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Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

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Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#111

Post by dougSF70 »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #104
bee_rider wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make the dessert-coffee drinks that some folks like. Those can be kind of a pain to clean up after, with all the frothed milk and sugar… Of course, probably shouldn’t have one every day anyway! Coffee-to-go can make sense if the place already has a pot going, I guess.

Yeah it’s this, Starbucks isn’t a coffee place; it’s a caffeinated drink place. Their brewed coffee (outside of their higher end tasting room stores) is deliberately undrinkable to push you to their espresso drinks or their sugary concoctions.

Its a flavored milk business that also sells coffee

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#112

Post by midnightclubbed »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #27
akerl_ wrote: post #16

I’m shocked that anybody with a smartphone is still ordering by talking into a voice box, regardless of whether it’s a human or an AI on the other end. There’s a Starbucks near me that is pickup-only. You mobile order, and inside there’s just a rack where the employees set out drinks as they’re made. Walking inside felt like I’d stepped into a glorious alternate reality.

China has mobile ordering to the next level. Every McDonald’s has a set of two sided lockers, you just scan your order QR code and the locker your order is in opens…no human contact what so ever. In the USA, McDonald’s app is pretty bad compared to Starbucks at least. Nowhere near where it is in China (well, if you do the wechat plugin). I find it isn’t worth the trouble and will just use the kiosk for the rare times…

What was weird was when the restaurant was closed and looked deserted but you could still order online and hope the locker with your order lit up with your food (it did).

I found it disconcerting that I couldn’t tell who was making my food, it felt dehumanizing and weirdly off putting

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#113

Post by pluto_modadic »

akerl_ wrote: post #16

I’m shocked that anybody with a smartphone is still ordering by talking into a voice box, regardless of whether it’s a human or an AI on the other end. There’s a Starbucks near me that is pickup-only. You mobile order, and inside there’s just a rack where the employees set out drinks as they’re made. Walking inside felt like I’d stepped into a glorious alternate reality.

if you drive down the road and decide on a whim to pull into a restaraunt, you shouldn't be looking down at your phone as you order. fast food is for impulse purchases.

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#114

Post by boogieknite »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #33
PapaPalpatine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard someone describe drive-thrus as a “famously bad experience.”

There’s a StarBucks near me that takes about 3-4 minutes per car at the drive thru. Frequently there would be 3-6 cars in line. Yes, people literally wait 15-20 minutes in line before they can even order, much less get their order. Sure, maybe they’re just inefficient and shouldn’t be rewarded. However the people there are indeed working feverishly (and paid poorly). Going inside and ordering isn’t any faster. I’d pu…

if youve ever been inside to listen to these kinds of orders these people WILL find a way to still take 3-4 minutes to order from an AI. if an AI can get those numbers down i want copies of those transcripts so i can learn how to do this myself

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#115

Post by toofy »

hackable_sand wrote: post #94
toofy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i definitely prefer to order from a person. for a few different reasons: 1) i kinda like people. 2) being in this industry, i know more than a few people who struggle with basic human social interaction shit. most of the people i know who are fine with other people worked these kinds of jobs when they were younger. dealing with customers face to face as a job teaches us stuff about interaction many of the struggle bu…

Makes sense to me. The first few months were rough. Mostly because I am neurodivergent, but also because the work does suck. It worked though. I kept my head down, got promoted, made friends. I went into software engineering out of high school, so this was definitely a new experience, but I agree. I think everyone should give this kind of work a shot. You learn a lot about people.

> I think everyone should give this kind of work a shot. You learn a lot about people.

absolutely. the things you learn/absorb in that kind of atmosphere are entirely different than what we learned in school social activities. you learn how to deal with coworkers having a bad day, shitbag bosses, how to differentiate if a customer is a true unempathetic dbag or just a regular person having a bad day.

and one of the most valuable lessons you learn to the absolute core, you absorb this to be one of the great truths: one nice person can take one of the worst hellfilled days of your life, and with a single snap of their fingers your day turns around. from one quick interaction with a nice person. and it happens regularly because at the end of the day, an absolute fuckton of people are kinda awesome.

the things you pick up about the world and about other people are invaluable tools that a lot of people are lacking (and it shows.)

