Yum! Brands executive pushes back against AI hate: Taco Bell drive-thru bot has helped increase employee retention by making jobs easier

Yum! Brands is trying to square two realities that don’t fit neatly together: loud public distrust of AI, and a very practical payoff inside its restaurants. At the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara on Tuesday, chief legal officer and corporate secretary Erika Burkhardt said the company sees real gains from automating drive-thru ordering, even while the outside world obsesses over data centers and the broader AI backlash.

Her pitch was simple. The system is cutting down the friction in ordering, which means team members can spend more time on the product and the hospitality side of the job. Burkhardt said that has helped retention because the work feels easier. That is a much less glamorous AI story than the one people usually argue about, but also a more believable one.

The technology itself is still very much a work in progress. The fast-food sector has tried AI in drive-thrus to speed up orders, and results have been uneven. Burkhardt pointed to the learning curve, while Taco Bell has already had at least one very public stumble: a customer once tried to order 18,000 water cups through the automated system.

Still, Yum is clearly leaning in. In July, Taco Bell expanded use of Omilia Voice AI to nearly 900 locations. And Burkhardt’s point was that even the rough edges can be useful if the company keeps improving the process rather than treating the tech as a magic trick.

DoorDash is making a similar argument from a different angle. Chief corporate affairs officer Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean said the company has folded AI so deeply into its workflow that it feels routine, not like a special event. Its Dash Buddy tool for new Dashers can answer about 95% of questions in real time, which she said makes the job easier rather than turning AI into a subject for endless debate. Arm’s chief marketing officer, Ami Badani, added that the company has already used AI to move faster on corporate communications and react more quickly to industry announcements.