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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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KFC, Pizza Hut Test Contactless Delivery in Response to China’s Coronavirus

As China continues to grapple with the deadly coronavirus outbreak, some restaurant chains are taking steps to ensure food delivery operations can continue. Yum China, which operates thousands of KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in China, is now using what it calls contactless delivery and pickup to safely get food from restaurants to customers without further spreading the deadly virus.

Yum posted videos to Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat showing a delivery driver having their temperature taken, putting on a mask, and disinfecting their hands before heading out to make the delivery. Drivers are also required to disinfect both their hands and their delivery boxes after each delivery.

The food courier drops the order at pre-appointed spot outside the customer’s building then watches from a distance of at least 10 feet while the customer retrieves their order and goes back inside:

Yum China is also testing an in-store pickup version of this contactless delivery at some locations, where pickup racks have been installed inside. For both delivery and pickup, customers ordering via can now choose a “contactless” option when they order online. 

Chinese food delivery services Meituan and Ele.me are providing similar services. And it isn’t just restaurants peddling this contactless form of food delivery. Grocery stores — namely Alibaba’s Hema, JD affiliate Dada, and Meituan — are using contactless delivery for grocery orders, offering an in-app option for customers similar to that of Yum China. 

CNBC reports that as of last week in Beijing, roughly 20,000 people were delivering an average of over 400,000 orders daily from Meituan and Ele.me alone, but that the “logistical challenges,” such as couriers having to wait outside instead of delivering food directly to the customer’s door, have lowered the efficiency of delivery operations. However, the CDC points out that coronavirus getting spread from person to person usually happens “among close contacts (about 6 feet),” making the measures around contactless delivery necessary if food delivery is to continue.

Others are skipping the human element altogether and relying heavily on technology. A hotel in Hangzhou, China has been dispatching robots to deliver meals to quarantined guests.

Food Tech News: KFC Canada Partners with Alexa, Blockchain and a New Peanut Allergy Drug

Pat yourself on the back — you made it to February. We’re in the thick of winter and here at The Spoon we’re busier than ever reporting on news and prepping for our Customize food personalization summit (you’re coming, right?)

But there’s always time for food tech news! Here are a few interesting stories from around the web this week: an Alexa skill that lets you talk to Colonel Sanders, food safety blockchain, e-grocery funding and a new peanut allergy drug. Enjoy!

KFC Canada unveils new Alexa skill
This week KFC Canada announced a new Alexa skill which allows users to chat with and reorder fried chicken from… the Colonel himself. The fast food chain teamed up with AWS to develop the skill, which uses AI to turn text into speech that sounds like the voice of Colonel Sanders. According to a release from KFC Canada, KFC is the first global QSR to use this text-to-speech technology. 

Photo: Neogen

Neogen partners with riope.io for food safety blockchain
Neogen Corporation, an international food safety company, is partnering with blockchain-for-food startup Ripe Technology (creators of ripe.io). Neogen will use ripe.io to create a blockchain to track food safety diagnostics and animal genomics for their customers. The company hopes that incorporating blockchain will help customers verify the authenticity of their food products and lead to increased transparency and traceability. 

FDA approves drug for peanut allergies
Those who suffer from life-threatening peanut allergies may soon be able to breathe a little easier. US health regulators have approved the first ever drug for peanut allergies. Called Palforzia, the oral drug works by slowly ramping up exposure of peanut protein to desensitize allergy sufferers. It’s specifically meant for children and teenagers.

E-grocery Supermercato24 raises €11 million (~$12.1 USD)
Supermercato24, a Milan-based e-grocery marketplace, announced that it had raised  €11 million (~$12.1 million USD), bringing its total funding to €28.4 million ($31.2 million USD) (via EU Startups). The round was led by DIP with participation from current investors 360 Capital Partners, Innogest and more. On Supermercato’s online platform, users can shop for groceries from local supermarkets, which will then be delivered to their door. With its new funds, Supermercato24 will expand its operations throughout Italy and Poland, where it’s already available, and grow into new countries. 

