Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is rolling out an artificial intelligence assistant that it hopes will cut the time it takes the chain to hire employees by 75%.
The virtual counter, known as Ava Cado, will be available in more than 3,500 of the chain’s restaurants by the end of the month in North America and Europe, the company announced Tuesday. The drop marks Chipotle’s second-busiest hiring period of the year, following the sales sprint it calls March through May.burrito season“.
The company said Ava will collect information from applicants, answer questions about the company, book meetings and send offers to human-selected candidates. The goal is to remove these administrative tasks from managers’ to-do lists so they can focus on restaurant management.
The system “works as if we hired additional administrative support for all of our restaurants,” Chipotle Chief Human Resources Officer Ilene Eskenazi said in a statement.
Powered by conversational AI from technology company Paradox, the AI assistant can speak English, Spanish, French and German. It’s Chipotle’s latest move into automation, following tests of robots that speed up avocado mashing and burrito bowl assembly.
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