Aakash GuptaLead source
McDonald's is replacing the kid at the drive-thru with an AI that gets your order wrong more often than he does. The AI, called Archy, takes orders at 90% accuracy. McDonald's human crews scored 93% in the latest industry drive-thru study. And this is the same technology McDonald's shut down in 2024 after it put bacon on someone's ice cream. So why spend part of $8.5 billion on a worse order taker? Start with the labor line McDonald's put in its own investor deck. Archy frees at least 50 crew hours per week per restaurant. At roughly $15 an hour that's about $39,000 a year per store, and across 13,500 US restaurants it's north of $500 million a year. Fifty hours a week is also 1.25 full-time jobs, which McDonald's describes as crew being freed up for hospitality. The accuracy gap is…Read original on X