Dave’s Hot Chicken has been one of the breakout restaurant stories of the past decade, growing from a $900 parking lot pop-up in East Hollywood to a fast-casual chain with more than 300 locations, systemwide sales projected around $1.2 billion in 2025, and a $1 billion acquisition by Roark Capital. Now the Nashville-style hot chicken brand is turning to artificial intelligence and automation as its next competitive weapon, a strategy highlighted recently in Fortune’s CIO Intelligence by contributing writer John Kell.
In that report, Kell details how Dave’s Hot Chicken and its chief technology officer, Leon Davoyan, are ramping up AI across the business: at the drive-thru, in mobile ordering, through delivery orchestration, and even in the fry station, where robotic arms handle French fries. The company’s technology stack is built around Qu, a unified POS platform that installs an edge-computing device in each store so that ordering and payment can continue even if cloud services suffer an outage. It is a textbook example of a high-growth restaurant brand acting more like a scaled enterprise IT shop, with resiliency, data, and automation now as central to the strategy as menu innovation and real estate.
Dave’s is layering additional technologies on top of that foundation through its “Dave’s of the Future” initiative, which has already been recognized with a franchise operations and technology award. The initiative spans AI-powered voice ordering in the drive-thru, a custom mobile app, digital menu boards, self-service kiosks from Grubbrr, kitchen display systems from QSR Automations, dynamic quote-time tools for delivery, Flybuy-powered order tracking, and a robotic fryer branded “French Fry Roboto,” supplied by Atosa. The goal is not to swap people for machines, but to offload repetitive work, tighten operations, and support a very aggressive development plan that could see the chain approach or surpass 400 locations by the end of 2025 and continue expanding internationally.
Kell’s reporting emphasizes that Davoyan and his team view AI as a co-pilot rather than a replacement for frontline workers. At the drive-thru, for example, automated voice ordering systems handle the complexity of menu combinations, modifications, and routine upsell prompts, while staff remain on station to manage exceptions, interact with guests, and keep the lane moving. In the kitchen, robotic fryers and connected kitchen management systems focus on timing, consistency, and safety, freeing crew to handle plating, hospitality, and other tasks that still demand a human touch. Similar logic applies to kiosks and mobile ordering: the technology is there to capture demand more cleanly, increase average check, and reduce friction, not to erase the brand’s edgy, personality-driven service style.
The timing of Dave’s AI push is not accidental. Chicken-focused chains have been one of the fastest-growing segments in U.S. restaurants, with strong digital engagement and a steady stream of new concepts. Dave’s has already emerged as one of the category leaders in customer sentiment; Yelp recently named it the “Most Loved Brand” in the U.S. across all categories, outranking heavyweights like Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s. In what some have dubbed the “chicken wars,” incremental operational gains from AI and automation—whether that means shaving seconds off service times, reducing error rates, or lifting average check—can translate into real competitive advantage when multiplied across hundreds of high-volume locations.
The broader restaurant technology landscape makes clear that Dave’s is not alone in betting on AI, but its approach is distinct. Wendy’s has been rolling out its FreshAI system, built with Google Cloud, to automate drive-thru order taking, reporting faster service times and improved accuracy, with a plan to reach 500 to 600 locations by the end of 2025. Taco Bell’s parent company Yum Brands has reported millions of AI-handled orders across its network, while White Castle has become an early standard-bearer for back-of-house robotics through its deployment of Miso Robotics’ Flippy fryer systems. On the other side of the ledger, McDonald’s decision in 2024 to end its IBM-powered drive-thru AI pilot, following concerns about accuracy and guest experience, has become a cautionary tale about rushing deployment before the underlying technology and operations are ready.
What distinguishes Dave’s strategy, as surfaced in the CIO Intelligence piece and reinforced by other public remarks from Davoyan, is how integrated the technology program has become. Rather than treating voice AI, kiosks, robotics, delivery integrations, and analytics as standalone experiments, the company is building around a cohesive architecture: Qu as the unified commerce backbone, QSR Automations for real-time kitchen visibility, specialized tools like Curbit and Flybuy for off-premise orchestration, and edge devices in every unit to keep mission-critical functions running even during cloud disruptions. That holistic view is closer to how enterprise CIOs in other industries think about digital transformation than the ad hoc, “let’s pilot a gadget” mindset that still prevails at many restaurant brands.
The implications for the rest of the restaurant industry are significant. CIOs and CFOs are under pressure to prove that AI investments do more than generate headlines; they need to deliver measurable productivity gains, new revenue, and better customer outcomes. In restaurants, that means tying AI to clear KPIs: drive-thru throughput, average check, kitchen labor hours, food waste, guest satisfaction, loyalty engagement. Dave’s early moves suggest a playbook in which AI agents and automation tools are deployed where they can most clearly augment human work, and where the underlying data infrastructure is mature enough to support reliable performance at scale.
There are still open questions. Voice AI remains controversial with guests in some markets, and high-profile glitches at several chains have fueled social-media backlash and concerns about over-automation. Robotics in the kitchen also raises capital cost and change-management challenges for operators and franchisees. Yet for a growth brand like Dave’s, whose fan base has demonstrated pricing resilience and loyalty through rapid expansion, the trade-off appears acceptable if technology can sustain speed, quality, and consistency without sacrificing the brand’s identity.
The takeaway is that AI in restaurants is moving beyond isolated pilots to become a central part of the operating model at a new generation of fast-growing brands. Dave’s Hot Chicken offers a compelling case study of what happens when a chain builds a modern digital foundation early, then layers AI agents, automation, and robotics on top in a disciplined, integrated way. The story is now an important marker for restaurant IT and operations teams charting their own path through the AI era.