KFC Commences Rollout of Beyond Fried Chicken with New Iteration

KFC announced today that it was expanding the test locations of plant-based Beyond Fried Chicken. Starting on February 3, select KFC locations in Charlotte, NC and Nashville, TN areas will offer Beyond Meat’s vegan fried chicken. It will be on menus through February 23, or as long as supplies last.

This news comes roughly five months after KFC debuted the Beyond Fried Chicken sandwich during a one-day test in Atlanta, GA. To say that the test was a success is a bit of an understatement — it drew lines around the block and sold out in less than five hours.

Since then, Beyond hasn’t just been sitting around twiddling their thumbs — according to the press release, the Charlotte and Nashville markets will actually roll out a new-and-improved iteration of the Beyond Fried Chicken. The plant-based chicken 2.0 is apparently more closely resembles the real thing, and also “pulls apart like a chicken breast.”

This last part is especially important since texture is a huge issue for plant-based meats, particularly for whole muscle cuts like steak and — you guessed it — chicken breast. Beyond Meat may have attracted flexitarians with its burger, but chicken is a different, and more challenging, ball game. Beyond knows it only has one shot make a first impression for its plant-based bird, which is likely why it’s being so cautious (and gradual) in its rollout.

Interestingly, the new locations will offer a more streamlined plant-based menu than the Atlanta test. Charlotte and Nashville will sell Beyond Fried Chicken pieces in four and 12-piece a la carte and combo options. Atlanta, however, offered wings and nuggets, but not whole fried chicken pieces. Pricing for the new locations has not yet been disclosed.

It may be moving slowly, but KFC is definitely invested in the plant-based meat movement. And not just in the U.S. In November KFC Canada did a one-day test of a meatless fried chicken sandwich featuring Lightlife “chicken,” though it has yet to announce a rollout schedule. I think that KFC is smart to get a chicken alternative on its menu before its bird-loving QSR competitors like Chick-fil-A and Popeye’s join the party.

If you’re in one of the lucky areas to get the Beyond Fried Chicken, make sure to drop us a line and let us know how it tastes!

Swag Alert: McDonald’s Opens First E-Commerce Shop

McDonald’s has gone to great lengths in the last few years to get us consumers stuff we don’t need, like branded scrunchies and massage chairs. And just in time for the holiday season, the company has opened its first-ever e-commerce shop in which to sell more of said stuff we don’t need.

According to a McDonald’s press release, the online shop, dubbed “Golden Arches Unlimited,” features McDonald’s-branded “fun and functional” merchandise not available anywhere else. The lineup of items will rotate seasonally, and starts with a winter collection that includes a beanie, holiday sweaters, and tree ornaments. It’s also a different roundup of merchandise than what you’ll find during the company’s McDelivery Night, which it does in partnership with Uber Eats each year.

Prices at the new online store cover a wide range, from about $15–$65 for apparel and $10–$25 for accessories. Items are branded with the famous golden arches and feature the brand’s signature yellow, red, and white color scheme.  

As the press release notes:

“Since the 1980s we’ve partnered with multiple fashion brands and retailers, and beginning in 2017 we launched our own limited-time-only line of merchandise through the McDelivery Collection. Now, we’re making it easier than ever for you to show off your brand love with direct access to branded items at GoldenArchesUnlimited.com.”

Which brings up an important point that goes beyond McBranded beanies. Thanks to delivery, more customers nowadays choose to order their fast food from the comfort of their own homes, which means they’re less likely to actually set foot inside a McDonald’s brick-and-mortar location. QSRs are as a result are having to meet those customers where they are rather than the other way around. Increasingly, that place is online. 

In fact, a number of QSRs now offer ridiculous-yet-enticing swag for sale via e-commerce shops. Dunkin’ opened its own e-commerce shop last month that sells wares like branded pajamas and dog accessories. KFC is selling fried-chicken-scented firelogs exclusively via Walmart.com. If it all sounds too dumb to be true, consider that last year, the latter’s Colonel Sanders Funko Pop sold out in 11 minutes. When it comes to enticing digital customers through physical goods, apparently swag works.

