Roy Baharav: Why AI’s Biggest Drive-Thru Impact Isn’t Replacing Workers; It’s Making Their Jobs Better

New York, USA, August 4th, 2026, FinanceWire

For years, the conversation around artificial intelligence in quick-service restaurants has centered on automation and labor replacement. Headlines have largely focused on AI taking drive-thru orders or whether machines will eventually replace cashiers. But inside restaurants, a different story is unfolding; one that has less to do with eliminating jobs and more to do with reshaping them.

According to Roy Baharav, CEO and Co-founder of Hi Auto, the most meaningful impact of AI happens behind the headset. Instead of spending an entire shift juggling conversations through a noisy speaker while coordinating with the kitchen and monitoring operations, employees can devote more attention to preparing food, helping guests, and keeping the restaurant running smoothly. As AI becomes part of daily operations, the technology is changing not only customer interactions but also the experience of the people working the shift.

Reducing Cognitive Overload in a High-Stress Environment

Few retail jobs demand as much constant multitasking as a drive-thru position. Employees often balance taking orders, answering customer questions, relaying modifications to the kitchen, handling payments, and monitoring production while working in an environment filled with overlapping conversations, alarms, kitchen equipment, and vehicle noise.

"Taking an order sounds simple until you're doing it while listening to kitchen calls, watching timers, answering teammates' questions, and trying to keep cars moving," Baharav said. "The headset creates constant context switching, and that takes a real cognitive toll over an entire shift."

Research increasingly suggests that reducing unnecessary cognitive load can improve operational performance. A 2025 study published in Scientific Reports found that poorly designed work processes increase cognitive load and reduce operational efficiency, highlighting the importance of simplifying repetitive tasks to improve worker performance.

Similarly, research published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology in 2025 found that workplace noise is a major contributor to sensory overload and fatigue, even when combined with other stressors such as time pressure and complex tasks. 

Those findings closely mirror what Baharav has observed in restaurants using Hi Auto's AI Order Taker.

Today, the company's technology operates in more than 1,000 drive-thrus across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, serving brands including Bojangles, Checkers & Rally's, Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, Burger King New Zealand, and Popeyes UK. Collectively, the platform processes more than 100 million drive-thru orders annually.

Rather than replacing employees, the AI assumes one of the most repetitive and mentally demanding tasks during a shift: taking orders accurately despite constant interruptions. "When people imagine AI in a drive-thru, they immediately think about labor reduction," said Baharav. "What we actually see is people finally having the mental bandwidth to focus on everything else that makes a restaurant run well."

From Order Taking to Hospitality

Removing order-taking from employees' workload changes how labor is allocated throughout the restaurant.

According to Baharav, restaurants using the platform have reported freeing up approximately three to eight labor hours per store each day. "Those hours don't disappear," said Baharav. "They get invested back into hospitality: speeding food preparation, checking food quality, helping customers at the window, training new employees, or simply giving managers more time to coach their teams."

The operational improvements extend beyond scheduling flexibility. Some restaurant operators have measured employee turnover declining by between 17% and 25% after implementing AI order-taking. "Nobody gets into this business because they love wearing a headset for eight hours," Baharav said. "When you remove one of the most repetitive and stressful parts of the job, people tend to enjoy the work more, and restaurants are seeing that reflected in retention."

While turnover is influenced by many factors, reducing repetitive stress and allowing employees to focus on more engaging responsibilities appears to contribute to better retention.

That matters in an industry where labor stability remains a significant challenge. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, U.S. restaurant labor productivity increased by more than 15% during and after the pandemic, driven largely by operational changes that reduced customer dwell time and improved efficiency rather than simply increasing staffing levels.

AI-driven workflow improvements fit squarely within that broader productivity trend.

A Different Kind of Restaurant AI Story

The public conversation around AI often assumes automation succeeds by removing people from the equation. Baharav argues that restaurants present a different model.

Hospitality depends on people. Guests judge restaurants by food quality, friendliness, speed, and consistency, areas where employees remain indispensable. "Restaurants aren't trying to automate hospitality," Baharav said. "They're trying to automate the repetitive work that gets in the way of hospitality."

Instead of forcing workers to split their focus between customers at the speaker, customers at the window, and activity inside the kitchen, restaurants can better match human skills with customer-facing work while allowing software to manage repetitive conversations.

"The best technology is the kind people eventually stop noticing," Baharav said. "If a shift feels calmer, guests are happier, and employees have more time for customers, that's when we know the AI is doing its job." That distinction is becoming increasingly important as restaurant operators seek ways to improve both guest experience and employee retention simultaneously.

Rather than representing a replacement for frontline workers, AI order taking may ultimately prove to be an operational tool that makes one of retail's busiest jobs more manageable. If the next chapter of restaurant AI is measured not only by faster service but also by calmer shifts, lower turnover, and employees spending more time on hospitality than headsets, its biggest success story may be about improving work, not eliminating it.

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