Red Lobster Accelerates Takeout with AI-Powered Phone Ordering
Red Lobster deploys SoundHound’s AI phone ordering across approximately 545 locations to answer every call, accelerate accuracy, and route orders directly to POS with a human fallback.
A September Turning Point
Red Lobster, described as "the world’s largest and most‑loved seafood restaurant company," has set a fresh table for off‑premise diners with a chainwide voice AI move. Announced on "September 23, 2025," the company is deploying an AI‑powered phone ordering agent with SoundHound AI across "approximately 545 locations." The brief is precise and unfussy: capture demand without delay, and make reordering as familiar as a favorite booth by the window. Engineered to ensure "every phone call is answered—no matter how busy the restaurant becomes," the system can juggle multiple calls at once, ushering guests toward store hours, locations, and menu clarity. It is trained on Red Lobster’s full menu for speed and accuracy, and crucially, orders route straight into the point‑of‑sale—no handoffs to fray at the edges during a dinner rush. For those who prefer a human cadence, the line remains open to a live agent. It is a measured embrace of automation: a warmer welcome, not a closed door. Analysis: The announcement establishes national scope and intent—an AI phone agent across roughly 545 restaurants to prevent missed demand—pairing automation with human backup to mitigate risk during busy periods.
The Persistent Bottleneck
Phone lines are often the unseen host stand—where impatience can gather like a queue at twilight. Red Lobster’s rollout concentrates on a stubborn constraint: missed or delayed phone orders that erode service promises and, by extension, loyalty. By handling multiple simultaneous calls and guiding guests through concrete questions—hours, location, the precise contours of a menu—the system aims to remove friction at the earliest touchpoint. The culinary choreography here is back‑of‑house in spirit. Training the agent on the full menu is designed to sharpen order accuracy and tempo, while direct POS integration removes rekeying—those small opportunities where errors creep in like too much salt in a bisque. The value proposition is less spectacle than steadiness: a reliable voice, an efficient path to the kitchen, and a quieter workload for teams who can redirect attention to the dining room and to keeping food hot and high‑quality. Analysis: By focusing on reliability and speed in phone ordering, the initiative targets a concrete, recurring pain point, promising capacity gains without burdening staff with duplicate tasks.
After Bankruptcy, Discipline
The decision lands in a broader modernization campaign following Red Lobster’s "emergence from bankruptcy in 2024" and under a new CEO, Damola Adamolekun. Industry observers frame the move as a response to financial pressure, including "$22 million" in losses in 2023. In this light, the voice AI is a lever for operational discipline—a way to keep service orderly when teams are stretched and to align resources with the rhythms of guest demand. Strategically, the emphasis is on off‑premise ordering and takeout, channels where speed, reliability, and consistency are the house rules. By automating routine interactions yet retaining an avenue to a person, the chain signals pragmatism: use technology for repetitive tasks while preserving human presence where it reassures. It is a balancing act that feels almost European in restraint—favoring clarity and cadence over novelty for novelty’s sake. Analysis: The rollout aligns a cost‑containment goal with guest‑centric priorities, demonstrating post‑bankruptcy rigor without abandoning the hospitality touchstone of human choice.
From Voice to POS
The operational flow is designed like a well‑paced service: the AI picks up "every phone call" and manages overflow with parallel capacity; it answers practical questions while navigating menu items with fluency trained from Red Lobster’s full catalog. Orders are not simply recorded—they are placed directly into the point‑of‑sale, reducing handoffs that can slow or skew a ticket. In turn, employees can concentrate on greeting guests and ensuring hot, high‑quality food rather than toggling between the host stand and the handset. Chief Operating Officer Larry Konecny underlined a key convenience: the system enables "quick and seamless reordering for those who always want their favorites," while giving callers the option to switch to a human at any point. The scope—"approximately 545 locations"—signals a chainwide intention rather than a tentative pilot, a vote of confidence that phone ordering is the right stage for voice AI to perform consistently. Analysis: The AI‑to‑POS bridge targets accuracy and speed while protecting hospitality bandwidth, with a human fallback serving as a trust anchor for callers.