…apparently i just entirely and verbosely over analyzed why i like to order my fries in person?

“and that my dear fellows is why it’s important to always order your milkshake in person. i now cede back any remaining time.”

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#117

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

hypeatei wrote: post #19
akerl_ wrote: post #16

I’m shocked that anybody with a smartphone is still ordering by talking into a voice box, regardless of whether it’s a human or an AI on the other end. There’s a Starbucks near me that is pickup-only. You mobile order, and inside there’s just a rack where the employees set out drinks as they’re made. Walking inside felt like I’d stepped into a glorious alternate reality.

With mobile ordering it's hard to tell where you are in the queue or where you will be I guess. In the drive thru, at least you can see how many people are in front of you and they're making orders chronologically.

... Except while you're on your way to the line (or waiting to get through it), other customers' mobile orders are being accepted and you still aren't sure of the order in which they're being prepared.

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#118

Post by onetokeoverthe »

eco wrote: post #14
josephwegner wrote: post #5

I will say, there is a Wendy’s near me that is piloting an AI drive-thru experience, and I prefer it 10-to-1 to the human version. It had a clear voice, it didn’t disappear randomly, it understood what I meant the first time (even though I was speaking naturally - I didn’t know at first it was AI), and it asked me for feedback (“what sort of sauce?”) in a very understandable way. Drive-thrus are famously a bad experi…

I've had two interactions with Wendy's AI drive-through, and the first time I was pleasantly surprised, but the second time it would not stop suggesting add-ons after every single thing I said. It was comically pushy. A human would have pretty quickly picked up on my increasingly exasperated "no, thanks" and stopped doing it, but the AI was completely blind to my growing frustration, following the upsell directive wi…

[dead]

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#119

Post by kenjackson »

akerl_ wrote: post #54
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more effort to order with a phone app than to just roll up and tell someone what I want. That's all there is to it, really.

It seems hard to have empirical data here, but even just the parallelization of it seems to bias in favor of mobile ordering. Part of the reason I hold this particular opinion weirdly strongly is because of the confusion I feel when I'm sitting in line in the drive-thru behind a van where a family or a group of friends is trying to crowdsource food for 2-4 people live at the window, or rattling off a complex coffee o…

Some places, like ChikFila, seems to optimize their drive thru experience. That said the trick that I do with them is say that I’m at the restaurant well before I get there so I don’t have to wait.

Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru

#120

Post by MangoToupe »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #33
PapaPalpatine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard someone describe drive-thrus as a “famously bad experience.”

There’s a StarBucks near me that takes about 3-4 minutes per car at the drive thru. Frequently there would be 3-6 cars in line. Yes, people literally wait 15-20 minutes in line before they can even order, much less get their order. Sure, maybe they’re just inefficient and shouldn’t be rewarded. However the people there are indeed working feverishly (and paid poorly). Going inside and ordering isn’t any faster. I’d pu…

I find it hilarious how painful starbucks has made the process of ordering coffee. I only drink drip coffee and think we deserve a distinct queue. This phenomenon has, a little distressingly, spread to places like dunkin donuts. People love to drink their sugary milk with a splash of coffee, I guess. I don't begrudge them this but I do question paying $7 a day for what must be a significantly-increased chance of getting diabetes. Curiously, these same people often turn their nose up at equally-sugary soda. You'd think people would just learn to make this at home with a moka pot and a milk skimmer that costs less than what they paid for a single drink...

Between this and the inexplicably high cost of hot black coffee, i've just given up ordering from "coffee shops" and buy it from wendys and mcdonalds instead. The coffee is both cheaper and delivered faster and it could taste a lot worse.

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