Culinary students embrace AI, but keep humans in restaurant jobs

At the National Restaurant Association Show, which ran May 16-19 at McCormick Place in Chicago, four Northern Arizona University culinary students gave an unvarnished read on where restaurant work is headed: they were comfortable using AI for planning and ideas, but not for cooking or hospitality.

That line matters far beyond the show floor. In a foodservice labor market still shaped by the Fight for $15, minimum wage fights, and a constant search for trained workers, the next generation is signaling that technology will be accepted when it takes friction out of the job, not when it replaces the human judgment that keeps a restaurant running.

For McDonald’s, the message lands in the middle of a sweeping digital push. The company has described Digitizing the Arches as a “once-in-a-generation transformation,” and said in August 2025 that Restaurant Platform Edge was live in hundreds of U.S. restaurants and expanding globally. It also said its AI-powered Accuracy Scales were already deployed across thousands of restaurants in a dozen markets, built to catch missing items before food reaches guests.

McDonald’s has framed much of that technology as relief for frontline pressure, not a substitute for labor. Brian Rice has said the aim is to ease stress for crew dealing with broken machines, wrong orders, counter traffic, drive-thru demand and delivery pickups. That is the kind of promise crew members and managers can understand immediately, especially in restaurants where a single labor gap or equipment failure can throw off an entire shift.

But the students’ reaction also draws a line that McDonald’s cannot ignore. AI may be useful for menu brainstorming, training summaries or workflow support, yet the people entering the industry still want a human to own food quality, guest interaction and line execution. That is a crucial distinction for franchise operators deciding what to automate, for trainers explaining new systems, and for corporate leaders trying to sell speed without making the job feel colder or more monitored.

McDonald’s has already hit one public limit. In June 2024, it ended its IBM AI drive-thru ordering test in more than 100 U.S. restaurants and said the technology would be removed by July 26, 2024. The company still said voice ordering would remain part of its future, a reminder that even a chain built on standardization can run into trouble when automation meets a live drive-thru.

The company’s answer, for now, still runs through people. Hamburger University remains McDonald’s global center for operations training and development, and the chain says its training focuses on quality, service, cleanliness and value. It also continues to use Crew Trainer and Coach resources inside restaurants. The students at McCormick Place made the underlying workplace question sharper: at McDonald’s, the tools that win will be the ones that remove drudgery and improve training without stripping away the human work that keeps the brand worth staying in.