Think you don’t need Computer Vision in your QSR business? Think again.

In the past several years, quick service restaurants (QSRs) have had to adapt to a number of changes. From Covid to labor shortages to supply chain issues, QSRs are continually perfecting how they deliver on the quickness and convenience customers expect. For many, this has included implementing multiple lines at drive-thrus, investing in confirmation screens, and curbside delivery. 

Investing in more technology may not seem like the smartest move in an uncertain environment, but investing in the right technology can significantly boost ROI. Computer vision can address QSRs most critical pain points and improve overall operations. In fact, the restaurant management software market, which includes artificial intelligence and computer vision, is projected to grow by almost 15% annually, reaching $6.95 billion by 2025.

Before you discard computer vision as a “nice to have,” consider its impact on your operations — like real-time alerts about wait times, speed of service and vehicle identification. Computer vision can provide the data and insights QSRs need to make better business decisions.

What is Computer Vision? Understanding Computer Vision for QSRs

Computer vision (CV) is a rapidly growing technology used for its visual identification and recognition abilities in a myriad of applications. By combining video analytics with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), a CV platform can be trained to track and process people, objects, movements, or anything else in images or video. With the right programming and training, virtually anything could be monitored with CV.

With these capabilities, any QSR can gather data and analyze key metrics to uncover new insights and efficiencies for their operations — from speed of service to consistent food preparation and optimizing promotions.

Quick-service restaurants already employ video analytics and POS data to inform operational improvements. However, video analytics without AI assistance rely on someone manually reviewing footage retroactively (typically for occupancy or security purposes). And POS data lacks additional context outside of logging orders and is rarely utilized for real-time decision-making.

The QSR industry especially benefits from implementing CV because they understand the value of data-driven operations — restaurants see a 7% increase in gross sales and a 2-3% increase in net income when data is used well. But gathering (and analyzing) data has often been a significant stumbling block between current capabilities and maximizing the information’s potential. CV removes that barrier.

Computer vision helps achieve new levels of automation and provides real-time business intelligence to guide operations continually.

How Is Computer Vision Used in QSR?

QSRs can use computer vision in a variety of ways like monitoring dining areas, drive-thrus, and behind-counter and kitchen operations.

Leveraging CV for Dining Rooms

The customer experience — particularly convenience, speed, and cleanliness — is the cornerstone of the QSR industry. The real-time data that a CV system provides can be instrumental to improving and maintaining that experience:

• Occupancy and peak traffic:Understanding occupancy and customer traffic trends help inform managers when to schedule employees. Adapting to insights around speed of service and other metrics is crucial to maintaining fast service and driving more sales. CV provides real-time alerts to managers so they can respond and adapt to changes in things like wait times immediately and ensure the best customer experience.
• Cleanliness:CV can recognize when customers leave cups, wrappers, and other trash at a table and notify staff that it needs to be cleaned up (e.g., auto-alerts after a minute). Employing CV to help maintain the expected level of cleanliness helps to retain customers and strengthens your brand’s reputation.

Customer attention: One of the many insights CV has helped businesses achieve is identifying what captures customer attention. You can train a CV system to recognize how long customers look at different parts of the menu, product promotions, and more to gauge their effectiveness.

Leveraging CV for Drive-Thrus

Despite existing popularity, drive-thrus and other pickup options have steadily become more important in recent years. 78% of customers cite convenience as the biggest draw to using the drive-thru. With dining-in suffering from public health concerns and restrictions, drive-thrus were even more heavily relied upon to maintain stability for QSRs during the pandemic. This created the need for more speed and accuracy which led to innovations gaining adoption, such as menu boards placed ahead of ordering speakers and dedicated mobile apps.

But while customers can resume dining in, many have opted to continue pulling into drive-thru lanes rather than parking spots. According to QSR Magazine’s 2022 Drive-Thru Report, “Consumers today are more satisfied with their drive-thru experience than at the peak of the pandemic.”

