AI News Monitor

Yum Brands, the largest food business in the world, is partnering with Nvidia to boost restaurant service.

Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, is preparing to release a range of AI-powered features. These features will help take customer orders in its restaurants. The food company will collaborate with tech giant, Nvidia, to develop AI technologies that will be integrated into its restaurant systems.

Yum Brands is the largest restaurant company in the world with over 61,000 locations around the globe. Joe Park, the company’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, said that the new updates are part of “a bold vision to deliver leading-edge, AI-powered technology capabilities to our customers and team members globally.”

Yum Brands will become the first food company to enter a partnership with Nvidia. The chipmaker is already collaborating with various multinational corporations and organizations to deliver AI-powered solutions. Its chips are used in the world’s largest data centers to train AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude AI. It is also collaborating with meteorological agencies to transform weather forecasting and improve disaster management worldwide. By working with Nvidia, Yum Brands hopes to leverage AI to better serve its franchises.

“We are thrilled to partner with a pioneering company like NVIDIA to help us accelerate this ambition,” said Park. “This partnership will enable us to… build smarter AI engines that will create easier experiences for our customers and team members.”

The AI tools to be rolled out include AI agents that can improve voice orders at drive-thrus. They will understand human speech patterns, complex menus, and customer preferences. The company also plans to use AI tools with computer vision to analyze drive-thru traffic and kitchen operations. The tools will send real-time alerts to managers and help them improve speed of service and optimize staffing. AI technology will also be used to analyze performance across thousands of restaurants and generate recommendations for improvement that are specific to each location. Managers and employees will have “AI agents that plan, reason and act to assist across restaurants,” according to the company.

Andrew Sun, Nvidia’s Global Director of Retail, CPG and QSR Business Development, who is a central figure in the deal, believes that it demonstrates AI’s growing impact. “NVIDIA’s software makes it affordable for even the largest restaurant company to improve operations and customer experiences, proving AI can pay off at every location,” he said.