Marketing & Promotions
9 Genius Ways Restaurants Are Using AI (and How You Can, Too)
5 min read
Dec 10, 2024
5 min read
Dec 10, 2024
Has your restaurant embraced artificial intelligence (AI) yet?
While you may not be ready to invest in an avocado-cutting robot like the fast food chain Chipotle (we’re not joking — its name is Autocado), there are multiple ways you can use AI to streamline operations and enhance the guest experience.
We surveyed restaurant owners across the globe to see how many have already adopted AI technology. And the response was overwhelmingly pro-AI — a whopping 85% of Australian operators are leveraging AI in some way, followed by 70% in the U.S. and 66% in the U.K.
Next, we asked how they’re using AI in restaurants.
The top categories were as follows:
But if you haven’t begun using AI yet, don’t worry.
“Leveraging AI” can be as simple as an AI-powered grammar checker or as complex as pricing analysis.
Let’s take a deeper look at how restaurants are using AI to elevate operational efficiency and the guest experience — and how you can, too.
If there’s one thing AI knows, it’s data. And the restaurant industry is taking full advantage of AI-powered data analysis to gain a competitive edge.
In Australia, 36% of restaurant operators use AI for data analytics, followed by 33% in the U.S. and 23% in the U.K. — and it’s easy to see why.
AI aggregates data from various systems, such as CRM, POS and marketing software, to provide a comprehensive view of restaurant performance.
We spoke with several restaurant operators to get a firsthand look at how they’re using AI for data analysis and reporting.
Kevin Coetzee, people director at Humble Grape in the U.K, is using AI to aggregate information for deeper insights. His team uses an AI bot that pulls information from solutions like SevenRooms, Harri and Lightspeed, and compiles it into one handy report.
Kelly MacPherson, chief supply chain and technology officer at Union Square Hospitality Group, loves how accessible AI makes reporting:
“AI elevates our storytelling around data. We have a wealth of data at our fingertips, but this can create analysis paralysis. With AI, we can more efficiently synthesize the data, create stories about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what we can do about it, and then present these stories to our teams in a digestible format with actionable next steps."
At many restaurants across the world, AI is on the menu — literally. And it’s helping restaurateurs analyze menu performance and strategically design item placement for maximum sales.
For instance, AI can suggest removing a low-performing dish or promoting a high-margin item more prominently on the menu.
Kylie Moncur, chief marketing officer at Australian Venue Co. (AVC) shared their plans to build an AI menu analysis model that provides strategic recommendations:
“We’re building an AI tool that can analyse menu structure & dish performance and will provide recommendations to optimise dishes and the overall menu. AI enabled menu engineering will inform things like position on menu and our upsell and bundling strategies.”
As a group with 220+ bespoke menus, AVC needs an AI solution that can provide nuanced guidance for their kitchen teams to help optimize based on individual product needs and performance.
“From a product perspective, the tool can identify whether a menu is missing elements that we consider essential, such as including enough dietary-friendly dishes across menu sections and dish styles, or that we have a minimum number of certain dishes or types of dishes. From a menu performance perspective, the tool can analyse volume, contribution margin and total contribution at an item level, to guide chefs as they review their menus to improve or replace dishes. Overall, the tool will guide kitchen teams in optimising menus to continuously improve customer experience as well as commercial performance.”
One price doesn’t fit every situation, restaurant or shift. That’s why restaurant operators are using AI to analyze pricing, predict trends and suggest revenue-maximizing adjustments.
Kylie at AVC is excited to implement an AI-driven pricing model across the brand’s venues.
“The most interesting project we’re working on at the moment is a price elasticity model that allows us to get much more nuanced about how we apply price across our venues,” Kylie shared. “With 220 unique brands, it can be difficult to apply pricing in a way that makes sense for us and also makes sense to the consumer. We want AI to help us understand where a price increase might negatively or positively impact volume.”
AVC plans on leveraging a combination of customer demographics and product performance to determine the appropriate pricing strategy for each venue.
“This will allow us to protect prices at venues where we have a highly price sensitive demographic, while taking prices where appropriate to deliver strong commercial outcomes.”
How do your customers truly feel about your restaurant? Is online sentiment about your brand positive or negative?
AI software is adept at analyzing customer reviews and feedback and extracting actionable insights to help you improve everything from table service to food quality.
By identifying common themes and trends, AI allows you to address issues promptly and enhance the overall dining experience. For instance, if many customers mention service has been slow on the weekends, AI can highlight this trend, enabling you to investigate and make necessary adjustments.
This proactive approach ensures continuous improvement and fosters a positive relationship with your guests.
As David from JKS Restaurants in the UK explained:
“The most impactful way we’ve been using AI is to summarise and identify trends in qualitative feedback from our guests. This has saved hours of time for our team, helped remove human bias in manual summarisation and surfaced actionable insights that have improved service in our restaurants.”
If guest calls are plugging up your phone lines, hindering your ability to deliver exceptional service, consider an AI-powered voice assistant.
AI voice assistants reduce the amount of time your staff spends on the phone by anticipating guest needs and triaging calls accordingly. These systems can create custom workflows for callers and handle requests for booking reservations, placing online orders or simply answering frequently asked questions.
