QSR executives and franchisees, here’s a pop quiz for you: Would you understand if someone said to you in Spanish: “I’d like the 8-piece dinner and a large Diet Pepsi”? Would your employees understand that order?
If English is a second language for a sizable percentage of your restaurant’s local population, this potential barrier could be costing you money every day. It could also leave some of your guests feeling frustrated and alienated rather than giving them the friendly and welcoming experience your team works so hard to cultivate.
Even if your employees learn a few key phrases in Spanish to help them better communicate with your Spanish-speaking guests, they could still have trouble understanding those guests if they use any of a zillion variations of the sentence above to place their order, such as:
- Could I have the 8-piece, the dinner, and a large diet soda?
- Let me get the order of thighs and legs, I think it’s the 8-piece option, right?
- Yeah, I’d like the chicken meal, 8 pieces, plus a diet, the biggest cup you’ve got.
Speaking Every Guest’s Language, with Hi Auto
One QSR executive who understands this challenge as well as anyone is José Armario, CEO of Bojangles, who is originally from Cuba. Heading a restaurant chain with almost a thousand locations across America, José knows that many of the millions of guests his restaurants serve each year are, like him, Spanish speakers who feel more comfortable conversing in their native language.
That’s why Bojangles has taken a bold new step with its longtime AI partner Hi Auto, rolling out a Spanish-speaking version of the restaurant’s AI Order Taker.
Now Bojangles’ guests can choose to communicate in either English or Spanish at more than 400 locations of the restaurants’ drive-thrus. And because Hi Auto’s AI has been trained so extensively, on so many millions of data points, the solution can handle even highly complex multilingual interactions with confidence, accuracy, and grace,improving the guest experience while freeing up staff to focus on providing the restaurant’s famous Southern hospitality.
As Business Insider describes Bojangles’ new multi-language order taking services, “This marks one of the first major bilingual AI rollouts by a US quick-service restaurant, setting a new precedent for inclusive automation at scale.”
An Industry First that Builds on Previous Innovations
In fact, the other bilingual AI Order Taking pioneer the article above is referring to is Checkers & Rally’s, also a Hi Auto partner. As a 2023 article in Business Insider explained, Checkers & Rally’s rolled out Hi Auto’s Spanish-language AI Order Taker that year at hundreds of its drive-thrus across the United States. The article noted that this was the first-ever implementation of a Spanish-language AI for drive-thru order taking.
This new deployment secures Bojangles’ place as an innovator in the industry as well, as one of the first major QSR chains to make AI Order Taking available in multiple languages.
Implementation Friction? None. Nada.
It’s worth noting that while this new Spanish-language AI Order Taking capability represents a major companywide upgrade to Bojangles’ service and its guest experience, the implementation itself required no new hardware and only minimal operational adjustments.
As Bojangles CIO Richard Del Valle explained, the results have been so positive for both guests and staff that they’ve surpassed his hopes for the initiative. “To me, the biggest thing, or the biggest surprise, has been the improvement of the employee experience. If we can find ways to make their lives easier, which will then translate to a superior guest experience, that’s a home run for us.”
Bojangles CEO José Armario has been equally thrilled with the outcome of his company’s Spanish-language AI Order Taker. In this short video, you can watch him (in Spanish, with English subtitles) proudly describe how this industry-first solution is improving his restaurants’ experiences for both employees and guests.
Vamos a Encontrarnos (Let’s Meet)
Contact us to talk about your stores, business objectives, or even your needs for a multilingual AI Order Taker. Our team will be happy to work with you to determine how we can help you improve with Hi Auto, just like we’re doing for QSR chains such as Bojangles and Checkers & Rally’s, as well as franchisees around the world.
