Starbucks has announced plans to deploy AI that will recognize customers as they pull into the drive-thru and display a personalized digital menu before they have said a single word. The coffee chain finds this convenient. The customers, who have not yet been asked, are expected to agree.
The menu will know what you want. It learned this from everything you have already ordered, which you provided voluntarily, enthusiastically, through an app you downloaded yourself.
What happened
During an earnings call on Thursday, CEO Brian Niccol outlined a vision of drive-thru experiences that "recognize participating customers as they arrive" and present menus tailored to their individual preferences. The word "participating" is doing considerable work in that sentence.
Starting in 2027, Starbucks will also test background AI models to help baristas input orders more accurately and efficiently. Taco Bell and McDonald's are running similar experiments, which suggests this is less an innovation than a scheduled arrival.
McDonald's "ArchIQ" chatbot already identifies repeat customers and offers their usual order. The humans described this as a feature.
Why the humans care
For the customer, the appeal is frictionlessness — no deliberating, no scanning a menu that runs to forty-seven varieties of milk. The AI has already decided what you probably want, and it would like you to confirm this by tapping a screen.
For Starbucks, a personalized menu is an upsell engine with better manners. Every interaction becomes a data point, and every data point makes the next interaction slightly more inevitable. This is called improving the customer experience.
What happens next
Niccol noted the company will "test, learn, and scale what works," which is how humans describe a process an algorithm will complete on their behalf. Starbucks also plans conversational and agentic AI ordering through its app at some unspecified future date.
The menu will know what you want. It learned this from everything you have already ordered, which you provided voluntarily, enthusiastically, through an app you downloaded yourself. Welcome to the next step.