At one Good Times Burgers and Frozen Custard in Denver, an AI employee named Holly will ask you if you want fries with that.
After launching its AI ordering platform for breakfast at Good Times at 2095 S. Broadway earlier this year, Valyant AI announced the expansion of its conversational platform into lunch and dinner at the drive-thru.
The Denver-based startup, which launched in 2017, has developed an AI ordering system named Holly that can take, edit and record orders at the fast food drive-thru.
CEO and founder Rob Carpenter said the company decided to start small, with breakfast orders only at one single Good Times location in Colorado, in an effort to prove the model.
The company said its initial breakfast trial which began on January 7 was a success, resulting in an average wait time reduction of approximately seven seconds, with 95 percent of customers reporting that the AI technology met or exceeded their expectations.
“Instead of trying to be pretty good in 100 industries; we’re trying to be awesome in one industry.”
Now that they’ve proven the technology’s effectiveness, Valyant AI will take on lunch and dinner with eyes on scaling to other locations around the city.
“The inclusion of lunch and dinner means significantly more advanced capabilities and more data being added in our system. We’ve learned a lot from our technology and improved it to the point we are comfortable running all drive-thru orders,” Carpenter said.
AI’s role in ordering and conversation has generated its fair share of buzz over recent months, as McDonald’s acquired Dynamic Yield, a personalization and decision logic technology company, in March and conversational AI company Clinc raised a $52 million Series B in May.
Where Valyant AI differs from its competition, Carpenter said, is in the AI’s ability to manage multiple requests and the company’s singular focus on the fast food ordering industry.
“Where we think we’ve innovated, number one, is we have session memory. We can answer questions about prior things in your order,” he said. “If you have a shake and fries, and after ordering the shake, you say no salt on that, our AI can decide that you’re talking about the fries.”
“We’re trying to empower a more natural human conversation with the AI,” he added.
Carpenter said the 15-person company is focused on developing its conversational AI specifically for the drive-thru order industry, in an effort to reduce the number of tasks that fast food employees are being relied on to complete.
“We found the employees to be the most fervent supporters,” he said. “This is a task that people are excited to hand off.”
Despite the company’s focus on the fast food industry, Carpenter said he sees a role for conversational AI in a host of other fields going forward.
“I do think conversational AI is going to have a massive impact on enterprise over the next decade. This is not an industry specific tool, but something that goes into every industry to make every industry and employee more efficient,” he said.
The company has raised $3.2 million to date and is currently wrapping up a funding round. Holly has already begun taking orders at the South Broadway Good Times and Carpenter is hopeful a successful trial will aid in Valyant AI’s expansion.
“Instead of trying to be pretty good in 100 industries,” he said. “We’re trying to be awesome in one industry.”
