The menu is 6 foot across, above the counter where you order, glowing, with pictures of each item and number next to it. Even someone who couldn’t read could order food using the normal system.
I’ve literally ordered by signing a number with my fingers to indicate the item I wanted in a country where I don’t speak the language at a fast food franchise I’d never been to before.
I prefer just saying “can I get a medium #2 combo, please.” And being done with it.
I suspect that even if they were abandoning future plans for AI drive through ordering, they wouldn’t say they were. Saying you’re not doing anything with AI might actually hurt a companies share price right now.
Leadership at these companies is personally compensated based on how quickly the company grows. They’re trying to maximize growth of the company by absorbing demand from the higher end, but in the process of doing so they end up pricing out the low end of the market, leaving low end consumers under served. They’re growing, they’re leadership is getting compensated better than ever, but now it’s difficult to find affordable places to eat out.
Theoretically what is supposed to happen in such a situation is new companies come in to take advantage of the gap left, but that’s not really happening because investment is all being focused on higher return opportunities. The low end stuff is still profitable and has potential for growth, but it’s not profitable/growing enough to attract investment over stuff that is perceived to be growing more aggressively.
Imagine if they replaced the crash screen with a fake automatic update.
So, they’re really easy to work with and relatively affordable, so great for prototyping, and acceptable for production if a company wants to get stuff out the door without getting a proper custom built solution that would be better in the long run.
When spin (electric scooter app rental company) pulled out of Seattle, they didn’t pick up a lot of the scooters there. People started pulling them apart when it was deemed they were legally abandoned, and it turned out they were all running on raspberry pi’s as their brains.
Ultimately it’s save money on the development side since it allows companies to use less experienced or specialized employees. It’s obviously expensive in the long term since a custom built system that only does what you need it to would cost less
Most menus are fixed paper with back lighting not changing displays, most of the places that have the new displays added them at the same time as the touch screen stations.