Scale Meets Integration
SoundHound arrives with a ledger of volume and variety. By "October 2024," its Smart Ordering phone AI had processed "over 100 million customer interactions" and facilitated "hundreds of millions of dollars" in food sales. The client roster—Chipotle, Jersey Mike’s, Applebee’s, Habit Burger, Noodles & Company, Beef O’Brady’s, and Casey’s General Stores—underscores a capacity to adapt across concepts and workflows. Strategic moves amplify that scale. In "June 2024" SoundHound acquired Allset, a local pick‑up ordering platform with "nearly 7,000" restaurant partners such as Joe & The Juice and Charleys Cheesesteaks, adding marketplace nuance and new relationships. The integration of the Amelia AI platform broadened omnichannel conversational reach, while a prior Synq3 merger widened distribution. The combined footprint stretches across drive‑thru, phone, kiosk, and in‑car systems to "more than 10,000 restaurant locations." For Red Lobster, these credentials translate to a partner versed in both the choreography of voice interactions and the plumbing of restaurant systems. Analysis: Selecting SoundHound pairs Red Lobster’s chainwide ambitions with a provider proven at high interaction volumes and multi‑channel integration, reducing the risk of rollout bottlenecks.
Drive‑Thru Cautionary Tales
Not all voice AI canvases are painted with the same brush. In fast‑food drive‑thrus, McDonald’s ended a test of IBM’s Automated Order Taker that began in 2021, concluding the program by "July 26, 2024" due to "accent misinterpretation and order inaccuracies," according to reports cited from CNBC and AP News. McDonald’s has since charted a different course with Google Cloud, bringing AI to drive‑thru, kitchen operations, predictive maintenance, computer vision, and generative AI for administrative tasks across "43,000 global locations," with an ambition to grow its customer base from "175 million" to "250 million" by 2027. Taco Bell, which put voice AI into "over 500" drive‑thru locations, is reassessing the footprint amid glitches, delays, and customer unease; its CTO observed that "AI cannot work everywhere," an admission that context matters. Red Lobster’s decision to focus on phone ordering suggests a more controlled theater—fewer environmental variables, clearer dialogs, and a cleaner path to the ticket printer. Analysis: Mixed results in drive‑thru highlight the importance of deployment context; phone ordering offers a simpler stage for consistency while preserving brand control.
Automation With a Handshake
The partnership’s messaging is unambiguous: it is poised to "revolutionize takeout ordering across all Red Lobster locations" by eliminating missed calls, guiding menu‑aware ordering, and accelerating reorders. The theme is not headcount replacement but staff enablement—freeing employees to refine the in‑person experience and the plate’s punctual arrival. Konecny’s emphasis on "quick and seamless reordering for those who always want their favorites" nods to a central truth of takeout: routine becomes ritual. And for those who prefer human rapport, the option to speak with a live agent remains, a small but essential courtesy. The provenance of the announcement—"SoundHound’s press release and corroborated by Business Wire"—roots the facts in company statements and a wire service summary, inviting readers to weigh the promises against the operational logic outlined. Analysis: Framed around convenience and consistency, the collaboration couples automation with a human safeguard to build caller confidence while staff attention returns to hospitality and food quality.
Metrics Still to Come
There is a deliberate modesty in what has not yet been said. The materials do not specify quantitative outcomes—no published changes in speed of service, order accuracy, or caller satisfaction. The timeline for full activation beyond the "September 23, 2025" announcement is not disclosed, though the intention spans "approximately 545 locations." Konecny is identified as COO "since November," with the year not specified. SoundHound cites "over 100 million customer interactions" and "hundreds of millions of dollars" in sales facilitated, but independent, third‑party performance audits for Red Lobster’s deployment are not included in the record. The existence of a live‑agent fallback is clear; the routing logic or triggers that determine when a call moves from AI to human hands remain unarticulated. Readers should see an operational thesis here: a system architected for reliability and scale, with protections for caller comfort, awaiting measured results. Analysis: The absence of outcome metrics places this as a strategy-in-motion, with safeguards in place and vendor experience as the confidence proxy until performance data emerges.
A Pragmatic Lesson
In the end, Red Lobster’s voice AI debut reads less like a gamble and more like mise en place—setting the station so the service can sing. Phone ordering is a tractable corridor: predictable questions, repeat behavior, and clean handoffs to the kitchen via direct POS integration. The choice of a seasoned technology partner, the retention of human fallback, and the chainwide scope suggest a play for operational steadiness rather than sizzle. It also reflects a broader post‑restructuring ethos: align technology with consumer preferences, "reduce friction, safeguard service standards, and support labor‑pressed teams." If executed as described, this program is structured to deliver practical gains without overreaching into noisier contexts that have tripped others. The lesson is elegant and clear—start where the dialogue is most controllable, let the results steep, and keep the hospitality intact. Analysis: The strategy zeroes in on a controllable channel to stabilize takeout experiences and protect brand consistency, a measured modernization step following restructuring under new leadership.