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SoundHound AI Inc. announced late Wednesday that the restaurant chain Peter Piper Pizza has begun rolling out its AI ordering system. The chain, which operates more than 120 locations in the United States and Mexico, is starting the rollout across its 41 restaurants in Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The new system can understand natural language and will enable consumers to place phone orders for pickup. Once orders are placed, payment can be handled either at the time of the order or upon pickup, depending on the restaurant’s existing procedures.
“Our focus is on providing a seamless ordering experience while integrating with established payment systems like Square, Olo, and Toast,” Ben Bellettini, SoundHound’s senior vice president of sales for restaurants says by email, referring to well-known payments processors in the dining industry.
The system is trained on Peter Piper Pizza’s full menu, including specific items, allergens, and store hours, and is expected to make handling phone orders “faster, more accurate, and efficient for customers and staff,” SoundHound says. The system is also capable of handling multiple phone orders simultaneously, helping ensure that phone orders are not missed.
In addition, SoundHound’s AI ordering system provides cross-selling and upselling capabilities, promotes special offers, such as birthday packages, and can answer frequently asked questions.
“Customers benefit from a quicker, more efficient, and consistent ordering experience, boosting their overall satisfaction. The technology significantly reduces the burden of routine tasks like order-taking for staff, freeing them to focus on more complex responsibilities, such as food prep and in-person customer service,” Bellettini says. “This not only improves staff efficiency, but can also lead to higher job satisfaction, reduced employee stress, and retention.”
SoundHound, which has deployed its technology in more than 10,000 restaurant locations, in February rolled out its next-generation AI ordering system, which enables restaurants to connect all ordering channels to provide a unified customer experience through those channels.
The technological heart of the new AI ordering platform is the Polaris multilingual speech-recognition model, which SoundHound developed in-house. As of late 2024, SoundHound’s AI-based phone-ordering technology had processed more than 100 million customer interactions for restaurants, the company says.
“Our AI technology allows merchants to manage a high volume of concurrent phone calls without being limited by on-site hardware or staff,” says Bellettini. “This ensures every customer call is answered regardless of how busy the restaurant is, and prevents lost orders and long wait times.”
