Burger King launches AI chatbot Patty to monitor employee friendliness and meal preparation

Burger King will use AI to check if employees say 'please' and 'thank you'

Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called "Patty," is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for "friendliness." Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, tells The Verge that the company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you." Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness. "This is all meant to be a coaching tool," Roux says, adding that the company is "iterating" on capturing the tone of conversations as well. The OpenAI-powered Patty serves as the "voice" of the BK Assistant platform, which combines data across drive-thru conversations, kitchen equipment, inventory, and other areas of the Burger King business. Employees can ask Patty questions, such as how many strips of bacon to put on a Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper, or for instructions on how to clean the shake machine. Because it's integrated with the new cloud point-of-sale system, the AI assistant will also alert managers if a machine is down for maintenance or when an item is out of stock. "Within 15 minutes, the entire ecosystem will remove it from stock -- whether you're walking into a restaurant to order from the kiosk, whether you're going to the drive-thru, the digital menu board will be updated," Roux says. Burger King may be building a chatbot into employees' headsets, but it doesn't seem like the brand is ready to widely launch AI drive-thrus just yet -- something we've seen chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, and Taco Bell attempt. "We're tinkering with it, we're playing around with it, but it's still a risky bet," Roux says. "Not every guest is ready for this." He adds that the company is currently testing the AI drive-thru technology in fewer than 100 restaurants. Burger King plans on launching its BK Assistant web and app platform to all restaurants in the US by the end of 2026, while Patty is piloting in 500 restaurants.

Burger King will use AI to monitor employee 'friendliness'

Burger King, the chain that leans into creepy when others don't dare, is at it again. The Verge reported on Thursday that the company is rolling out a new voice-controlled AI chatbot for its workers. That may sound like business as usual in 2026, but this assistant doesn't just help with meal prep and monitor inventory. It also has an unsettling habit of surveilling employees' voices for "friendliness." The voice-controlled chatbot will live inside employees' headsets. The company said the AI is trained to recognize when its low-paid workers utter phrases like "welcome to Burger King," "please" and "thank you." Managers can then keep tabs on their location's "friendliness" performance. "This is meant to be a coaching tool," Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, told The Verge. However, he added that the company is also "iterating" the system to detect tone in conversations. Is there a chatbot that can warn Burger King executives about off-putting ideas? The OpenAI-powered assistant's other duties sound potentially useful (and decidedly less creepy). It can answer workers' meal prep questions, like how many strips of bacon to put on burgers or instructions for cleaning the shake machine. It's also integrated into the chain's point-of-sale system, so it can tell managers when items are out of stock or machines are down. The "Patty" chatbot is part of a broader BK Assistant platform the company is launching. It will roll out to all US locations by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, its "restaurant maintenance with a side of mass surveillance" chatbot is currently being piloted in 500 restaurants.

Surveillance With a Smile: Burger King Will Use AI to Track If Employees Say 'Please' and 'Thank You'

Burger King is rolling out a new AI-powered management platform in its restaurants that keeps an eye on everything â€" and we mean everything â€" from when menu items are running low to complaints about dirty bathrooms, and even how employees interact with customers. The BK Assistant platform pulls together data from across restaurant operations, including food inventory, kitchen equipment, the point of sale system, employee schedules, and drive-thru conversations. It also includes a voice-enabled chatbot called Patty that workers can interact with directly through their headsets. "At the core of BK Assistant is 'Patty,' a voice AI that lives inside cloud-connected headsets and is powered by an OpenAI base model with the brand's proprietary in-house architecture," a Burger King spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed note about the new assistant. During an investor presentation on Thursday, the President of Burger King U.S. & Canada, Tom Curtis, tried to frame the platform as an assistant for managers and employees that leverages “real-time data in our restaurants to improve the lives of our team members.†But the tech admittedly sounds like it could veer into dystopian big brother terrority very quickly. For instance, the system always seems to be listening for specific phrases during customer interactions to generate a friendliness score. Burger King Chief Digital Officer Thibault Roux told The Verge the company collected feedback from franchisees and guests about how to measure friendliness. Using that data, the AI assistant was trained to recognize phrases such as “welcome to Burger King,†“please,†and “thank you.†With this tech, managers can ask Patty for a friendliness score for a specific location or shift. But whether employees will embrace an always-listening, Alexa-like bot that follows them all day and dishes out a friendliness score to their boss remains an open question, especially when the metrics behind that score are pretty unclear. The phrase “friendliness score†itself sounds like something lifted straight from an authoritarian regime. Still, Roux told The Verge, “This is all meant to be a coaching tool.†Burger King demonstrated the system in a video shown at its parent company, Restaurant Brands International’s investor event, showcasing the range of tasks the BK Assistant can handle and everything it monitors. In the video, Patty alerts workers when the soda machine is low on Diet Pepsi, flags that the women’s bathroom needs cleaning, and helps a worker assemble an Ultimate Steakhouse Whopper. It also notifies staff when they are one order away from hitting an upsell goal. The system can also automatically remove items from in-store menus, drive-thru boards, and delivery apps when ingredients are out of stock or when equipment, like a milkshake machine, is down for maintenance. Curtis said the BK Assistant platform is already operational in roughly 500 restaurants and will roll out to all 7,000 locations by the end of the year. It remains to be seen how well the platform will work at scale and how workers will adapt to an omnipresent digital manager that seems able to keep an eye on everything going on in the restaurant. This also isn’t the first time fast-food chains have experimented with AI. Companies including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, White Castle, and Taco Bell have been using AI in drive-thru ordering in recent years, often with mixed results. Last year, Taco Bell said it was retreating from the strategy after it found the public really liked messing with AI by doing things like asking for “18,000 cups of water, please.â€

