Information Density: Presto – Signal Evidence & AI Readability

[H1] Drive-thru voice automation leader

Improve staff productivity, increase revenue, and enhance the guest experience. With over 15 years of restaurant industry experience, we’ve become the most popular automation solution for drive-thru restaurants.

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What’s new

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Press Release: Presto announces nationwide expansion with Wienerschnitzel

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Blog: QSR Productivity Surge

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Proud customers

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Drive-thru Voice AI Experts

[H2] Experienced restaurant enthusiasts

Presto offers the industry’s most widely adopted drive-thru ordering assistant, driven by a powerful spectrum of Voice AI.

About Presto

What’s new

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Press Release:Dairy Queen Partners with Presto on Voice AI

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Blog: The Drive-Thru Is an American Invention – and Infrastructure

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Proud customers

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[IMG: Hardees logo]

[IMG: Fazoli]

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[IMG: Presto Drive-thru Voice AI Experts]

Drive-thru Voice AI Experts

[H2] Experienced restaurant enthusiasts

Presto offers the industry’s most widely adopted drive-thru ordering assistant, driven by a powerful spectrum of Voice AI.

About Presto

Successful statements
“There’s data that backs up the continuous upselling is working.”

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Rusty Bills
Chief Operating Officer The Galardi Group Inc.

Successful statements
“It's important that we have an assistant that can take care of taking orders so we can focus on making great food.”

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Steve Smyth
Director of Restaurant Technology Taco John's

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[IMG: Steve Smyth - Chief Operating Officer Taco John]

[H2] Introducing Presto Voice™

Optimize staff efficiency, supercharge upselling, improve order accuracy, and accelerate service for your drive-thru.

Voice AI benefits

Revolutionize Your Drive-Thru

Optimize Staff Efficiency
Streamline operations and reduce dependency on staff by automating order-taking processes.

Supercharge Upselling
Consistently recommend add-ons and specials to increase average order value.

Provide a Superior Guest Experience
Enhance customer satisfaction with quick, accurate, and seamless interactions.

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[H2] Why Presto

Founded in 2008, we've become one of the largest AI and automation technology providers to the restaurant industry due to our experience automating drive-thrus of multiple QSR brands nationwide.
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We've determined that a single approach to AI will not meet the expectations of our customers and their guests. Presto utilizes a spectrum of Voice AI for the drive-thru, maximizing the potential AI can currently offer.
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Each location has its own integration challenges, and our experience with POS and headset providers allows us to install Presto Voice quickly without disrupting your drive-thru operations.
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Measurable Metrics

[H2] A drive-thru voice assistant driven by powerful AI that has a direct impact on your revenue

Our automated drive-thru solution has the richest feature set, is easy to install at scale, offers 24/7 availability, and delivers proven ROI.

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Up to 95%

Non-intervention rates

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Up to 88%

Upsell offer rates

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Up to 6%

Monthly incremental revenue increase

[H2] Latest blogs & news

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Press Releases

Dairy Queen Partners with Presto on Voice AI

Apr. 16, 2026
• Presto Marketing

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Blogs

The Drive-Thru Is an American Invention – and Infrastructure

Apr. 13, 2026
• Presto Marketing

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Press Releases

The Return of Co-founder Krishna Gupta as CEO, Marking A Successful Q1

Apr. 9, 2026
• Presto Marketing

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[H2] The future of drive-thru service today

Unlock unparalleled efficiency, cost savings, and revenue growth with Presto Voice.