KFC Canada to Sell Plant-based Fried Chicken for One Day Only (Tomorrow)

Today KFC Canada announced its new product, the KFC Plant-Based Fried Chicken sandwich. Launching tomorrow, November 27th, the sandwich will only be available for the day at a single KFC restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario. If sandwiches aren’t your bag, you can also try the Plant-Based Fried Popcorn Chicken bucket.

According to a press release from KFC Canada, the chain partnered with Canadian alternative Lightlife to develop its plant-based poultry offerings. The sandwich will be available regular or spicy and will cost $6.99. The popcorn chicken bucket is $3.99.

Lately Canada has been a testing ground of sorts for fast-food chains to try out plant-based meat offerings before deciding whether to bring them south of the border. At least that’s been the case with McDonald’s PLT and Wendy’s ‘The Plentiful’ burger.

In this case, however, it’s the reverse. KFC tried out plant-based chicken back in August in a similar one-day, one-location test in Atlanta. The launch drew huge crowds and the “chicken” sold out in less than five hours.

KFC Canada is clearly hoping to replicate the viral success up in the Great North. However, there are a couple of key differences. Firstly, KFC in the U.S. used plant-based chicken from Beyond Meat, while KFC Canada is tapping Canadian alternative meat company Lightlife. The Atlanta KFC also served nuggets and wings, while KFC Canada is focusing on a sandwich.

We haven’t tasted either of KFC’s plant-based chicken offerings, so it’s difficult to compare their finger-lickin-goodness levels. However, one thing to note is that KFC Canada doesn’t include the Lightlife name in its new sandwich, meaning it won’t be able to capitalize on brand recognition in the same way that the Beyond Fried Chicken did.

Customer response on the one-day trial run will determine whether the vegan chicken will be rolled out nationwide in 2020. Based off of the popularity of Beyond Fried Chicken in Atlanta and the general success of alternative meats in fast-food (barring a few notable exceptions), I’d say there’s a good chance that the KFC Plant-Based Fried Chicken Sandwich will be more than a one-day phenomenon.

As QSRs Double Down on Off-Premises Ordering, What Happens to the POS?

Whatever your food plans for the weekend, I’m betting there’s a good chance they’ll involve some kind of off-premises ordering. Delivery? Drive-thru? Drone? All of the above and more are becoming de rigueur for foodies and restaurants alike. With that in mind, here are a few more pieces of restaurant industry buzz from the week, all of which hint at what the next 12 months could look like when it comes to when, where, and how we get our food.

Grubhub and Shake Shack Expand Delivery Partnership Nationwide
Expanding on a deal struck back in August, Shake Shack is now available for exclusive delivery with Grubhub across the U.S. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, more than 140 Shake Shack restaurants now offer delivery through that third-party service and no other. While that’s great for customers who want Shack Burgers delivered to their couch, the partnership has also hurt Shake Shack’s sales, according to the chain’s third-quarter results. Part of that may have been due to the exclusive nature of the deal, exclusivity being a strategy increasingly discouraged in the restaurant industry when it comes to effective delivery services.

KFC’s Drive-Thru of the Future Is Open for Business
July brought the initial news that KFC had a drive-thru-only concept in the works down under, in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Said location is now open for business. The new store features five drive-thru lanes that let customers order and pay via the KFC mobile app. While there is a designated lane for customers who want the traditional drive-thru experience (ordering on a crackly speaker, paying an actual person), there is no dining room at this location. If this pilot location proves successful, we’ll see more such KFC locations in the future.

Dunkin Donuts

Houston, We Have a Dunkin’
Dunkin’ (née Donuts), an institution here in the Northeast, is continuing its expansion across the U.S., and it’s bringing its next-generation store with it. The chain announced it is developing 18 new locations around Houston, TX that will emphasize to-go orders, self-service kiosks, and dedicated drive-thru lanes for customers who order via the Dunkin’ mobile app. The first of these new stores is slated to open in summer 2020.

