New capability extends Hi Auto’s drive-thru AI from the order point to the pickup window, giving QSR operators a complete, real-time view of every guest interaction.
Hi Auto, the AI order-taking platform purpose-built for QSR drive-thrus, today announced Hi Auto Window Intelligence, a new add-on capability that brings AI-powered analysis to the pickup window for the first time. With this launch, Hi Auto becomes the first company to analyze both sides of the drive-thru interaction, from the moment a car pulls up to order to the moment it drives away.
Hi Auto’s AI already understands everything that happens at the speaker, across ~1,000 stores and 100M+ orders per year, with 93%+ completion and 96% accuracy. Window Intelligence extends that same intelligence to the one part of the drive-thru that has always been a blind spot: the pickup window, where food is handed off, payments are processed, and the guest experience is won or lost.
The drive-thru speaker has been digitized by Voice AI order taking. The pickup window has not.
The window is where the guest experience becomes personal. It’s the one moment in the drive-thru where a real human connection happens, where a friendly greeting, a correct order, and a fast handoff turn a transaction into a reason to come back. Employees are the backbone of QSR, and a great team member at the window is the winning formula.
Window Intelligence helps restaurants support that formula. It gives operators real-time visibility into service quality, coaching opportunities, and guest satisfaction at the window, so the best behaviors can be recognized and replicated across every location.
Most employees are doing excellent work. But when something goes wrong at the window, whether it’s a service issue, an order dispute, or an integrity concern, operators today have almost no way to see it in real time. Drive-thrus account for up to 70% of QSR revenue. In the current market, restaurants cannot afford to lose customers over problems they never knew existed.
Until now, operators relied on periodic mystery-shopper audits, manual POS void reports, and anecdotal manager feedback. These approaches are cumbersome, infrequent, and lack the granularity to drive the maximal operational improvement.
A microphone installed at the pickup window captures every guest-employee interaction. Hi Auto’s AI analyzes each interaction and surfaces insights through the existing operator dashboard. Because the system already knows what the guest ordered, it can correlate window audio with POS transaction data. A void without a conversation is a flag. An order change at the window traces back to its source, whether it was an AI error or an employee mistake.
Key capabilities include:
That contextual awareness, knowing the order before analyzing the window, is what makes theft detection, accuracy tracking, and dispute resolution possible in the first place.
Conversations are free-form, brief, and acoustically messy. There is no menu structure to guide the AI. Car noise, ambient sound, and overlapping activity make every interaction harder to parse.
Hi Auto’s models are purpose-built for these conditions. More importantly, because the AI already took the order, it arrives at the window with full context: what was ordered, what was upsold, what was modified. That’s what makes it possible to detect a void that doesn’t match a conversation, or trace an order correction back to its source.
Window Intelligence launches in closed beta with three brands. The capability is available as a modular add-on for both existing Hi Auto customers and new deployments.
For years, the conversation around drive-thru AI has focused on a single question: can AI take an order? Most solutions never got past 5-10 store pilots. Hi Auto proved it works at ~1,000 stores, then kept going, saving 3-8 labor hours per store per day, lifting average ticket by 1-2%, and reducing employee turnover by 17%.
Window Intelligence is the next step. Window Intelligence gives operators visibility into the one part of the drive-thru they’ve never been able to analyze.
“The window has always been a blind spot for operators. They haven’t had visibility into what guests ask for at the window, how they’re greeted, or the friendliness of the service they receive,” said Roy Baharav, Co-founder and CEO of Hi Auto. “Window Intelligence changes that. It gives operators a real-time view of what’s happening at the window, so they know when service is great, when it isn’t, and exactly where it broke down. For the first time, the entire guest experience is visible, from order to handoff.”
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Hi Auto Launches AI Tool to Analyze Drive-Thru Pickup Window Interactions