Let’s get started

INCREASE REVENUE

GREATER STAFF RETENTION

OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS

IMPROVE THE GUEST EXPERIENCE

[H4] Successful pilot results lead to an expansion across the nation with select franchisees
MINNEAPOLIS, April 16, 2026 – American Dairy Queen Corporation (ADQ), a leader in iconic treats and food, announced today it has partnered with Presto on Voice AI, with an initial focus on the drive-thru. The company has tested the technology in its corporate stores and is now expanding the pilot to select franchisees around the country.“We’re committed to delivering an exceptional experience to our Fans and our staff, and we believe Presto can help us delight them even more. Presto has been an excellent partner and our initial results using their AI look quite promising,” said Kevin Baartman, EVP of IT at Dairy Queen. “With Presto’s AI, we can enable our staff to focus on high-value tasks that ultimately benefit our Fans, with a friendly experience, and high order accuracy. We look forward to working with select franchisee partners as we expand our engagement.”“Dairy Queen is an iconic American company with visionary leadership and a seminal role in the fabric of towns across the US and Canada. We’ve been thrilled to partner closely with their team to optimize the last mile of AI deployment, including complex menu integrations, friendly voices, and a smooth human-AI waltz that just works,” said Krishna Gupta, CEO of Presto. “We have an ambitious joint AI vision, and I’m excited to continue expanding our reach for all the DQ Fans out there – happy tastes good!”Dairy Queen and Presto will highlight their partnership during a joint speaking session at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on Monday, April 20.
[H5] About International Dairy Queen, Inc.
International Dairy Queen, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the parent company of American Dairy Queen Corporation and Dairy Queen Canada, Inc. Through its subsidiaries, IDQ develops, licenses and services a system of more than 7,700 DQ restaurants in more than 20 countries. IDQ is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. (Berkshire). For more information, visit DairyQueen.com.
[H5] About Presto Phoenix, Inc.
Presto is the Voice AI market leader for restaurant drive-thrus. Presto’s products increase revenue, decrease labor costs, improve staff productivity, and standardize/enhance the guest experience. Presto is expanding nationwide with some of the most recognized quick-service restaurant (QSR) brands in the United States. Based in Silicon Valley, Presto is backed by Voice AI specialist Remus Capital and aims to deliver a full suite of Vertical AI solutions for restaurant chains to enable end-to-end automation.
[H5] Media Contact:
[H5] Dairy Queen:[email protected]
[H5] Presto:[email protected]
Source: International Dairy Queen
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Blogs The Drive-Thru Is an American Invention – and Infrastructure
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Press Releases The Return of Co-founder Krishna Gupta as CEO, Marking A Successful Q1
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There are few inventions more quietly transformative to American life than the drive-thru. It is not just a convenience or just a feature of fast food. It is, in many ways, infrastructure that’s woven into the daily rhythms of American mobility, labor, and consumption.
But to understand how the drive-thru came to dominate American commerce, you have to start with a mentor, a protégé, and a taco stand in Southern California.
[H5] Where It Really Started: Glen Bell and a Lesson in Speed
In the late 1940s, a young entrepreneur named Glen Bell was trying and failing to build a successful hot dog stand in San Bernardino, California.1
Across the street was a small Mexican restaurant with a line out the door. Bell did something that would define the next half-century of American fast food: he studied it obsessively. He watched how tacos were made. He reverse-engineered the process. He figured out how to pre-assemble key components so that food could be served much faster than traditional made-to-order cooking allowed.
That insight became the foundation of what would eventually become Taco Bell. But more importantly, it established a principle that would ripple across the entire industry: Speed is not just about cooking faster; it’s about designing a system that eliminates friction.
[H5] Enter John Galardi: The First Disciple of the System
One of the people paying close attention to Bell was a young man named John Galardi. Galardi didn’t just admire Bell; he worked for him. He learned the system from the inside. He saw firsthand that the breakthrough wasn’t tacos. It was a process, one that involved pre-preparation, tight menus, and standardized execution.
When Galardi left to start his own business, he didn’t copy the menu. He copied the system thinking.
[H5] Wienerschnitzel: Applying the System to the Drive-Thru Era
Galardi founded Wienerschnitzel in 1962 with a radically simple idea: Take the operational discipline of Taco Bell and apply it to a format optimized for speed and scale.2 Hot dogs became the vehicle. But the real product was throughput.
By the time the drive-thru began gaining traction in the 1960s and 70s, Wienerschnitzel was perfectly positioned because Galardi had already built for:
Fast decision-making
Fast production
Fast service
The drive-thru didn’t require reinvention. It amplified what he had already designed.
[H5] From Taco Stands to Drive-Thru Systems
The drive-thru wasn’t the original innovation. It was the natural extension of a deeper shift. First came systemized food preparation, standardized menus, and high-speed execution. Then came the realization: if you’ve optimized everything inside the restaurant, the next bottleneck is the customer interface. The drive-thru solved that.
[H5] Why This Scaled: Systems, Not Stores
What made the drive-thru model unstoppable wasn’t just demand; it was replicability. Bell and Galardi weren’t building restaurants. They were building systems that could be copied.
Once you have a simple menu, standardized process, and predictable model, you can franchise it. The drive-thru made these systems even more powerful, with higher throughput, smaller footprints, and greater consistency.
[H5] The American Dream, Codified
The combination of systemized operations, car-based consumption, and franchise distribution created a repeatable path to entrepreneurship at scale. Thousands of operators could plug into a system and build real wealth. Not by inventing something new, but by executing something proven.
[H5] What Comes Next
Today, the drive-thru is evolving again. Voice AI, automation, and data are elevating the interface. But the core principles remain:
Design for speed
Build systems, not one-offs
Elevate the art of the possible
The founders who understood this built an industry. The ones who apply it next will thrive in this modern chapter of a journey that started with American entrepreneurs like Glen Bell and John Galardi.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Bell
2. https://www.wienerschnitzel.com/new-biography-of-wienerschnitzel-founder-offer-insights-into-a-hot-dog-empire/
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[H2] Recent posts
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Press Releases Dairy Queen Partners with Presto on Voice AI
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Press Releases The Return of Co-founder Krishna Gupta as CEO, Marking A Successful Q1
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Press Releases Presto Announces 100 Days of Celebration for America’s 250th Birthday
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[H1] Building the drive-thru of the future

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[H2] Redefining an Industry with Automation Technology

Founded at MIT in 2008, Presto spent its formative years building cutting-edge technology that transformed the way diners ordered, paid for, and interacted with their favorite full-service restaurant brands. Then COVID arrived and upended the restaurant industry. As the pandemic raged, consumers shifted from casual dining establishments and flocked to Quick Service Restaurants at the exact moment the industry was grappling with unprecedented labor shortages.Spotting an opportunity, Presto applied its extensive experience deploying restaurant technology at scale to a nascent yet promising new field: Generative Artificial Intelligence. Presto Voice was born.

[H2] Transforming drive-thru operations with industry-leading Voice AI

With Presto Voice’s industry-leading AI, powered by in-house Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Large Language Models (LLMs), QSR operators now have the opportunity to enhance the guest experience, redeploy labor, and boost drive-thru revenue all at once.

Contact our team to see how Presto Voice can help you build the automated drive-thru of the future.

2008

Founded at MIT

2012

Launched Presto Touch

2018

Began AI Development

2022

Pioneered Presto Voice

2023

Expansion of automated drive-thrus

2024

Presto shifts to focus on drive-thru Voice AI automation entirely