How KFC and Taco Bell’s top technologist is embracing AI and automation across 63,000 restaurants

Previously, the software that connected the chain’s kitchen and fleet systems processed orders in a rudimentary “first in, first out” flow. An order would come into the restaurant and a ticket would immediately be generated to tell the kitchen to put the pizza in the oven. But there were plenty of times where the the order would sit idle waiting for an available driver.

Dausch and his team created a data-forward automation layer that changed the workflow, telling cooks not to make the pizza until the system knew with greater certainty that further down the chain, a driver would be available for pickup. The change led to hotter food deliveries and a “meaningful” increase in customer satisfaction scores, according to Dausch.

“We are sort of step-by-step going through what it takes to run our restaurant and finding every way we possibly can to automate those things,” says Dausch.

Dausch joined Yum Brands, which recently saw sales take a hit from a cyclospora outbreak, in December 2024 as global chief digital and technology officer of Pizza Hut. He was promoted 11 months later to hold that same title across the entire enterprise, which includes the Taco Bell and KFC brands. He oversees Yum’s websites and apps, digital order platforms, corporate systems, AI and data, and restaurant technology across 63,000 global locations that are operated by around 1,500 franchisees.

Yum is Dausch’s first foray into the restaurant sector, but he says that his thinking around technology closely mirrors his 20 years of experience at hospitality giant Marriott. All of his technology investments focus on customers, workers, and the franchisees. For the franchisees, food and labor have traditionally been their largest expenses, but increasingly, they’ve had to increase their investments in technology. Still, Dausch says they have little appetite to just accept every new tool without a clear return on investment.

“When we talk to our franchisees, they’re very worried about that,” says Dausch. “If we can’t prove that what we’re putting in place is either going to meaningfully improve the customer experience in a way that drives higher same-store sales growth, or meaningfully reduce food waste in a way that is going to ultimately pay for itself, obviously the franchisee is going to kind of resist.” 

With ROI in mind, there are times when Dausch has to say no. Robotics have generated buzz among franchisees, but no single prominent use case has emerged that Yum deems worthy of chasing. He’s also cautious when buying the AI capabilities pitched by software-as-a-service vendors, saying higher chip costs and other infrastructure expenses have made pricing for these features too frothy.

Some bigger technology bets Dausch has placed include digital kiosks, which have been rolled out to around two-thirds of restaurant locations globally and consistently produce higher check averages than in-person orders. An automated, voice AI ordering system has been rolled out to more than 900 Taco Bell U.S. restaurants, also with the intention of boosting order sizes, while also improving accuracy and increasing customer satisfaction.  

Dausch acknowledges that the voice AI system has been a “learning journey,” requiring Yum to make tweaks to the system so that the handoff between the AI and human workers is smoother.  

Across the quick-service restaurant industry, kiosks have been one of the biggest tech hits with diners, but even there, Dausch sees an opportunity for improvement. He’s added a step where consumers can enter their loyalty program information so that kiosks can make more personalized offers based on the data the restaurant has from past orders.

At Yum, which ranks #474 on the Fortune 500, Dausch also oversees Byte, a proprietary SaaS restaurant technology platform that was designed to consolidate online and mobile app ordering, point of sale, kitchen and delivery, menu management, inventory, and labor management tools and systems. For now, Byte is completely an internal platform, though the intent is that it will have an external customer in Pizza Hut, which Yum agreed to sell for $2.7 billion in June.

Dausch credits former CEO David Gibbs, who retired earlier this year, for setting the vision that Yum would need to prioritize technology and AI to compete aggressively in the restaurant sector. A typical restaurant location was managing up to 30 software vendors, and it could take a day or longer to pull insights from some of those systems. Byte operates as a single platform with just one data source.

“The challenge was that the restaurants often did not have a common line of sight across all of those systems to how their business was doing in real time,” says Dausch.

