Matt WamplerCEO & Co-Founder, ClearCOGS · CEO & Co-Founder, ClearCOGS 🔪

Taco Bell is Backing Off AI Drive-Thru...Here's Why

23 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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1:06

In this commentary, the speaker argues that discussions about AI often focus on speculative future benefits rather than concrete current capabilities and limitations. Using Taco Bell’s recent decision to scale back its voice‑AI drive‑through deployment as a case study, the speaker highlights that the technology, now installed in about 500 locations, does not perform reliably in every scenario. Taco Bell is experimenting with a hybrid model—using AI during certain hours and human staff at other times—to find the optimal balance. The speaker praises this measured, data‑driven approach and calls for the industry to dismantle the hype that AI will instantly transform businesses, instead emphasizing realistic expectations, incremental adoption, and clear strategies for handling AI’s current shortcomings.

Chapters

I think we focus too much on what it will be when no one knows and less on like, okay, here's what it can actually do and here's what, here's how that might impact your business and here's what it's not so good at yet and here's how you should react to that. And that's why this latest story out of Taco Bell, which said last week that they're sort of pumping the brakes a little bit on their voice AI drive-through rollout. They've got it in 500 restaurants and they've found that it's not, it doesn't work in every scenario. Okay, it's not that it's not working. Nothing works in every scenario. Yeah. And so, you know, they're saying, okay, maybe certain hours of the day you resort to the AI, other times you got a human order taker there. They're still figuring it out. And I love that approach. Like, that's how we should approach this as a tool that is still new and it's moving really fast and no one really knows, especially in restaurants, you know, what the best way to use this is. So that's where I think the focus needs to be. And we need to sort of tear down this mystique around AI as it's— that it's gonna like transform your whole business overnight.