IA en un minutoNewsBusiness and products
Bojangles will bring Hi Auto voice AI to 100 more drive-thrus by mid-2027
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Bojangles is staying with Hi Auto for several more years and wants its Bo-Linda voice assistant in 100 additional restaurants by mid-2027. The system already serves nearly 500 locations and handles over a million orders weekly, with a 98% success rate according to both companies. The new features are recommendations that adapt to the line of cars and a photo of the vehicle linked to each order.
Bojangles, a US chicken restaurant chain, has extended its partnership with Hi Auto, the company that builds AI voice ordering systems for drive-thrus, for several more years. The two companies announced it on Thursday in a joint press release.
The system, which the chain calls Bo-Linda, takes orders at the drive-thru. Bojangles began rolling it out across its network in July 2024; today it runs in nearly 500 of its more than 890 restaurants, spread over 24 states, and the chain plans to add another 100 before mid-2027. According to the release, it processes more than one million orders a week with a 98% success rate. With that expansion, roughly two-thirds of the locations will use it, Restaurant Dive estimates.
The new agreement brings sales suggestions that change in real time with the line of cars: when the queue is longer, the system offers items that are quicker to make. Hi Auto already tuned those recommendations to the time of day, the weather and stock levels. At drive-thrus with two lanes, each order is tied to a picture of the car that ordered it, so staff can check they are handing over the right one when the two lines meet. The release adds that Bo-Linda connects to Genius, Global Payments' point-of-sale platform, through a new XPI link, and credits that integration with keeping the system's performance steady as it went from 100 to nearly 500 locations.
"The system is a rare tool that improves the guest and employee experience at the same time," said Richard Del Valle, chief information officer and chief of staff at Bojangles.
Hi Auto says it works in the US, the UK and Australia, with more than 1,000 stores and over 100 million orders a year; among its customers it lists Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, Checkers & Rally's, Popeyes in the UK and Burger King in New Zealand. The release gives neither the value of the deal nor how many years it covers.
Restaurant Dive notes that drive-thru voice AI has not yet reached mass adoption: McDonald's test with IBM had trouble getting orders right and, according to the BBC, an order for 18,000 waters played a part in Taco Bell rethinking its AI strategy. Even so, McDonald's is building its own system, called Archy, and Taco Bell keeps deploying it with Omilia.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
The renewal comes after several big chains stumbled in public with voice ordering, and that is why it carries more weight than a pilot: Bojangles is not testing the technology, it is expanding it after taking it to hundreds of locations. The success rate should be read with caution, because it comes from the companies themselves and the release does not explain how it is measured. The most telling part is the new features: selling adapted to the queue and the photo of the car show that the edge is no longer only in understanding what the customer orders, but in fitting AI into the real pace of the restaurant. Anyone who takes orders by phone or at a counter can draw the same lesson: start with the concrete day-to-day bottlenecks rather than with the technology.
Source: Hi Auto and Bojangles (Business Wire) · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
