Meet ‘Patty’, Burger King’s AI chatbot assessing staff’s friendliness

Meet ‘Patty’, Burger King’s AI chatbot assessing staff’s friendliness · USA TODAY

Michelle Del Rey , USA TODAY

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 4:55 AM GMT+9 2 min read

Burger King is launching an AI chatbot to monitor whether employees are being polite to customers.

“Patty,” the company’s new voice-enabled chatbot, will be live in employees’ cloud-connected headsets. It’s part of a new OpenAI-powered platform called BK Assistant.

Burger King introduced BK Assistant on Thursday, Feb. 26. The platform will bring artificial intelligence technology to restaurant teams by “unifying POS (point of sale), kitchen equipment, inventory and digital ordering into one command center,” the company said in a news release.

Here’s what to know.

Burger King is using AI to track politeness

Burger King has tracked aggregated keywords such as “welcome,” “please” and “thank you” at a limited number of pilot locations to help managers understand overall service patterns, the company said.

In an emailed statement to USA TODAY, Burger King said the chatbot is not being implemented to score individuals or enforce scripts.

“It’s about reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real-time insights so they can recognize their teams more effectively,” the fast-food chain said. “We believe hospitality is fundamentally human. The role of this technology is to support our teams so they can stay present with Guests.”

How else is ‘Patty’ being used?

In practice, the technology has been used to alert managers to automatically remove items from digital menus and the Burger King app when a product becomes unavailable, support on-the-line questions about menu item preparation and product details without interrupting service, and analyze drive-thru audio to promote order accuracy and provide coaching insights, Burger King said.

**More: **Burger King bringing back popular Whopper on Feb. 24. See which one.

The chatbot is scheduled to be piloted in 500 restaurants by the end of 2026, and the BK Assistant web and app platform will be available in all locations in the United States by the end of the year.

It’s not the only measure the company has recently taken to ensure customer satisfaction. Earlier in February, the fast-food chain announced customers could call Burger King President Tom Curtis at (305) 874-0520 to share thoughts on their experience.

Curtis will take as many calls as possible daily. A news release announcing the move states that every message received will be reviewed and responded to, helping the company make decisions across the business.

Michelle Del Rey is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at mdelrey@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Burger King’s new AI chatbot ‘Patty’ assesses employee friendliness

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