Show: Me, Myself, and AI · Publisher: MIT Sloan Management Review + BCG · Host: Sam Ransbotham, Shervin Khodabandeh
Episode URL: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/audio/hungry-for-learning-wendys-will-croushorn
Publish date: 2025-12-16
Duration: NAs
Default source credibility: HIGH — MIT SMR + BCG joint production. Named F500 CxOs on-record about production AI deployments. Academic/consulting co-brand keeps claims disciplined. Host has light BCG framing; guest metrics stay HIGH.
- Wendy’s Fresh AI Initiative uses AI agents to handle drive-through orders, improving accuracy and accessibility.
- The system handles about 95% of orders, with 150,000 orders processed daily, expanding to multiple languages.
- Fresh AI focuses on removing barriers and enhancing customer experiences, including support for atypical speech.
Extracted quotes
| # | Credibility | Speaker | Org | Timestamp | Topic | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HIGH | Will Crouchhorn (Product Manager) | Wendy’s | 06:54 | 02-corporate-tools | Right now, we are handling about 95% of the orders that come through. It’s about 150,000 orders every day, and we’re continuing to add sites. |
| 2 | HIGH | Will Crouchhorn (Product Manager) | Wendy’s | 05:33 | 07-adoption-challenges | We’ve done a lot of research to understand how do we help guests looking at the cognitive load order in an easier process. And so one of the ways that we do that is we actually will show you the transcript so you can see what the agent is saying. You can see what you’re saying. |
| 3 | HIGH | Will Crouchhorn (Product Manager) | Wendy’s | 18:09 | 07-adoption-challenges | We’ve reduced the number of times the agent says sorry by about 60% over the last few months. And that’s one of those not obvious metrics, but it’s made a huge impact in the customer experience. |
Per-quote detail
1. Will Crouchhorn — Wendy’s (06:54)
Right now, we are handling about 95% of the orders that come through. It’s about 150,000 orders every day, and we’re continuing to add sites.
- Stat: 95% of orders handled, 150,000 orders daily
- Credibility: HIGH — Named exec at identifiable org with specific metric and unscripted interview.
- Topic tag:
02-corporate-tools
2. Will Crouchhorn — Wendy’s (05:33)
We’ve done a lot of research to understand how do we help guests looking at the cognitive load order in an easier process. And so one of the ways that we do that is we actually will show you the transcript so you can see what the agent is saying. You can see what you’re saying.
- Credibility: HIGH — Named exec with specific claim about production deployment detail.
- Topic tag:
07-adoption-challenges
3. Will Crouchhorn — Wendy’s (18:09)
We’ve reduced the number of times the agent says sorry by about 60% over the last few months. And that’s one of those not obvious metrics, but it’s made a huge impact in the customer experience.
- Stat: 60% reduction in ‘sorry’ metric
- Credibility: HIGH — Named exec with specific metric and unscripted interview.
- Topic tag:
07-adoption-challenges
Extracted 2026-04-14T21:31:02 via scripts/podcast_mine.py (MLX mlx-community/Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct-4bit).