Fazoli's customers can now order meals via Alexa at some locations, thanks to its partnership with Orderscape, an order automation and voice technology software company, CEO Carl Howard said in an interview with FastCasual, a Mobile Payments Today sister publication.

"Our investment was mainly the time of our team to collaborate with Orderscape and some small soft cost," he said. "The ordering availability is only available at select company locations while we work through all of the dynamics of this new technology."

Howard said although he doesn't view voice ordering as a significant part of the brand's business in the near term, he recognizes the growing need to offer every ordering channel possibility for guests.

"We are moving to an on-demand and stay-at-home economy, and we will work to provide our guest with every ordering option available and furthermore provide our guest with every option to receive our great tasting Italian dishes," he said.

Orderscape offers automation using voice technology on a number of conversation channels, including Alexa and soon, Google Assistant and Google Home, Michael L. Atkinson, CEO and co-founder of Orderscape, said in a press release. With full-menu voice ordering, restaurants using leading food ordering platforms like Olo and Onosys, can extend their reach and provide a seamless conversational food ordering experience to their customers, creating another revenue stream while significantly improving the customer experience.

"Conversational commerce, or the fourth pillar of online ordering, coupled with artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize digital ordering for restaurants," Atkinson said. "Voice makes it easy to interface with technology into one, familiar action: speaking. Conversational food ordering technology drives revenue and improves the guest experience at the same time."