A McDonald’s drive-thru restaurant near Baldslow, East Sussex, England, in 2008. Illustrative photo. Image: Oliver P Guffogg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped
The next voice to take your order at a McDonald’s drive-thru may well be an AI. Chief executive Chris Kempczinski told investors on November 4 that Archy, the company’s AI “smart ordering system”, is expected to be deployed across the majority of its US restaurants by the end of 2027.
McDonald’s has nearly 14,000 restaurants in the US, so that means AI ordering at well over 7,000 of them in a little over a year. Speaking on the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Kempczinski said testing is already spreading to more drive-thrus in the US and Australia, with “further pilots planned internationally through 2027”.
What Archy is
Archy is the voice-ordering part of ArchIQ, which Kempczinski called “our new restaurant operating platform”. McDonald’s first showed it at its Worldwide Convention in Las Vegas in June, when it was being tested in five US restaurants, and set out more detail at its Investor Day in Chicago on September 23.
It takes drive-thru orders in English and Spanish and runs on Google Cloud edge computers inside each restaurant, so the processing happens on site rather than in a distant data centre. McDonald’s has worked with Google Cloud since 2023. ArchIQ does more than listen: McDonald’s says it also helps count stock and uses scales to check that bags are complete before they are handed over.
McDonald’s hasn’t said how many restaurants are using Archy today, or which ones.
“It will free at least 50 labor hours per week”
At Investor Day, global chief information officer Brian Rice pitched Archy on time saved and happier customers. He said it is more than 90% accurate, a company figure that hasn’t been independently checked, and set out what McDonald’s expects as it spreads:
As Archy scales, it will free at least 50 labor hours per week.
Brian Rice, global chief information officer, McDonald’s
He also said that “in our early test restaurants with Archy, drive-thru customer satisfaction is above national trends”. On the earnings call, Kempczinski said the system is giving restaurant teams more time to spend with customers and to make sure every order is right.
McDonald’s hasn’t said whether the freed-up hours will mean fewer shifts. About 95% of its restaurants are run by franchisees, who make their own staffing decisions. Voice AI is already taking over customer calls elsewhere: Grok Voice already answers 20,000 Starlink calls a day.
McDonald’s has tried this before
This is McDonald’s second go at AI drive-thru ordering. It tested an automated order-taker built with IBM in more than 100 US restaurants, then switched it off by July 26, 2024, after customers complained about wrong orders, several of which went viral on social media. At the time, McDonald’s said that “a voice ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants’ future”.
This time the system is its own, built on Google’s technology and tied into the rest of the kitchen, and Kempczinski framed it as part of McDonald’s > NEXT, the growth plan it unveiled in September. It is not the only place McDonald’s is leaning on AI: it also uses an AI pricing engine that works out how much customers will pay for a Big Mac.
The company could do with a win at home. Its third-quarter results showed US comparable sales down 0.2%, while global comparable sales rose 1.5%.
Why it matters
If McDonald’s hits its target, AI order-taking goes from a handful of test sites to the normal way millions of Americans order fast food, within about a year. Its last attempt fell apart in public, so Archy’s accuracy at that scale, and what it means for crew hours, will be watched closely by every other chain.
Sources: McDonald’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call transcript (TradingKey, November 4, 2026); McDonald’s third-quarter 2026 results (SEC filing); Restaurant Dive (September 25, 2026); CNBC (June 17, 2024).
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