Dairy Queen is putting an AI chatbot in its drive-thrus
Dairy Queen is rolling out an AI voice chatbot to dozens of drive-thru locations across the US and Canada, built by a company called Presto. The system takes orders, confirms them back to customers, and nudges people to add more items, with the chain reporting 90 percent order ac...
Dairy Queen is officially joining the AI drive-thru race. Emma Roth, writing for The Verge on April 17, 2026, reports that the ice cream and fast food chain is expanding a chatbot-powered ordering system to dozens of locations after a pilot run last year. The system is built by Presto, an AI company that already has its voice technology running inside chains like Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Taco John's, and Fazoli's. The goal, as Dairy Queen frames it, is faster service and higher average order values.
Why This Matters
This is not a science fair project. A major consumer brand with thousands of locations is committing real resources to AI-powered drive-thru ordering, and the numbers it is reporting, 90 percent accuracy and double-digit customer satisfaction improvements, are meaningful enough to take seriously. Presto is building a portfolio of fast food clients that could make it one of the most embedded AI tools in the restaurant industry. When you combine labor cost pressures, thin margins, and chains desperately competing on throughput speed, automated voice ordering stops being a novelty and starts being an operational necessity.
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The Full Story
Dairy Queen tested Presto's voice AI at a small number of drive-thrus in 2025 before deciding the results were strong enough to justify a wider push. Kevin Baartman, Dairy Queen's executive vice president of information technology, confirmed the expansion to The Wall Street Journal, describing plans to add the technology to dozens more stores across the United States and Canada. That is a meaningful scale-up, and the fact that Baartman is publicly talking about it suggests the company is confident enough to own this decision rather than quietly test . The chatbot works by handling the full ordering interaction through the drive-thru speaker system. It takes the customer's order, reads it back for confirmation, and prompts customers with upsell suggestions. That last part is worth paying attention to. Dairy Queen specifically cited "encouraging customers to add more food to their orders" as one of the primary objectives, according to The Wall Street Journal. An AI that never gets tired, never skips the upsell script, and consistently reminds every customer about add-ons is, bluntly, a revenue tool wearing the costume of a convenience feature.
One of the more interesting performance notes Baartman shared is that the AI system performs reliably in situations where human employees tend to slip up. Specifically, it reads orders back to customers for confirmation every single time, which human workers sometimes skip during busy rushes. That consistency matters more than it might sound. Missed order confirmations are a direct contributor to order errors, which cost chains money to fix and cost customers patience they were not planning to spend.
The Presto system achieves correct orders roughly 90 percent of the time, and Dairy Queen reported double-digit percentage improvements in customer satisfaction scores during its pilot phase. For a fast food chain, those are compelling numbers. But it is worth being clear-eyed about the 10 percent that does not go smoothly. One in ten orders requiring some form of correction or human intervention at a high-volume drive-thru is still a real operational load, and how Dairy Queen handles those failures will matter as the rollout expands.
There is also a layer of history here that deserves mention. In December 2023, Bloomberg reported that Presto's AI drive-thru systems were actually assisted by human workers in locations like the Philippines, stepping in when the AI could not handle a request. The Verge covered that report at the time. Dairy Queen has not said whether its deployment uses that human-backup model, and Presto has not clarified publicly. That question is not a gotcha, it is a legitimate operational and transparency issue that customers and franchisees should want answered.
Key Details
- Dairy Queen announced the expansion on April 16, 2026, through a Business Wire release confirming its partnership with Presto.
- Presto's technology is already deployed inside Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Taco John's, and Fazoli's locations.
- The chatbot achieves approximately 90 percent order accuracy, according to The Wall Street Journal.
- Customer satisfaction scores improved by double-digit percentages during Dairy Queen's 2025 pilot program.
- Kevin Baartman, Dairy Queen's EVP of information technology, is the executive leading the expansion.
- A 2023 Bloomberg investigation found that Presto's AI drive-thru systems were backed by human agents operating from the Philippines.
What's Next
Dairy Queen's "dozens of stores" framing is deliberately vague, but the chain operates more than 6,800 locations in the US and Canada combined, so this is still a small fraction of its footprint. Watch for a more specific location count or a franchise adoption timeline to emerge over the next two quarters, as franchisee buy-in will determine how fast this scales. If the accuracy rate climbs closer to 95 percent and the upsell numbers are as strong as the company implies, expect Dairy Queen to push toward a system-wide rollout announcement before the end of 2026.
How This Compares
Dairy Queen is not first, and it is not alone. McDonald's ran a high-profile AI drive-thru experiment with IBM, then pulled the plug on that specific partnership in June 2024 after widely reported order errors that went viral on social media. That story became a cautionary tale about deploying voice AI before it was ready, and it is the backdrop against which every subsequent fast food AI announcement gets measured. Dairy Queen's 90 percent accuracy claim looks better than McDonald's messy exit, but the bar McDonald's set was embarrassingly low.
Wendy's has been more aggressive and more transparent, partnering with Google Cloud to build a system called FreshAI and expanding it to franchise locations starting in 2023. Wendy's approach is notable because it leaned into the Google brand as a credibility signal. Dairy Queen is betting on Presto, a less recognizable name to consumers but a company that has been quietly building a fast food client list. For anyone tracking the AI news in this space, Presto is starting to look like a serious infrastructure player rather than a startup chasing a trend.
The broader context is that 2025 and 2026 have become the years where AI moves from boardroom pilot to actual customer interaction. Chains that spent 2023 and 2024 testing in one or two stores are now making decisions about real expansion. Dairy Queen's announcement fits that pattern exactly. The question the industry has not answered yet is whether customers actually prefer talking to an AI over a human, or whether they tolerate it because the alternative is a long wait.
FAQ
Q: What is Presto and what does it do for fast food chains? A: Presto is a technology company that builds AI-powered voice ordering systems for fast food drive-thrus. Its chatbot handles customer orders through the speaker system, reads orders back for confirmation, and suggests additional items. The company already works with chains including Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Taco John's, and Fazoli's, and now Dairy Queen is its latest partner.
Q: How accurate is the Dairy Queen AI drive-thru system? A: During Dairy Queen's pilot program in 2025, Presto's chatbot took orders correctly about 90 percent of the time, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal. That means roughly 1 in 10 orders may still require correction or human intervention. Customer satisfaction scores improved by double-digit percentages during that same test period.
Q: Does the AI replace human workers at the drive-thru? A: Dairy Queen has framed the AI as a tool to speed up service and handle ordering, but has not said it eliminates drive-thru employees. Notably, a 2023 Bloomberg investigation found that Presto's systems at other chains were backed by human agents working remotely from the Philippines when the AI could not process a request, though neither Presto nor Dairy Queen has confirmed whether that model applies to this deployment.
Dairy Queen's expansion is a clear signal that AI voice ordering has crossed from experiment to strategy for major fast food brands, and the next 12 months will show whether the technology can perform at scale without the kind of high-profile failures that derailed McDonald's earlier push. Subscribe to the AI Agents Daily weekly newsletter for daily updates on AI agents, tools, and automation.
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