
The Next-Gen Drive-Thru Is About AI, Not Mobile Ordering - apsec112
https://thespoon.tech/the-next-gen-drive-thru-is-about-ai-not-mobile-ordering/
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sarcasmic
Fluff piece almost devoid of content; a quasi-submarine for industry
executives that namedrops a few companies selling fancy point-of-sale tech.

The two important points made in the article are that fast food places have
issues with timing mobile orders, and many store managers notice that mobile
pickup facilities are overprovisioned relative to their usage.

The first is a solved problem in the world of takeout pizzas; in fact, such
pizza places often have minimal storefronts and waiting space. But pizza keeps
well in a box under its own heat, and heatlamps have become unfashionable in
fast food as everyone wants to move upmarket and made-to-order. But there's
also a UX solution: detect or ask the customer via the app when they're ready
for the order to be made.

The second point is ironic: all these companies pushed into mobile ordering as
a top-down directive thinking that's what users want. They'll push into AI or
whatever hype next the same way. It's bullshit. People want low prices
(McDonald's, Taco Bell), or they want the appearance of quality (Panera).
Blowing a ton of money on some half-baked ML ordering system is a waste, when
they've already cut their cashiers by putting up slow kiosks and put all their
ordering UI on everyone's phone. But the people selling this to clueless
executives spinning their wheels stand to make a decent chunk of change until
they cash out to some equally-clueless established point-of-sale company.

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skwb
I suppose you could even use some basic ML (or hell, just geo-location and
expected arrival) get an idea of when to prompt the restaurant to "start
making XYZ order" when it appears the customer is driving in the direction of
the restaurant. Though this does potentially doesn't make since if your gym is
right next to the burrito shop, and you end up with a cold burrito!

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joezydeco
This is exactly what the larger chains are trying to accomplish.

Let's take McDonald's as an example. I've worked there as a crew member and,
many ironic decades later, currently assist some of their OEMs in the kitchen
equipment area.

McD has always been a JIT-based manufacturing/assembly company. And their
production window isn't a week or a day: it's 10 minutes. Back in the old days
when you walked in and there was a bin full of burgers, those were all made to
be sold or tossed after 10 minutes. How do you manage that without wasting a
single burger?

Managers would keep insanely detailed logs of sales by the hour or even half-
hour to try and assemble some kind of historical record that could be used to
anticipate future demand. They would even record the traffic level outside and
weather conditions. It worked pretty well, but one rogue schoolbus full of
hungry teens would blow that forecast out the window.

The newer systems try to smooth some of that out with heated holding cabinets
and faster toasters and et cetera, but there are some things you really can't
batch and hold for very long, like fries. Customer demand has also required
some of the batched systems go away, like the Quarter Pounders being grilled
as they are ordered.

So when a batch of fries takes 5 minutes to cook, and you know there's a wave
of people arriving, _any_ technique to help anticipate that and trigger a
production cycle sooner is ideal. It benefits producer and consumer alike.

Mobile ordering isn't a panacea, and in fact the current system isn't very
usable at all. But they're trying. And I do know second-hand that they're
aware of geofencing but there are complications to a system like that as well.

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gurumeditations
Mobile ordering has never made sense. It’s easier to just tell a person what
you want when you actually get to the drive-thru, not to mention fresher. You
don’t have to make an account or input payment information or download an app.
Just speak and then hand a small plastic rectangle to them.

This AI BS is just a scam designed to dupe clueless executives out of their
money. It’s just window dressing. The real problem? Constant delays in the
drive thru. People can order just fine already, what pisses them off is
sitting in the drive thru for 10 minutes waiting for “fast food”. Not to
mention the price increases and a lack of new novel menu items.

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Animats
Where does the customer's vehicle go between ordering and pickup? Some places
have an order station followed by a waiting lane of N car lengths to the
pickup station. That limits throughput to 1/N prep times. More waiting lane
space costs real estate. It also means you can't sell anything with a long
prep time.

So the temptation for fast food sellers is to make customers order ahead. This
is an economy for the store, not a convenience for the customer. Thus, efforts
to encourage or coerce customers to order online.

This leads to a proliferation of ordering apps, all different. That will be
followed by consolidation: "Uber Eats", "Amazon Fresh", "Google Chow".

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firefoxd
> Apprente makes interactive machines powered by a proprietary, neuroscience-
> based AI technology.

They say mobile ordering is bad, so the solution is AI ordering, and a touch
screen.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
> neuroscience-based AI technology

Is this just a journalistic misinterpretation of neural networks?

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InclinedPlane
Dumb. Fast food is dying because people don't want mass produced food that's
been sitting in a warehouse frozen for months. Automation is a race to the
bottom in fast food, which will only accelerate its decline even if it can
marginally reduce costs.

