AI and automation will have a big role to play in both staff and customers’ experience of KFC in the future, its CTO Jatin Chandwani told MCA’s Hostech conference yesterday (22 October).
Simplifying and streamlining experiences has been a big focus for fast food business – and what originally inspired chief technology officer Jatin Chandwani to work for KFC UK & Ireland – with investment in new technologies forming a huge part of the strategy.
After spending three weeks working at two of its restaurants when he joined the business, Chandwani said he learned that staff didn’t always trust the tech and at times relied on gut instinct.
“There is an opportunity,” he realised, and from that he helped KFC to build a roadmap – which it’s still delivering.
He described KFC as predominantly a digital business now. “Last year we hit the £1bn mark in digital sales mark and as of last week are performing around 70% digital (kiosks, mobile app, delivery orders etc).”
What’s helping grow digital sales is collaboration, between marketing, ops, techs, restaurant design, promotion and tech, he explained. Even the physical journey in the restaurant is now created in such a way that it is easier to use digital.
“But our goal is to get to 100%, and in order to get to 100%, personalisation also plays a big role in the customer experience – and that’s where AI comes in to play,” he said. As well as enabling customers to spend less time choosing their food and ordering and more time enjoying eating it, AI and automation also have a big role to play in freeing up staff to spend more time with customers, he added.
Tech on trial
KFC has been exploring various use cases as to where AI could be use within its restaurants, both back and front of house. For example, it has been testing how chatbots and AI assistants can help with ordering. While there has been some impact on the time it takes to complete the order, he admitted… the ticket value does go up.
It has also been working on the introduction of robotics for a couple of years now, and has tested a robotic arm’s ability to cook chips and has also been looking at how it could robotics could help automate drinks preparation.
Staff were initially concerned the use of robots might mean that less labour is required, but Chandwani said once they realised robots weren’t coming for their jobs, but could instead be used to help deploy labour to other areas, they were excited at the prospect for their introduction.
Computer vision is another area KFC has been looking at – the ability for computers to identify and understands objects and people.
The business has been trialling to see how it can improve the accuracy of orders. “Speed is important, but when speed is important staff tend to miss items in the bags.” KFC has therefore been investigating the potential to introduce technology that would identify the missing items, however he said that the model is current not scalable relative to the cost.
Chandwani also touched upon the use of AI in waste management, which he said was an important part of running a sustainable business. KFC can’t hold some of its freshly cooked food for more than 15 minutes, so how can it avoid throwing food away? By using AI and forecasting to get an accurate picture of consumer demand, based on time of day, location, labour and the weather, for example.
“If you have not started working on AI and automation – do it now,” he said.