One example of how Byte has helped improve restaurant operations has been in inventory ordering. Yum’s automation system has led to an 85% reduction in “stockouts,” which is when a restaurant would run out of ingredients, resulting in lost sales when menu items aren’t available.

Yum has authorized enterprise licenses for OpenAI’s ChatGPT for district managers and franchise leaders, who are also mandated to take courses through an “AI Academy” that teaches them how to understand prompting, create digital executive assistants, and encourage the development of more than 400 AI agents.

All that said, Dausch knows he’s only one piece of the pie. “I don’t know anyone that has ever just selected a restaurant to go to based on the technology,” says Dausch, who adds that craveable food at a fair price is what wins diners. “It’s important for us that we don’t lose the plot.”

John Kell

NEWS PACKETS

Anthropic’s second-quarter revenue soars, less so at OpenAI. Bloomberg reported last week that the Claude maker told prospective investors that its second-quarter revenue soared to more than $11.5 billion compared to just $787 million a year ago and $4.73 billion in the first quarter of 2026, as Anthropic has seen great demand from corporate customers for its AI products. Days later, the Wall Street Journal reported that second-quarter sales growth grew at a slower pace at rival OpenAI. First-to-second quarter revenue increased 18% at OpenAI, but more than doubled at Anthropic, and the former’s operating margin dropped deeper in the red while Anthropic reported a small operating profit.

Nvidia, OpenAI announce a massive new data center. On Monday, the AI chipmaker announced it would provide up to $105 billion in financial backing for a massive data center in Ohio, which will be leased to OpenAI. The Pike County, Ohio, project could cost as much as $500 billion in total, the New York Times reports, and under the terms of the agreement OpenAI will only lease the site as capacity becomes available. OpenAI’s 20-year lease for the data center will provide the company with eight gigawatts of computing capacity. And as data centers face bipartisan opposition from Americans, OpenAI’s announcement for the project loudly touted the creation of construction jobs, community fund grants, and millions in Codex credits as part of an effort to entice a more favorable local response.

Lululemon’s chief AI and technology officer exits after less than a year. The athleisure company confirmed that its top technology leader—and the first to ever hold this title—has left Lululemon and that the retailer is searching for a successor. Ranju Das initially joined Lululemon in September 2025, with a focus on leveraging AI and technology to enhance both the retail experience for customers and internal operations. Earlier in August, Das’ predecessor, former CIO Julie Averill, wrote a New York Times op-ed lamenting the pressure to add “AI” to news releases, job postings, and titles, with little strategy behind it. Luluemon has also faced sales challenges and recently settled a conflict with its founder, Chip Wilson, in a deal that adds three new directors to the company’s board by October.

OpenAI, Google are offering AI to a new target age demo: children. This week, OpenAI announced a special version of ChatGPT for teenagers with stronger protections around topics including sexual chats, self-harm, and suicide. This new version of the chatbot comes roughly two months after Florida became the first U.S. state to sue OpenAI over concerns that the core ChatGPT tool posed a risk to children. Meanwhile, Google last week announced that its Gemini chatbot would enable some features for K-12 schools to assist with math and writing assignments. The push by AI giants to offer their services to students comes as some schools have sought to temporarily halt the use of AI in schools.

China’s tech firms Alibaba, Z.ai debut new models. The U.S. versus China battle for AI dominance was on full display this week, with an announcement on Monday from Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which debuted a new AI model that’s designed to run on consumer hardware like laptops. This new model, which is called Qwen3.8-27B, can perform coding, professional work, research, and long-horizon agentic tasks, according to CNBC. Separately, the Beijing-based Z.ai upgraded its flagship AI model, GLM-5.3, with improved coding capabilities that closes the gap with market leaders like Anthropic’s Fable 5.

ADOPTION CURVE

Companies are bullish on agentic AI, but few feel workers are ready. Three-quarters of business leaders expect that nearly half of their business processes will need to be redesigned or rebuilt around AI agents, according to a recent survey of 501 senior manager- to C-suite-level respondents conducted by consulting giant Deloitte. And a majority of these leaders feel prepared when it comes to their vision and strategy around agentic AI, as well as their technology infrastructure and data foundation. 