The end result is a reduction in the number of customer calls answered by staff, enabling them to focus more on delivering memorable hospitality experiences.
AI can also be used to draft responses to customer inquiries via email and text. This helps teams quickly craft responses based on sentiment and tone, which can then be edited and sent.
Setting the restaurant’s voice and tone is critical to reflect answers that feel and sound like your unique brand, so don’t forget to incorporate that information into your AI prompts.
Implementing a chatbot on your website is one of the easiest ways to get started with AI. These AI-powered virtual assistants can handle common customer inquiries, reservations and orders without human intervention, freeing your staff up to focus on other tasks.
But they can also escalate issues to the appropriate departments if guests need more help.
Even better? Chatbots are available 24/7, allowing you to provide around-the-clock customer service.
Kevin Coetzee at Humble Grape, shared how he uses chatbots to provide a more interactive and engaging experience for website visitors while taking advantage of automation.
“We use a chatbot on our website to funnel and direct inquiries from customers to the relevant stream — like weddings or private events versus an FAQ.”
But chatbots don’t only have to be guest-facing.
Take McDonald’s, for example. The fast food chain implemented a chatbot named “Ask Pickles” to assist workers during their shifts. Pickles was trained on the company manuals, enabling it to provide answers to common shift conundrums like how to clean the chain’s ice cream machines.
Faster answers and enhanced productivity? We’re lovin’ it!
Table management can be a puzzle even the most experienced restauranteur needs help solving. Enter: artificial intelligence.
AI software can predict guest arrival patterns, optimize seating arrangements and reduce wait times. This improves your guests’ dining experience by ensuring they’re seated promptly and can also lead to more revenue.
SevenRooms’ Table Management software uses an AI-driven seating algorithm that considers over 10,000 combinations every second. This reduces wait times and maximizes your floor plan, so you can serve more guests more often.
Ordering too much — or too little — is a thing of the past.
AI systems can track inventory levels in real time, predict usage patterns and automatically reorder supplies. This can lead to better inventory control and cost savings. But it can also help reduce food waste.
Dishoom, a restaurant group in London, reduced food waste by 20% by using an AI-powered inventory management tool.
AI can also ensure you always have fresh ingredients on hand.
For example, if AI predicts a particular ingredient will soon run out based on current usage rates, it can automatically place an order before the ingredient is depleted. And if you’ve ever had to tell the Sunday brunch crowd you’re out of their favorite frittata, you know how important this is.
AI-powered staff hiring and training systems are becoming more common. SevenRooms’ survey found that 25% of restaurant operators in Australia use AI for this purpose, followed by 24% in the U.K. and 15% in the U.S.
AI can streamline the hiring process by analyzing resumes to identify the best candidates based on specific criteria. This can lead to higher-quality hires and reduce turnover.
Artificial intelligence can also assist with staff training and performance management.
Under- or over-staffing can lead to significant issues like revenue loss and high turnover. AI addresses this by analyzing historical data and trends to ensure the right number of staff is scheduled at the right times.
For example, some KFC, Taco Bell and Dairy Queen franchises use an AI system named Riley. Riley collects video and audio data to assess workers’ performance, providing bonuses to those who upsell the most customers.
AI can write blog posts, generate social media captions and even edit your content. And restaurant marketers across the globe are using it for these tasks.
28% of restaurant operators in the U.K. and Australia, respectively, use AI to create marketing collateral.
These tools use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand context, tone and direction to create content and images that will resonate with your audience.
In fact, we asked AI to generate this image of “hands holding a delicious, juicy cheeseburger in a restaurant setting”. Here’s what we got in less than a minute:
While AI content requires a human touch, it provides an excellent starting point for any marketing material.
In fact, Kevin and the Humble Grape team use AI to help with content creation for all aspects of marketing.
“We actively use AI in marketing, SEO, social media posts and various other written tasks using ChatGPT. The team also uses it for email responses, letter drafting and HR functions like job adverts and descriptions.”
ChatGPT can emulate writing styles. If you have published bylines, ask ChatGPT to write in your voice. Otherwise, choose a writer whose style fits your brand and include that direction in your prompt.”
There’s no denying that AI brings a lot to the table. While there are many ways to incorporate it into your operations, from table management to content creation, it can never replace the human experience. But when you combine the two effectively, you get the best of both worlds.
As Kinesh Patel, co-founder and chief technology officer at SevenRooms, said:
“AI has the potential to create a golden age for hospitality – an age of SuperHuman Hospitality, if you will. With AI becoming ubiquitous, you're going to have increased demand for human experiences. And the other part of the equation is that restaurants will inevitably use robotics in the back of house or back offices to streamline cost…so you're going to have expanded margins in restaurants because AI helps reduce their cost…the combination of those things is going to make hospitality really attractive.”
Want to learn more insights on consumer and restaurant trends from the world’s leading operators? Download our Restaurant Trends and Diner Expectations Reports for the United States, United Kingdom and Australia today.
Plus, schedule a free demo to learn more about how SevenRooms can help you improve operational efficiency, boost your marketing efforts and create better guest experiences.