Image via Unsplash.

RIP POS?
But is the POS about to become an endangered species? Not this week, and not probably in the next year. But the growth of ghost kitchens, which exist to fulfill off-premises orders and have no dining room, suggests that pieces of the front-of-house restaurant tech stack could be eliminated in the future. That’s the scenario posed by the folks at Reforming Retail this week. An excellent article from a few days ago points out that with no front of house or cashiers, and with customers ordering directly from their mobile devices, 99 percent of the tech in restaurants could disappear: “And instead of a restaurant needing multiple [sales] terminals they need, well, none.”

Agree? Disagree? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

KFC Hints at AI, License Plate Recognition for Drive-thrus

KFC is exploring technology that would automate the process of ordering and upselling items in the drive-thru, according to an interview the chain’s U.S. Chief Technology Officer Christopher Caldwell did with Nation’s Restaurant News this week. KFC’s strategy looks to be focused on AI technology similar to that of McDonald’s, whose digital menu boards speed up ordering and automatically recommend items to customers.

The news comes on the heels of KFC’s little-publicized launch of an in-house online ordering platform, which happened earlier in October and is clearly part of a larger push from the Louisville, KY chain to increase efforts around the digital restaurant experience.

While Caldwell said the new native online ordering platform is “exceeding expectations” in terms of customer response, improving and innovating on the drive-thru is crucial for KFC.

That’s hardly surprising. Speed of service at the drive-thru in general has steadily gone down over the last decade, with the average time in 2019 a good 20 seconds longer than the previous year. But drive-thrus still account for a huge percentage of sales at QSR chains. For KFC, they account for about 65 percent of sales, according to Caldwell. Using automation in the drive through could potentially minimize both mistakes that happen during the order-taking process in the drive-thru as well as the length of time a customer spends waiting.

Caldwell also said drive-thru technology could bump up check averages thanks to better personalization and suggestive selling — one of the key benefits McDonald’s has been touting with the Dynamic Yield AI technology it’s rolled out to thousands of drive-thrus of late. He also hinted at license-plate recognition in the future, where the system can scan a customer’s plate and immediately suggest that person’s favorite meal.

A number of other QSRs are now testing new technologies and methods to speed up service in the drive-thru. Chains like Dunkin’, Krispy Kreme, and Chipotle are adding lanes for mobile-only orders. Sonic piloted AI-powered menu boards earlier this year. Meanwhile, companies like 5thru and Valyant AI are partnering with QSRs to automate more of the process through AI.

KFC hasn’t actually deployed any of this technology to actual stores yet, though Caldwell told NRN that “there’s going to be no shortage of [KFC] franchisees that want to adopt and be a test partner” when that finally happens.

Long Lines, Huge Crowds: KFC’s New Beyond Fried Chicken is Going Viral

Yesterday KFC made headlines when the fast-food chain announced that it would test out plant-based Beyond Meat chicken nuggets in one location in suburban Atlanta.

As the majority of the Spoon team is based in the Pacific Northwest, we couldn’t quite justify a trip to taste the plant-based chicken ourselves. Thankfully I grew up in Atlanta and my parents still live there — so this morning I called up my mother to ask her for a big favor: to drive over to KFC and try the Beyond Fried Chicken.

“This is crazy,” she said thirty minutes later when she called to update me. She described lines around the block 70 people deep with dozens of cars queued up to get into the drive-thru. Traffic was stopped on the entire right-hand side of Cobb Parkway, a major city thoroughfare. It was barely 11 a.m. “I can’t believe this is happening in Atlanta!” 

Indeed, the ATL is a place that dearly loves its fried chicken. A soul food hub, the city is also home of Chick-fil-A, which has expanded across the nation drawing fans with its crispy chicken sandwiches and nuggets.

