When Your Tummy Rumbles, This Wearable Aussie AI Places a Chicken Order

Australian chicken chain Red Rooster (aka Reds) made a smart T-shirt that will monitor your tummy and initiate meal orders.

Agency whiteGrey helped develop the garment. When it detects rumblings of hunger, the shirt sends an order to Reds’ app, which prompts users for their approval. The size of that prospective meal is based on the intensity and duration of the abdominal growls.

We live in a deep-fried, extra-crispy golden age. Pass the drumsticks!

The “Crave Wear” algorithm is so wise, it ignores belches, heartbeats and flatulence. That’s how far we’ve come from caves in 5,000 years.

“Basically, some seriously cool tech that means you can bypass the normal decision-making process and let your stomach do the ordering for you,” says whiteGrey CCO Chad Mackenzie. “I mean, we’ve got AI threatening to write our copy and pull together all our imagery for us, so why not ordering chicken for us?”

It’s gone way beyond the threatening stage. But whatevs.

“Crave Wear” represents an effort by Red Rooster to stay competitive in the QSR space dominated by big spenders like KFC and McDonald’s.

“To be top of mind with a fraction of their competitors’ marketing budgets they had to create something audacious,” Mackenzie tells Muse. “So what do they do? They go ahead and hijack the source of cravings—people’s stomachs. As far as ideas go it doesn’t get more outrageous than that.”

While innovative, “it might not be the greatest use of AI,” CTO Jono Casley concedes. “But the potential of changing how we order food is on the horizon. This is one iteration of it, and a pretty fun one.”

The campaign features digital support plus PR and influencer outreach.

Also, fans can submit their tummy yowls to win a free year of chicken. (Record them in the basement for that reverb effect!)