After Chipotle Mexican Grill introduced a conversational AI assistant named ‘Ava Cado’ to help its restaurant teams streamline the hiring process in October last year, the technology is already producing tangible results.
As it happens, Ava Cado has shortened the average amount of time it takes for a candidate to complete their application and start the job from 12 to four days, nearly doubled Chipotle’s applicant flow, and increased candidate application completion rate to over 85% from about 50%, the company said on February 19.
Furthermore, the fast-food giant has recently announced plans to hire 20,000 seasonal employees this year, the largest number in history and up from its hiring targets of 19,000 workers in 2024 and 15,000 in 2023. Likely, the ‘virtual team member’ featured on Chipotle’s recruitment website, will help with the process.
Ava Cado speeds up hiring process
Indeed, Chipotle announced in October 2024 its partnership with HR AI software company Paradox, which helped it introduce a new platform that uses AI tech to make the hiring process more efficient.
Specifically, the avatar greets visitors when they arrive at the company’s jobs website, saying “Hi! I’m Ava Cado, your Virtual Team Member at Chipotle! I can help you search and apply for opportunities or you can ask me anything about our business, culture, team, and more.”
Ava Cado chats with candidates, answers their questions about Chipotle, collects basic information, schedules interviews for hiring managers, and sends offers to candidates selected by managers. She’s multilingual and can converse with candidates in English, Spanish, French, and German.
This way, managers in over 3,500 Chipotle restaurant locations can spend less time on the above administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on their day-to-day operations and providing service to guests. As Chief Human Resources Officer at Chipotle, Ilene Eskenazi, explained at the time:
“Paradox operates as if we’ve hired additional administrative support for all our restaurants, freeing up more time for managers to support team members and provide an exceptional guest experience. We’re excited about the early improvements we’re seeing.”
Meanwhile, conversational AI is set to rake in $57 billion in revenue over the next three years due to increased enterprise spend on these platforms as companies become aware of the benefits of equipping their services with AI.
ReadNext