My mother may be nice, but she’s not nice enough to wait in line for three hours on a rainy Tuesday (I can’t blame her). So instead she found a few lucky folks who had already scored their Beyond Fried Chicken and called me up to interview them.

Justin and Ryan with their Beyond Fried Chicken nuggets and wings.

Justin and Ryan waited in line for an hour right when the KFC opened at 10:30am in order to snag the Beyond Fried Chicken. They got 12-piece nuggets ($8.00) and a 6-piece wings, Nashville Hot flavor ($6.00). “They’re really good — the breading is nice, and they’re juicier than other fake chicken we’ve tried like from Morningstar,” they told me. They also said that the nuggets were relatively bland, but that the barbecue dipping sauce added a lot of flavor.

Both Justin and Ryan are vegetarian so they couldn’t speak to whether they thought the Beyond Fried Chicken would fool a meat-eater. They also didn’t offer to share the hard-won “chicken” with my mom (fair enough), so she, a fried chicken obsessive, couldn’t give me her opinion.

Based off of looks alone, it doesn’t seem like the Beyond Fried Chicken is going to be enticing any hardcore carnivores. “It doesn’t look very appetizing,” my mom told me later after sending me a photo of Justin and Ryan’s hard-earned nuggets and wings.

Indeed, the plant-based chicken isn’t winning any beauty contests. But a good chunk of ATL-liens don’t seem to care — heck, they’ll even drive out of their way and wait for hours in the rain for it.

At least part of this fuss is because Beyond Meat has become such a buzzed-about news topic ever since their successful IPO. Consumers are also always drawn to the next hot trend, and the KFC/Beyond Meat partnership got a lot of media coverage. There’s also a slight ‘Free Stuff!’ incentive: today the select KFC location is giving out complimentary samples of Beyond Fried Chicken from 10:30am to 6:30pm (with the purchase of a full-priced menu item and while supplies last).

However, I don’t think the promise of a free plant-based nugget was enough to draw crowds of this size. Instead, the viral popularity of the Beyond Fried Chicken speaks to just how much consumers want plant-based options, well, everywhere. Even in a city famed for its love of fried bird.

“It’s a sensation,” my mother said as she pulled out of the parking lot to head home. KFC stated that it would consider consumer response to the plant-based chicken before it considered a larger product rollout. If it mirrors what happened with Burger King and Qdoba, both of which tested out Impossible Foods products briefly in a few locations before expanding nationwide, that rollout will happen pretty soon.

Based on today’s response, I’m guessing we’ll soon be able to taste KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken in a lot more places — maybe even Seattle.

Update: According to a press release sent to The Spoon, KFC sold out of Beyond Fried Chicken in less than 5 hours. In that time, the amount of Beyond Fried Chicken purchased by guests was equal to the amount of popcorn chicken that KFC would typically sell in one week.

Krispy Kreme Gets a Digital Makeover With Newly Redesigned Store

Krispy Kreme debuted its first store redesign in over a decade this week, and it’s all about digital enhancements to speed up ordering, payments, pickup, and delivery for the doughnut-centric business.

According to a press release, the first of these locations opened on Tuesday in Concord, N.C., appropriately just a stone’s throw away from the company’s Global Product & Innovation Center.

Besides an expanded menu and something called “an enhanced doughnut theater experience,” where you can watch the goods being made step by step, the new store design features a number of tech-forward initiatives. Online ordering is integrated into the overall format, as is delivery. In terms of physical layout, the store has a dedicated area for self-service mobile order pickup for customers and/or delivery drivers. Krispy Kreme has also expanded the store’s drive-thru to two lanes — much like Dunkin’ did in 2018 when it opened its next-generation concept store.

