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KFC and Baidu team up to honor the “Original+”

By Ding Yining | April 28, 2016, Thursday | Online Edition

KFC opened its first “Original+” concept store on April 25 as part of a collaborative effort with Baidu to be the first restaurant chain to offer services enabled by artificial intelligence.

Located inside the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, the “Original+” concept store offers consumers from all over the country high quality dining services and innovative dining experience.

KFC China Chief Executive Officer Joey Wat said at the opening ceremony that the store name “Original+” honors both Original Recipe chicken, which is a KFC classic, and the brand’s original commitment to offering good food. Along with her there were Yum! China CEO Micky Pant and Wang Haifeng, VP of Baidu.

Inside the store, traditional Chinese garden design and innovative technologies are integrated organically, and the customers are offered a continuum of digitalized experience from ordering, to paying, and to entertainment. This testifies to KFC’s determination to create enjoyable experience for the consumers.

Consumers can also place orders with Baidu’s Duer artificial intelligence robots, marking the first time that the robots are used for high-tech services in an everyday setting. The opening of the “Original+” concept store is yet another extension of Baidu’s foray into artificial intelligence.

In collaboration with Baidu, KFC has built the first store offering artificial intelligence experience including placing orders with Duer robots. With their advanced voice and speech recognition capabilities, the robots are able to take orders from the customers, thus offering the customers artificial intelligence-based services. This also marks the first application of an artificial intelligence device in a chain restaurant setting. The Duer robots bring the consumers high-tech ordering services and add to the fun of the entire dining experience.   

At the same time, the “Original+” concept store has upgraded its automatic ordering machines. The design is now more stylish, and with the user-friendlier pages and easier operation, the machines cater more to the younger generations.

While offering smarter and more convenient ordering processes, the “Original+” concept store has enhanced the brand’s fun side by offering the consumers a series of specially designed entertainment experience.

In terms of audio experience, stylish “Music Charging Tables” were designed, where the consumers can place their cell phones capable of wireless charging inside the charging area, so that while the phones are being charged, the consumers can enjoy a list of songs customized by BaiduMP3 for the store.

The design of the “Original+” concept store is inspired by sceneries from the four seasons in a typical ancient town in Jiangnan, or the regions south of the Yangtze River, and the designers sketched out, in simple lines, green bamboos, flowers on window sills, moon-shaped doorways and pale-shaded walls and roof tiles.

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