If you’ve pulled up to a Dairy Queen drive-thru lately and felt like something was off about the voice on the other end of the speaker, you weren’t imagining things. That might not have been a person at all. Dairy Queen is rolling out AI voice ordering technology across its drive-thru locations, and the reaction from customers has been loud, immediate, and mostly negative.
The chain has partnered with a company called Presto Phoenix to bring automated voice ordering to dozens of locations, with plans to eventually expand across all 3,000 of its North American drive-thrus. That’s a massive bet for a brand that’s always leaned into its small-town, friendly-neighborhood-ice-cream-shop identity. And it’s a bet that a lot of people really don’t want them to make.
What’s Actually Changing at the Drive-Thru
Here’s how it works. Instead of a teenager or a shift manager greeting you through the speaker box when you pull up, you get a voice bot. It’s powered by Presto’s AI system, which listens to your order, processes it, and sends it to the kitchen. The idea is that it speeds things up, cuts labor costs, and keeps the line moving.
After running pilot tests at company-owned stores in 2025, Dairy Queen is now pushing the technology out to franchised locations in at least 25 states and Canadian provinces. The rollout is happening in phases, starting with several dozen stores over the coming weeks. Dairy Queen hasn’t published a full list of which stores are getting the AI treatment, so you might not know until you’re sitting in the lane and a robot voice asks if you’d like to try a Blizzard.
Presto CEO Krishna Gupta described the system as “a smooth human-AI waltz that just works.” That’s a fun way to put it. A lot of customers would use different words.
Customers Are Not Having It
Social media reaction has ranged from annoyed to outright hostile. One Reddit user summed up the frustration perfectly: “I hate fast-food AI in general. Nine out of 10 times the employees need to take over anyway.” Others have said they prefer a direct, human interaction when placing their order, especially when they’re making customizations or dealing with a complicated order.
And the numbers back them up. A January 2025 YouGov survey found that 55% of Americans said they’d prefer a human to take their drive-thru order. Only 4% said they’d actually choose an AI chatbot. Four percent. Even among people who had used an AI drive-thru system before, only 14% said they’d pick the bot over a real person. That’s a pretty clear signal that customers aren’t asking for this.
The frustration isn’t just about principle. People have real, practical complaints. Robotic-sounding voices. Awkward pauses in conversation. Systems that can’t handle simple substitutions like swapping onion rings for fries. One restaurant technology expert recently described the current state of AI ordering as being stuck in an “uncanny valley,” that uncomfortable zone where the technology is close enough to human interaction to feel familiar but different enough to feel wrong.
The 90% Accuracy Problem
Presto says its AI system can accurately process about 90% of orders. On the surface, that sounds decent. But think about what that actually means in practice. One out of every ten orders gets messed up. If a Dairy Queen location handles 300 drive-thru orders a day, that’s 30 wrong orders. Every single day. That’s 30 people who pulled away from the window, looked in the bag, and found something they didn’t ask for.
Taco John’s, which uses the same Presto technology and has been at it for three years, says its AI bot handles between 90% and 93% of orders independently across its 45 AI-equipped locations. Three years of refining and it’s still not cracking 95%. For Dairy Queen, which is just starting to expand beyond test stores, the accuracy rate could be even lower as the system learns new menus and customer habits at different locations.
For context, when McDonald’s tested AI drive-thru ordering with IBM, accuracy was reportedly in the low 80% range. McDonald’s wanted at least 95% before broader adoption. They never got there. The partnership ended in mid-2024. Social media posts about the McDonald’s AI getting orders hilariously wrong went viral on TikTok, turning the whole experiment into a public joke. One franchise analyst put it bluntly: the system needed to be at least 95% accurate AND save franchisees money over having a person in the drive-thru. It did neither.
The Overseas Worker Question Nobody’s Answering
Here’s where things get really interesting. Back in 2023, Bloomberg investigated Presto’s AI systems and found something surprising. The “AI” taking drive-thru orders at some locations was actually being monitored and assisted by human workers based in the Philippines. When the bot couldn’t understand an order because of accents, background noise, or complicated customizations, a real person overseas would step in and handle it.
So the “AI” wasn’t fully AI. It was a bot with a human safety net sitting in another country. Neither Dairy Queen nor Presto has publicly clarified whether the current system still uses overseas workers or if it’s now fully automated. That’s a pretty significant unanswered question, especially when the whole pitch to customers is about cutting-edge technology replacing the need for human interaction.
If workers in the Philippines are still stepping in to fix orders that the bot can’t handle, then the conversation about replacing American jobs with AI takes on a whole different dimension. You’re not replacing workers with a machine. You’re replacing local workers with a combination of a machine and cheaper labor overseas. That’s a distinction a lot of people would care about if they knew.
Why Dairy Queen Is Doing This Anyway
The short answer is money. Industry analysts estimate the drive-thru automation market could be worth $1.5 billion by 2028. Presto just raised $10 million in new funding led by Metropolitan Partners Group, on top of an earlier $18 million capital infusion. The company wants to be in thousands of restaurant locations by the end of 2026. They now work with 12 restaurant brands, including Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, Wienerschnitzel, and Fazoli’s.
For fast-food chains, the appeal is obvious. AI doesn’t call in sick. It doesn’t need breaks. It doesn’t quit after two weeks. And it can be programmed to upsell on every single order. “Would you like to add a cookie dough Blizzard to that?” Every time, without fail, with zero fatigue. A recent industry study found that AI drive-thrus were actually faster than human-staffed ones. Speed is king in the drive-thru business. Even a few seconds shaved off each order adds up to real money over thousands of transactions.
Presto also partnered with ElevenLabs, an AI voice company, to make its bots sound more human. They hired the founder of Wendy’s FreshAI system to build a data platform that personalizes offerings in real time. They’re clearly spending a lot of effort trying to make the experience less robotic. Whether that’s working is another story.
Dairy Queen Isn’t the Only One Doing This
Dairy Queen is far from alone. Wendy’s has partnered with Google on its own drive-thru AI. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s already use Presto. Wienerschnitzel expanded its Presto partnership in 2025 with plans to bring AI to all 350 of its drive-thru locations. Zaxby’s, Church’s Texas Chicken, and Bojangles are all moving in the same direction.
The entire fast-food industry is sprinting toward automation, and the results so far have been mixed at best. Some customers say the experience is fine and even fast. Others complain about systems that can’t handle a simple “no pickles” request without falling apart. The technology is getting better, sure. But “getting better” and “ready for prime time” are two very different things.
What This Means for Your Next DQ Run
Since Dairy Queen hasn’t published a list of which specific locations are getting the AI treatment, you won’t necessarily know until you’re there. The rollout is happening in phases across at least 25 states, so it could hit your local spot next week or not for months.
If you do encounter the AI system and it botches your order, you can always ask to speak to a human. That’s still an option. At least for now. The whole point of the technology is to reduce the need for employees at the speaker box, but there should still be someone inside who can step in when the bot gets confused.
You could also skip the drive-thru entirely and walk inside to order. It’s a small act of rebellion against the robot takeover, and you’ll probably get your order right the first time. Dairy Queen built its reputation on being a friendly, personal kind of place. The kind of spot where the person at the window knows your name, or at least pretends to. Replacing that with a voice bot that might struggle with “no whipped cream on the sundae” feels like a step in the wrong direction. But this is where the industry is headed, whether customers want it or not. The question isn’t really if AI is coming to your local DQ. It’s whether the technology will be good enough to not ruin the experience when it gets there.
