Leon Davoyan, the chief technology officer for Dave’s Hot Chicken, has ramped up the application of artificial intelligence across the restaurant chain’s operations, including the drive-thru, mobile ordering, rover delivery, and robotic arms that whip up french fries.
But he is cautious not to lose the human touch of hospitality. That AI-enabled drive-thru—a trendy application of AI that historically hasn’t had the smoothest deployment for larger chains including McDonald’s and Taco Bell—isn’t intended to replace workers. “Our strategy is to allow the human to do more with the robot assistant,” says Davoyan.
All that said, successful deployments of AI, robotics, and other emerging technologies could give Dave’s Hot Chicken an edge in the fast-growing and highly competitive chicken restaurant category that includes incumbent brands like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes and fast-growing concepts like Raising Cane’s, Hangry Joe’s Hot Chicken & Wings, and Dave’s. Quick-service and fast-casual chicken restaurants expanded their domestic unit count by 4.7% in 2024 from the prior year, along with a sales leap of nearly 10%, according to market research Datassential.
Adding more AI-enabled functionality to Dave’s Hot Chicken’s ordering systems has been a core priority for Davoyan over the past year and a half and will continue to be an area of focus in 2026. He has launched AI drive-thru ordering and hopes that the learnings from this application can be used to train large language models that could be tapped for similar functionality in the company’s mobile app.