The similarities between Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ shouldn’t be taken as a doughnut to donut comparison, though. Rather, Krispy Kreme is merely following the direction most QSRs are traveling these days, which is all about becoming digital-first restaurants that can accommodate the growing number of sales channels (in-store, delivery, mobile app, drive-thru) customers want as options for ordering, as well as growing demand for better personalization. The news comes just days after KFC announced its digitally focused drive-thru of the future, Starbucks opened an express store concept in China, and, here in the U.S., Brightloom (formerly Eatsa) upped the ante on restaurant-tech in general by partnering with Starbucks to license the latter’s tech. Among many other developments.

According to the press release, the Concord, N.C. store is the first of 45 planned Krispy Kreme locations, new and existing, that will get the digital makeover throughout 2020.

Newsletter: The New All-in-One Restaurant Tech Is Here, Digital Drive-Thru Goes Down Under

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I was in a local coffee shop recently and overheard a rep from a well-known POS company trying to sell his product to the shop’s manager. But for every feature he offered up (“It’ll manage payroll!” “It makes tipping easier!”), the cafe manager had more or less the same rebuttal: more tech would make more work for her staff.

I suspect this conversation is happening all over the world. Tech’s march on the restaurant industry is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily making life easier for restaurants. In a growing number of cases, too many digital tools actually make it harder to get work done, particularly as demands for delivery and mobile orders ramp up and those functions have to be integrated into an already chaotic workflow.

But this week, we got a different glimpse into the future of the digital restaurant — namely, one where disparate tech solutions are replaced by a single digital platform that can manage every corner of the restaurant, from the kitchen system in the back to the kiosk out front to the off-premises order on its way out for delivery.

At least, that’s what Brightloom hopes to launch to restaurants this fall. The newly rebranded company, formerly known as Eatsa, announced yesterday that it’s revamped its existing end-to-end restaurant tech platform, into which it’s also integrating Starbucks’ famed mobile technology.

This is a big deal because, while many products claim to be “all-in-one” restaurant management software packs that make it easier for restaurant owners and operators to manage the entire business, no one’s yet managed to seamlessly integrate the mobile aspect of business into their system.

And nobody does mobile like Starbucks. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s hard to deny the mega-chain’s dominance when it comes to offering fast, highly personalized order and pickup functions for customers. Brightloom’s soon-to-be-unveiled system will integrate the Starbucks mobile order, pay, and customer loyalty tech into its own system. We don’t yet know exactly what that will look like, but it will undoubtedly raise everyone’s standards around what restaurant-tech systems should be able to do and put pressure on others to make their offerings just as useful and less of a burden for restaurants to implement.

Good-bye, Crackly Speakerphone. Hello Digital Drive-Thru
Will all these digital developments render the crackly speaker at the drive-thru null and void? Probably, and sooner than we think.

While major QSRs like Dunkin’ and Starbucks have been implementing digital and mobile ordering into the drive-thru experience little by little over the last couple years, KFC took things a step further recently by announcing its first-ever drive-thru-only concept store.

The store, which is slated to open in November, will feature multiple drive-thru lanes dedicated to customers who have ordered their food via the KFC website or mobile app. The idea is to streamline the order process and cut down on how long it takes customers — or delivery drivers — to get their food. But again, it’s all about the implementation. KFC’s concept store could raise the bar on what QSRs are expected to deliver in terms of speed and quality. Or it could just be introducing another digital process that stresses workers out. We’ll know more when the pilot launches in November, in Australia.

Delivery Bots on the Rise
Or you could just let the restaurant come to you in the form of a roving bot. There’s a growing number of these devices delivering food from restaurant to customer, often on college campuses, which hold a lot of people in a relatively small geographic area.

But as my colleague Chris Albrecht pointed out this week, Kiwi announced it will test its semi-autonomous delivery bots on the streets of Sacramento, CA this fall, which suggests we’re coming to a point where these li’l roving machines will start to become a more common sight on regular city sidewalks. Who needs drive-thru when you can have your meal brought to you by a cute little box on wheels? As Chris said, “it was pretty amazing to whip out my phone, order a burrito, have a robot fetch my lunch and bring it to my location.”