CV can further optimize QSR’s essential service delivery method in ways such as:

• Reducing wait times:A CV system trained on the drive-thru can notify managers if the line is backed up and more employees need to be reassigned to maintain quick service.
• Ensuring order accuracy:Because order accuracy is the most significant factor affecting customers’ repeat visits (58% of respondents in QSR’s Report), an investment in CV can determine whether customers receive the correct items based on the sequence of cars passing through the drive-thru.
• Arrival notifications for curbside pickups:Most restaurants and stores that now offer curbside pickup have dedicated parking for the service. A CV system can let you know when someone has pulled into those spaces further increasing speed of service.

Leveraging CV for Behind-Counter and Kitchen Operations

CV used for dining rooms and drive-thrus tends to focus on collecting data related to customers and their experience. But there are a lot of advantages to monitoring employee efforts behind the scenes, including:

• Monitoring protecting covering: Maintaining a clean and germ-free environment is vital. CV can spot missing hair nets, hats or gloves.
• Improving efficiencies:CV can help managers better understand order fulfillment by tracking processes behind the counter and optimizing staff.

QSR Reservations Over Implementing CV

For many QSRs, CV might seem like valuable technology but too expensive to implement. But that’s only true if you had to develop it from scratch. With turnkey solutions like alwaysAI Smart Retail, implementation is fast, and ongoing application management and support ensures you continue benefiting from real-time data analysis without excessive effort.

For example, alwaysAI’s deployment management system quickly connects the necessary CV applications to existing camera systems. The platform is implemented with innovative model training for QSR needs requiring minimal human input. Tailoring the AI to each individual store can be done by simply reviewing and adjusting annotations as needed. Finally, our expert team maintains the platform so you don’t need any staff members knowledgeable about AI’s intricacies. However, a developer experienced with widely known Python can easily build and customize your CV applications after implementation.

Beat the Competition With Computer Vision

When people think about camera systems in QSRs and stores, they typically associate them with security. But the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning has changed everything.

Leveraging all the capabilities of a computer vision platform enables you to find new advantages over your competitors that have never been possible before.

Harness the Power of Real-Time Data

Data and analytics isn’t new to the QSR industry, but it typically looks at historical data. That means there’s a time delay between when the data is gathered and when you derive insights. This is a significant challenge for the QSR industry, given how fast and steady the flow of customers is. By the time you have actionable insights, many customers have already come through, gotten their food, and left — their experience cemented.

As a result, it’s difficult to identify and address issues before they begin affecting sales. With alwaysAI Smart Retail, real-time data keeps you updated at every moment. Between foot traffic, orders, prep times, and efficiency, you can continually adjust your operations to deliver the optimal customer experience.

In turn, this helps boost customer loyalty and return visits - driving revenue higher.

Automate More of Your Restaurant

These days, most QSRs are already outfitted with camera systems, but if manual loss prevention is their primary purpose, you’re ignoring so much of their potential. A major benefit of alwaysAI Smart Retail is seamless integration with your existing cameras — no new investment necessary.

Leveraging your current cameras to automate more of your QSR operations will recover significant costs and bandwidth. As shown in the examples above, you can minimize errors and ensure that the right number of staff are assigned to the right job at every moment — and adjust as needed with ease.

It's a Low-Cost Investment With Huge ROI

The QSR industry relies on turnaround times that are only minutes long. The same concept applies to CV implementation with alwaysAI. 

alwaysAI offers out of the box starter applications and pre-trained models to get you up and running quickly. However, if you need highly customized, specific applications for your unique business needs, we will work with you to provide tailor-made applications. 

QSRs are seeking every advantage they can to compete in a tough economy and gain a competitive edge. Computer vision is one of the most-valuable assets the industry can leverage. Computer vision can help QSRs improve speed of service, reduce wait times and optimize operational processes to increase revenue. 

To learn more about the alwaysAI Smart Retail and how it can result in 5-6x ROI, speak to an AI expert today!