Where they feel less sturdy is in workforce readiness, with only 25% reporting they feel either prepared or highly prepared when it comes to agentic AI adoption. That’s a big problem, considering agentic AI is not only expected to dramatically remake workflows, but also considering 61% report they expect humans will be expected to oversee these autonomous systems. How can an employee manage a system that they may not fully understand?

China Widener, Deloitte’s vice chair and US Technology, Media & Telecommunications industry leader, tells Fortune that the firm’s research has shown that for every dollar spent on technology 93 cents is allocated for the tech, leaving just seven cents for the human component. To better prepare for agentic AI, this formula may need to be reconsidered with more AI skills development, but also a clear vision from leaders as to what workflows will look like in the future.

“Human investment is equally important, because it’s the human-agent interaction that’s going to reap tremendous benefits in the long run,” says Widener. 

Courtesy of Deloitte

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– Citi is seeking a global head of prime technology, based in New York. Posted salary range: $250K-$500K/year.

– Wiley is seeking a senior director of people technology, based in Hoboken, New Jersey. Posted salary range: $189.7K-$278.6K/year.

– New York Life is seeking a VP, head of enterprise architecture, based in New York. Posted salary range: $250K-$300K/year.

– The Breast Cancer Research Foundation is seeking a director of technology and information systems, based in New York. Posted salary range: $175K-$190K/year.

Hired:

– Progress Software announced the appointment of Bridget Collins as CIO, where she will lead the enterprise software vendor’s global IT and security organization and report to CEO Yogesh Gupta. Previously, Collins served as CIO at cybersecurity company Rapid7 and as CIO and chief transformation officer at Cerence, a software company that develops AI-powered virtual assistants for the auto market.

– Mantis Space named Dale Parkes as its first-ever CTO, where he will lead the engineering team at the space infrastructure startup and report to CEO Eric Truitt. Parkes joins Mantis Space from aerospace giant Boeing, where he worked for 25 years, where he was a technical fellow and served as a chief engineer.

– Valeris appointed Adam Miller to the role of chief technology and AI officer, a newly broadened position that reports directly to CEO Rob Truckenmiller. Miller joins the life sciences company after most recently serving as CTO at IT services provider PeakActivity. Previously, he was chief product officer at GoodRx and CIO at TherapeuticsMD.

– Invoca announced the appointment of JB Brown as CTO, joining the call tracking and analytics company as it expands its use of AI agents. Previously, Brown served as VP of engineering at software-as-a-service company Smartsheet. He also previously spent nearly a decade in leadership roles at department store chain Nordstrom.

– Transient.AI appointed Michael Ponniah as CTO, where he will oversee the financial technology firm’s global engineering, technical strategy, and platform architecture. Ponniah joins Transient.AI after nearly a decade at Amazon, where he held senior engineering roles across Amazon Web Services, Alexa AI, and the company’s last mile delivery logistics. He also spent seven years at financial giant Credit Suisse.

– Align promoted Noel Kilcooley to the role of CTO, where he will oversee the technology strategy, AI, cybersecurity, and compliance for the IT services company. Kilcooley has worked at Align since 1999 and previously served as senior systems engineer.

– Health Gorilla announced the appointment of Ryan Smith as CTO, where he will be responsible for platform architecture, engineering, and the technical roadmap for the healthcare software provider. Previously, Smith served as founder and CEO of the SaaS startup The Warehouse Co. He also was SVP of product and engineering at senior living and care software company Aline.

– Credit Acceptance named Jeetu Mirchandani to the role of CTO, effective August 27, where he will lead the auto financing company’s engineering organization and technology strategy. Mirchandani joins Credit Acceptance after a 21-year career at Amazon, where he most recently served as a director of applied AI.