Hungry for Learning: Wendy’s Will Croushorn
From Me, Myself, and AI by MIT Sloan Management Review
December 16, 2025 · 32 min · Season 12 · Episode 8
About this episode
Will Croushorn discusses how Wendy's FreshAi is transforming the drive-through experience with AI technology.
On today’s episode, Wendy’s product manager Will Croushorn joins Sam to share how FreshAi, the fast-food restaurant’s voice-based AI ordering system, is reinventing the drive-through experience for millions of customers. From handling 200 billion ways to order a Dave’s Double burger to making fast food more accessible for guests in multiple languages, Will reveals how empathy and innovation will positively impact the future of convenience. Learn how his team turns speech data into insight, builds trust in automation, and can even hide a few Easter eggs in your next order. Read the episode transcript here. That's a wrap on Season 12! We'll back in January with a bonus episode. *Please take our listener survey: mitsmr.com/podcastsurvey It's short — we promise! — and all respondents will receive a free MIT SMR article collection, "Maximizing the Value of Generative AI." Guest bio: Will Croushorn is a product leader at Wendy’s and cocreator of its drive-through voice agent, FreshAi, which handles more than 150,000 orders each day across hundreds of stores throughout the U.S. Recognized by Fast Company as one of the “Next Big Things in Tech,” the artificial intelligence platform shows…
People in this episode
Host: Sam
Guest: Will Croushorn
Topics covered
- AI technology
- fast food innovation
- voice-based ordering
- customer experience
- automation
- multilingual support
Keywords
- AI ordering
- drive-through
- Wendy's
- FreshAi
- customer accessibility
- speech data
- automation
- innovation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Wendy’s, Fast Company
Products: FreshAi
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