Yum! Brands (Louisville, Ky.) has unveiled plans to partner with artificial intelligence (AI) chip maker/software provider Nvidia to accelerate the use of such technology at the 61,000 restaurants it operates under the KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Habit Burger & Grill banners. This is Nvidia’s first foray into the restaurant business, the companies say.
“At Yum!, we have a bold vision to deliver leading-edge, AI-powered technology capabilities to our customers and team members globally,” said Joe Park, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Yum! Brands Inc. and President, Byte by Yum! “We are thrilled to partner with a pioneering company like NVIDIA to help us accelerate this ambition. This partnership will enable us to harness the rich consumer and operational data sets on our Byte by Yum! integrated platform to build smarter AI engines that will create easier experiences for our customers and team members.”
Said Andrew Sun, Nvidia’s Global Director of Retail, CPG and QSR Business Development, “Working with Yum! Brands’ best-in-class Digital & Technology team and proprietary Byte by Yum! platform to integrate NVIDIA AI software breaks barriers to AI innovation in the restaurant industry – delivering real-time, context-aware intelligence, powered by a scalable inference platform.”
Among the key systems Yum! plans to develop with Nvidia are:
• Voice automated order-taking AI agents: Advancing drive-thru and call center operations with conversational AI, powered by NVIDIA Riva and NVIDIA NIM microservices, that adapts to human speech patterns, understands complex menus and customer preferences and enables a more natural, seamless ordering experience.
• Computer vision-enhanced operations: Deploying NVIDIA-powered computer vision to optimize drive-thru efficiency and back-of-house labor management through real-time analytics and alerts.
• Accelerated restaurant intelligence: Utilizing AI-driven analytics and agents to assess restaurant performance, generating personalized action plans for restaurant managers based on best practices from top-performing locations.
Yum! said it has already begun piloting multiple AI solutions using Nvidia technology in select Taco Bell and Pizza Hut locations in the United States. A broader rollout of this technology targeting 500 restaurants across Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC and Habit Burger is planned for the second quarter of this year.
Beyond that, Yum! said it is expanding AI to help team members manage complex tasks, including AI agents that plan, reason and act to assist across restaurants. The intelligence built with the latest Nvidia software will be proprietary to Yum!, giving the company full ownership to customize and evolve its technology stack. This will enable Yum! to integrate more advanced AI models, such as large language models, into its operations and pave the way for innovative applications, including sentiment analysis and personalized customer interactions.