New feature enables restaurants to use virtually any voice for drive-thru order taking

Presto Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: PRST), a leader in restaurant technology, announced today the introduction of a custom voice feature in its Presto Voice^TM drive-thru automation solution. This highly innovative feature, an industry first, takes the drive-thru experience to a new level, allowing guests to converse with celebrities, mascots, characters, or other custom voices while placing an order at the drive-thru.

With custom voices, drive-thru ordering is transformed from a purely transactional experience to an exciting interaction that guests look forward to and want to experience more frequently. The new Presto Voice feature is expected to help fast-food restaurants increase sales, boost order accuracy, and improve brand loyalty while delighting customers.

Presto Voice is currently the industry’s most widely adopted A.I.-powered drive-thru voice assistant with over 75% market share. It delivers strong return on investment by boosting upsell revenue by an average of $330,000 per year and reducing labor costs by $35,000 per year for a typical drive-thru restaurant.

Quick-service restaurants are experiencing significant headwinds, including the labor shortage, inflation, and a looming recession. For some operators, forced wage increases like those driven by the California FAST Recovery Act (Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act) further increase their cost pressures. As drive-thru demand grows and headwinds continue, automation becomes the best solution. Presto Voice offers a significant advantage to restaurants by minimizing human error, reducing wait times, and freeing up staff so they can focus on improving customer experience.

The unique experiences enabled by this new Presto Voice feature include:

• Celebrity Voices: Guests can experience drive-thru voice ordering by conversing with a celebrity, whose voice would be programmed to know the whole menu.
• Seasonal Experiences: Presto Voice can be customized to take orders in different voices according to the season, such as Santa Claus during Christmas, or a witch during Halloween.
• Brand Mascots: Restaurants can customize the order-taking voice to be the voice of their own brand mascot, such as Ronald McDonald, Jack Box, Colonel Sanders, the King, or others.
• Local Experiences: The voice can be customized for local events or experiences such as players on local sports teams, local heroes, and for other campaigns.
• Local Accents: Presto Voice can be customized to use local accents, slang, and colloquialisms.
• Limitless Flexibility: The voice customization feature in Presto Voice is very flexible, offering limitless customizations in practically any voice.

According to a recent Presto survey, 68% of consumers aged 18-44 years said that they are significantly more likely to go to a drive-thru if it offers a celebrity voice to take orders.

“Automation technology doesn’t have to be boring or impersonal. We are proud to bring this highly innovative automation solution that delivers exciting guest experiences while improving staff productivity,” says Rajat Suri, founder and CEO of Presto. “The key is to deploy and integrate Presto Voice early on to stay ahead of the curve.”

“The lack of quality talent is crippling the fast food industry, forcing many to cut back on operating time. Employees also often complain about being treated poorly by customers. Presto provides an automation solution that addresses both these issues by supplementing the ever-smaller staff with conversational A.I. that can cover a shift and improve employee satisfaction,” shares technology analyst Rob Enderle of The Enderle Group.

Due to the current labor shortage, quick-service restaurants are forced to often operate at lower capacity, which leads to lower revenue and customer frustration. Presto Voice is specifically designed to help quick-service restaurants fully reopen and scale – even with limited staff. With Presto Voice, guests place orders in a natural conversational style via highly accurate automated speech recognition, even in the noisiest environments. And the new custom voice feature is expected to significantly enhance the guest experience and make drive-thru ordering delightful for visitors.

Presto Voice is a powerful next-generation solution that uses A.I. to automate speech recognition for drive-thru restaurants. The voice solution can be augmented with Presto Vision^TM, another A.I.-powered product that provides 16 unique operational metrics on drive-thru performance. These real-time metrics can help reduce wait time and increase order accuracy. Presto Flex^TM complements the A.I. technology stack as a custom-designed, multi-purpose tablet that can be interchangeably deployed for a variety of restaurant dine-in and drive-thru applications including pay-at-table, staff handheld, kiosk, and drive-thru line busting.

About Presto Automation Inc. (PRST)

Presto overlays next-generation digital solutions onto the physical world. Presto’s enterprise-grade voice, vision, and touch technologies help hospitality businesses thrive while delighting guests. With over 300 million transactions processed, Presto is one of the largest labor automation technology providers in the industry. Founded at M.I.T. in 2008, Presto is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with customers including many of the top 20 restaurant chains in the U.S.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). Statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as “plan,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “outlook,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “project,” “continue,” “could,” “may,” “might,” “possible,” “potential,” “predict,” “should,” “would” and other similar words and expressions, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. The forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release or as of the date they are made. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Presto disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release. Presto cautions you that these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the control of Presto. In addition, Presto cautions you that the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are subject to the following risks and uncertainties: our ability to manage our growth effectively, to sustain our recent revenue growth or attract new customers; the limited operating history with our new Vision and Voice products in a new and developing market; our ability to achieve revenue growth while our expenses increase; continued adverse impacts from COVID-19 (including as a result of global supply chain shortages); the loss of any of our three largest customers or a reduction in their business with us; our ability to improve and enhance the functionality, performance, reliability, design, security, or scalability of our platform to respond to customers’ evolving needs; our ability to protect the security of our customers’ information; changing privacy laws, regulations and standards, and our ability to comply with contractual obligations and laws related to data privacy and security; unfavorable conditions in the restaurant industry or the global economy, including with respect to food, labor, and occupancy costs; the availability of capital or financing on acceptable terms, if at all; financial covenants and other restrictions on our actions contained in our financing agreements that may limit our operational flexibility; the length and unpredictability of our sales cycles and the amount of investments required in sales efforts; material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting and, our ability to remediate these deficiencies; our ability to continue as a going concern; our ability to receive additional financing in a timely manner; shortages, price increases, changes, delays or discontinuations of hardware; our ability to maintain relationships with our payment processors; our reliance on computer hardware, licensed software and services rendered by third parties; U.S. laws and regulations (including with respect to payment transaction processing), many of which are unsettled and still developing, and our or our customers’ ability to comply with such laws and regulations; significant changes in U.S. and international trade policies that restrict imports or increase tariffs; any requirements to collect additional sales taxes or be subject to other tax liabilities that may increase the costs to our customers; our ability to adequately protect our intellectual property rights; claims by third parties of intellectual property infringement; our use of open-source software in our platform; and other economic, business, competitive and/or regulatory factors affecting Presto’s business generally as set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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