined the NVIDIA AI podcast to share how the company is further accelerating AI deployment with NVIDIA AI.

Yum! Brands’ AI-first strategy aims to enhance every aspect of the restaurant experience, from the kitchen to customer interactions. Park discussed how Yum! Brands uses machine learning to optimize sales forecasts and inventory management, solving the costly problem of food waste and stockouts.

AI can also help with kitchen management. Imagine a local pizzeria getting dozens of calls in a short time and needing to plan which orders to start first so the customers can get their pizzas as fresh as possible.

“We use AI to solve for that,” said Park. “We can collect all kinds of different inputs and apply machine learning to figure out which customers’ pizzas to make now versus later, or which ones could be picked up by the delivery driver.”

With more than 61,000 restaurants operating globally under the Yum! Brands banner, efficiency at scale is always a priority. So, too, is keeping things simple for restaurant managers and team members. To that end, Yum! Brands recently launched Byte by Yum!, a proprietary AI-powered platform that integrates many technologies QSRs rely on.

Beyond AI-accelerated ordering, Yum! is also testing computer vision to analyze drive-thru traffic and explore new use cases for AI to perceive, alert and adjust staffing, with the goal of optimizing service speed. The team is also excited about Voice AI for order taking, including some unique edge use cases.

“If you think about a Baja blast, a chalupa, a gordita — words that aren’t found in Webster’s English dictionary — partnering with NVIDIA has helped us a tremendous amount because we’ve been able to train models with our own custom words and vernacular,” Park explained, referring to common orders at Taco Bell.

“AI at the drive-thru window increases accuracy and speed of order-taking, and helps make team members’ jobs easier,” Park added.

Time Stamps

03:51 – Park discusses how technology and AI are transforming the QSR industry.

06:58 – Yum! Brands’ AI use cases, including sales forecasting and inventory management.

15:07 – Inside the introduction of the Byte by Yum! AI-powered restaurant technology platform.

20:47 – Park’s advice for getting started on the AI journey.

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