Say hello (and thank you) to Patty, Burger King's new AI chatbot, which will live inside its employees' headsets to monitor their etiquette and branch performance

Patty will live in your headset to provide meal prepping instructions and track data across the company. Of all the places I thought AI would knock on the door of, like a grim reaper, I never expected it to be Burger King. Tech, videogames, movies, sure -- they're all about cutting-edge technology, even if it's misguided and self-destructive -- but a fast food chain? As reported by The Verge, Burger King is launching its own AI chatbot (how many are there now?) powered by Open-AI, creatively named Patty, that will reside in the headsets of its employees. It's aiming to roll this out to all its restaurants in the US by the end of 2026. Why does a fast food company need an AI bot? That's a good question. Patty is designed to help its employees prepare meals, such as giving reminders of how many strips of bacon should be on a burger or how to clean certain equipment. But it can also evaluate the "friendliness" of employees' interactions with customers. Burger King's chief digital officer, Thibault Roux, explains that the AI has been trained to recognise words and phrases like "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you," so that managers can use the assistant to monitor their location's performance. "This is all meant to be a coaching tool," Roux adds. And Patty is just the "voice" of the company's AI assistant platform, Roux explains, as the system also tracks and collates data such as inventory, equipment, and drive-thru conversations. The idea being that key systems become automated. Roux gives the example of an item running out of stock, which will alert managers and "Within 15 minutes, the entire ecosystem will remove it from stock -- whether you're walking into a restaurant to order from the kiosk [or] going to the drive-thru, the digital menu board will be updated." Speaking of drive-thrus, Burger King is "playing around with it, but it's still a risky bet," as Roux explains that "Not every guest is ready for this". That's not the only thing I'd be weighing up if I were them, as we've already seen the complications of AI drive-thrus after one man ordered 18,000 water bottles at Taco Bell.

Burger King to bring AI-based voice coach to Canada later this year

Artificial intelligence will start coaching some of Burger King's Canadian staff later this year. The owner of the fast-food chain says it's aiming to bring its new Patty tool to the country in the second half of 2026. Patty is a voice-based assistant which will be piped through the headsets Burger King staff wear. It will be able to remind employees how to make orders and let them know when they're close to reaching sales goals, so they can step up efforts to upsell customers. Patty can also prompt staff to remove items from digital menus or app ordering when products are unavailable and alert them to washrooms that need cleaning. The tool powered by OpenAI is currently being piloted by 500 Burger King restaurants.

Burger King's AI Chatbot, Patty, to Dish Out Tips on Meal Prep and Track 'Friendliness' via Employee Headsets - IGN

Burger King will soon use an AI chatbot in employees' headsets to recommend tips on meal preparation and track "friendliness." The Verge reported on the bot, a tool named Patty that's powered by OpenAI, following a conversation with chief digital officer Thibault Roux. The fast-food giant says the BK Assistant web and app platform, which collects data related to drive-thru conversations, will be seared into all of its restaurants before the year concludes, with Patty planned to give it a voice in workers' ears with tests across 500 locations. Roux says the chatbot angle of Burger King's AI push is "meant to be a coaching tool," and can offer tips for everything from cooking a Whopper to cleaning equipment. It will also allow managers to ask how their individual restaurant is performing based on friendliness, with the system able to recognize phrases like "welcome to Burger King" - or even "please" and "thank you." Roux says Burger King is also testing the waters for a future that could see it measuring an employee's tone, too. AI has wormed its way into systems across the globe, but Burger King admits it's already hesitant about how such technology could be implemented in the fast-food business. Less than 100 of the Whopper house's locations are testing AI in their drive-thru operations currently, as the company calls its implementation "a risky bet." "Not every guest is ready for this," Roux adds. Reactions from customers online suggest Roux assessment is correct, with dozens of posts criticizing the move already popping up across social media. Users have already started comparing the move to Netflix's sci-fi dystopia anthology series, Black Mirror. Specifically Season 3 Episode 1, Nosedive, which takes place in a society where people rate each other based on their interactions, which appears to be brought up the most. "So Burger King can't make the ice cream machine work, but suddenly they've built Skynet for manners?" one X/Twitter user said, comparing the AI system to the entity that helps kick off the events of the Terminator movies. "Peak dystopia, next they'll fine you for breathing too loud into the headset," another added. "Sounds like I'm boycotting Burger King forever now," someone else said. Still, Burger King says it will continue "playing around with it" as it plans for Patty to make its debut. Unless the company decides to reverse course, workers may want to expect to hear Patty guiding them through interactions in the near future. Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).