Drive-thru AI gains ROI traction, raising stakes for McDonald’s crews

McDonald’s is testing a new AI ordering system at five U.S. locations as it looks for a drive-thru model that can show hard returns, not just novelty. For crews, that shifts the question from whether the system works to how much of the lane, the screen and the recovery work still stays human.

The timing matters because McDonald’s has already lived through one failed swing at the same problem. Its IBM drive-thru test began in 2021, expanded to more than 100 restaurants, and ended in June 2024, with the company saying the technology would be removed by July 26, 2024. That reset helps explain why the current ArchIQ pilot is being treated more cautiously and why the company is now talking less about futuristic ordering and more about productivity.

McDonald’s has plenty of scale to make small gains matter. The company said in 2023 that it had more than 27,000 drive-thru locations worldwide, and in 2020 it said 95% of its U.S. restaurants had drive-thrus. With full-year 2025 global systemwide sales topping $139 billion, even slight improvements in speed, accuracy or order size can ripple across the system, especially in stores where the drive-thru carries the daypart.

That is the staffing issue behind the ROI pitch. Zacks framed SoundHound’s drive-thru AI as a tool operators are trying to justify in hard numbers, pointing to stronger cross-selling and adoption of Voice Insight tools as evidence that AI ordering is being sold as a productivity tool. In a McDonald’s restaurant, that logic can mean fewer seconds on first-touch ordering and more time spent on exceptions, screen checks, payment handoffs, food recovery and customer recovery when the system misses an item or garbles a special request.

McDonald’s own language has moved in the same direction. In August 2025, the company called its digital transformation strategy, “Digitizing the Arches,” a “once-in-a-generation transformation.” In June 2026, it introduced McDonald’s > NEXT as a plan to unlock growth and productivity, improve unit economics and bring in more customers more often. The company has also said its partnership with Google Cloud is meant to help create better experiences for customers, restaurant teams and employees.

SoundHound is pushing beyond the speaker box too. In 2024, it said its restaurant platform would extend from drive-thru ordering into call-to-order, text-to-order, scan-to-order and in-car voice ordering. In 2025, it said live demos would include AI-powered drive-thru, phone, kiosk and in-car ordering tools aimed at boosting staff productivity and service speed. Some reports on McDonald’s current ArchIQ test say the system, nicknamed Archy, can handle English and Spanish orders and has processed more than 1 million transactions with about 90% completed without human escalation.

That is the real test for McDonald’s crews and managers: whether AI removes labor or simply rearranges it. If the system scales, the restaurants that win will be the ones that train people to oversee it, fix its mistakes and keep the lane moving when automation falls short.