Dive Brief:
- Wendy’s will invest in improving its mobile app and in-restaurant technology in the coming year to benefit customers and workers alike, CEO Kirk Tanner said on a Q4 2023 earnings call last week.
- The restaurant chain will put roughly $15 million into enhancing its mobile app experience and loyalty capabilities, Tanner said. The changes are expected to enable more seamless experiences and unlock additional customer data to improve personalization.
- Wendy’s will also invest about $20 million to introduce digital menu boards in all company-operated restaurants in the U.S. by the end of 2025 to improve order accuracy, according to Tanner.
Dive Insight:
Wendy’s is focusing on the customer and crew experience as a key element in its plan to grow global digital sales to more than $2 billion in 2024, which would put the company a year ahead of its initial goal, according to Tanner.
The company is building off the momentum of its Wendy’s FreshAI program, a drive-thru chatbot that reduced average service times by 22 seconds at an Ohio test site.
All of Wendy’s plans are designed to complement each other in ways that will bring customers in more often, Tanner said.
Wendy’s will also tie AI into its digital menu boards by testing AI-enabled menu changes, suggestive selling and dynamic pricing as early as 2025, Tanner said.
The data gathered from the new technology is expected to improve personalization for loyalty members, though Tanner did not provide details on specifics of the plan.
The plan could follow a similar trajectory to McDonald’s recent AI investments. The company is leveraging data from its more than 40,000 restaurants and more than 150 million active app users to help it achieve $45 billion in loyalty sales.