For now, roving delivery bots are probably not a priority for most restaurants’ overall digital solutions. But as all-in-one offerings like the Brightloom-Starbucks tech get more commonplace and digital ordering becomes routine for customers and workers alike, there may be room for most restaurants to accommodate a bot or two in their tech stack.

KFC Is Testing Out a Drive-Thru-Only Concept Store in Australia

If you want a hint at what all drive-thrus of the future might look like, head to Australia, where KFC is piloting its first-ever drive-thru concept store.

The store, which will first be trialled in Newcastle, New South Wales, is the chain’s first drive-thru-only location and is meant to speed up the process of ordering, paying for, and collecting food while at the drive-thru.

Digital is the main focus here. Customers order ahead via the KFC mobile app, which will then generate a four-digit code. Once in the drive-thru lane, they key that code into a touchscreen receiver, which shoots the order to the kitchen where the food is made. Drivers then pull up to the main pickup window to retrieve the food.

KFC has also said this streamlined setup is ideal for delivery drivers picking up food, as it could cut down on how long they have to wait before collecting a customer’s order.

What’s potentially more exciting about this concept, though, is not what it will look like when the store opens in November, but what it could eventually become. Gary Mortimer, a retail expert at Queensland University of Technology, noted in a recent interview that while a drive-thru-only concept could speed up the process, in this iteration of KFC’s new store, customers still have to wait onsite for their food to be made. He then hinted at the potential of push notifications, which could be used to tell the customer when their food is ready and also alert the restaurant when a customer is less than a mile away.

That level of precise timing won’t make it into this first iteration of KFC’s new drive-thru only store, but the concept itself is a good indicator of what’s to come for drive-thrus all over the world as the restaurant industry goes more digital and customers expect their food faster.

Major QSRs still see over half their orders come from the drive-thru window. But at the same time, waits are getting longer. In response, tech companies and QSRs alike are implementing tech-driven initiatives to cut down those times. Dunkin’ has added dedicated drive-thru lanes for mobile orders, and Starbucks already offers a number of drive-thru/walk-up locations meant for speedier service in high-traffic areas.

KFC’s new store will still feature two lanes for more traditional drive-thru operations, where customers can order via a speaker phone that has a human being on the other hand. That human element will remain an important offering for QSRs implementing new tech concepts — for now. As customers grow more comfortable with digital, there’s a good chance the crackly speaker phone will fall by the wayside at some point.

KFC Contemplating a Plant-Based Chicken Option

KFC isn’t “chicken” when it comes to experimenting with plant-based proteins. This week, Kevin Hochman the president of KFC’s U.S. business told Business Insider that the fast food chain will be meeting with several alternative protein makers to explore what an alterna-chicken product would look like.

The notion of a Kentucky Fried Plant-based Chicken menu item actually shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as restaurants across the country are joining the movement towards plant-based meat. Burger King is rolling out the plant-based Impossible Whopper nationwide, White Castle offers the Impossible slider, and Red Robin, Del Taco and Qdoba all have plant-based “meat” options on their menus.

KFC didn’t provide many details about its plant-based ambitions, but perhaps the company felt compelled to say something publicly after one of its key rivals, Chick-Fil-A, said last week it was exploring plant-based options.

The big issue facing both KFC and Chick-Fil-A right now is that the two big alternative protein companies, Beyond Meat and Impossible make beef and/or sausage substitutes, not chicken. In fact, Beyond Meat recently pulled its chicken strip offerings from store shelves because, according to a company FAQ, they “weren’t delivering the same plant-based meat experience as some of our more popular products.”

However, given that KFC doesn’t seem to be on any strict deadline for bringing a plant-based option to market, it could potentially find a partner like Tyson. The chicken giant announced earlier this year that it was developing its own plant-based proteins. Additionally, there is Seattle Food Tech, which has developed plant-based chicken nuggets for large scale commercial kitchens like those in school cafeterias and hospitals.

Of course, the true test for any plant-based chicken meal at KFC will be: Is it finger-lickin’ good?