Could an AI barista know you’re craving an iced caramel macchiato? Starbucks says it will begin testing artificial intelligence for drive-up ordering — including recognizing customers as they approach — as the company focuses on integrating more automated tech, CEO Brian Niccol said on last week’s fourth-quarter 2026 earnings call.
The idea is to make ordering “faster, more convenient and more personal” for drive-up customers, which account for roughly half of all Starbucks patrons, according to Niccol. The company would begin testing background AI models for drive-thrus sometime during fiscal year 2027, which ends Sept. 28, 2027. There were no specifics as to where the testing would take place or how it would affect food and drink prices.
Niccol said AI would help input orders “more accurately and efficiently” while the baristas talk to drive-up customers to increase personal connection and speed up service.
The AI could also know what you want, or might want, before you even engage with the human barista. Niccol said the company is exploring ways for automated systems to recognize repeat customers as they drive up and offer “personalized digital menus,” possibly including suggested purchases.
While the exact kind of systems that would be tested to recognize customers weren’t specified, possible methods could include facial recognition, license plate reading or perhaps mobile app detection. It also remains to be seen which methods would require explicit customer consent or offer an opt-out mechanism. In an email to CNET, a Starbucks representative did not confirm which specific technology would be employed.
The representative said that Starbucks is already using AI in its operations through Green Dot Assist, which helps workers look up drink recipes, troubleshoot equipment issues and coordinate staffing. The company also uses Smart Queue to figure out sequencing of orders that come in via in-store, drive-thru, mobile app or delivery.
Do customers even want more AI?
Several major fast-food chains are using or testing AI to process drive-thru orders, including McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC, White Castle and Wendy’s. Customer reviews have been mixed so far, with the main problems being botched orders, lengthy processing and the inability of bots to answer questions, according to customer research from restaurant tech website Canopy.
Burger King, meanwhile, decided to pull back on using AI for drive-thru because some customers drove off rather than place their orders with a bot. The company is still testing AI but said it wants to give people the option of ordering from a human.
It’s unclear what Starbucks’ goal is or what customers the company is trying to appeal to, said Uttara M. Ananthakrishnan, AI researcher and associate professor at the University of Washington. But there’s plenty to be skeptical about.
“AI in face-to-face customer service will fail in many edge cases and has many potential PR problems with no clear benefits,” Ananthakrishnan told CNET. “It is better to defer until there is a broader general acceptance among the public.”
Ananthakrishnan said one flaw of using bots is voice recognition — many AI models are trained on general US accents and don’t perform well with non-native speakers or international accents. Surrounding noise from vehicles and weather can also affect how well the bot understands the customer through a kiosk microphone. That could pose health risks, Ananthakrishnan said, if, for example, someone is allergic to nuts and the AI misinterprets the request as “no nuts.”
McDonald’s ended its AI drive-thru experiment with IBM in 2024, when bots were unable to understand various accents and dialects. The fast-food giant recently launched a new experiment with AI bot Archy as part of an $8.5 billion modernization plan. There was also a fake order that went viral when someone ordered 18,000 waters at a Taco Bell, and the AI processed it.
Most of Ananthakrishnan’s students have said they don’t want to talk to AI during their customer service interactions. However, more people might accept drive-thru AI if they know that mistakes will be rectified quickly, Ananthakrishnan said.
In a Bluesky post by More Perfect Union, an Emmy-winning nonprofit newsroom that advocates for workers, the reaction to Starbucks’ AI plan was overwhelmingly negative, with commenters complaining about privacy violations and pointing to the potential for “dynamic pricing” based on customer behavior and algorithms
Starbucks has said it doesn’t use surveillance pricing, a discriminatory method that’s been increasingly used by hotels, airlines and retailers. Still, a 2025 report in The Washington Post indicated that loyal customers using the Starbucks app more often might be getting fewer promotional deals.
More AI, fewer workers?
In a 2026 statement on the use of AI, the company says: “Our business is rooted in human connection — and our technology is designed to strengthen it, not replace it.” But Starbucks’ human connection with its workers has been problematic, and AI isn’t known for improving labor relations.
Since initiating a major organizing blitz starting in late 2021, Starbucks employees have formed unions at nearly 700 stores in the US, demanding higher pay and more robust staffing levels. Workers say they are not given enough hours so the company can avoid providing benefits, and are often given very short notice about shift changes. Last year, the NLRB said Starbucks “engaged in a scorched earth campaign and pattern of misconduct in response to union organizing.”
Since taking over as CEO in September 2024, Niccol has cut more than 2,000 employees as part of his Back to Starbucks strategy, which has resulted in simplified menus, reduced wait times and the closure of some shops.
In August, Starbucks Workers United, which represents 12,000 baristas, announced an open-ended national consumer boycott against corporate-owned Starbucks locations. The call accused the company of violating US labor law and attempting to break up the union, while also criticizing the corporate push for AI. “Starbucks has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of care for the workers who fuel the company’s profits by wasting millions of dollars on AI and technology that doesn’t work, launching countless gimmicky drinks designed to distract from real problems, and inventing pointless policies that do nothing but make workers’ jobs harder,” the call read.
In a 2025 interview with Current Affairs, union organizer Jason Woods said the company was trying to use AI to place orders but couldn’t handle staffing when an employee calls out. “They want to use algorithms to deploy our plays,” he said. “It’s inhumane. It’s anti-worker, anti-labor.”
Starbucks Workers United didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ever since being fascinated by the Cambridge coffee webcam from the 1990s, I've written about VPNs, the NFL, smartphones, living wages, over/unders and everything in between. See full bio
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