For the last couple of years, there's been a nonstop barrage of big promises and impressive headlines about AI's impact on businesses. As an entrepreneur, you're probably wondering whether this is true, how it applies to restaurants, and whether you should be thrilled or chilled.
First, you should understand that you probably already use AI in some of your restaurant operations. The second thing to note is that terms like ''AI'' tend to be thrown around carelessly, so it's essential to stay informed about what AI can and cannot do.
The third thing to be aware of is the different ways you can incorporate innovative AI solutions into your restaurant to help modernize your business and improve the guest experience.
Understanding AI technology for restaurants
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a discipline of computer science that dates back decades, and broadly refers to the ability for computer programs to imitate or simulate the reasoning and problem-solving abilities of a human being.
Eventually, the evolution of AI led to the concept of machine learning. This is what happens when algorithms are refined with large datasets, known as training models, so that they can recognize patterns in massive amounts of information and continuously improve their results. And in recent decades, this developed into deep learning, in which the training models have a layered structure known as ''neural networks'' to ingest more data, return better results, and require less human intervention.
Today, there are AI and machine learning elements in most sophisticated digital software, which means you're likely deploying it in your restaurant already. Here are some examples:
You have a POS solution that creates reports for you, allowing you to monitor — and possibly forecast — trends in sales volume and value over time.
You use an inventory management system that recognizes and alerts when stock is nearly depleted, and understands when to place automatic reorders.
You maintain a CRM system that tracks customers' purchasing habits and preferences so you can deliver personalized messages and offers to them.
You rely on a scheduling software that helps you ensure shifts are covered and confirm staffing levels correspond to expected customer demand.
These are just some ways that intelligent algorithms are already well-established in restaurant operations, and if you haven't implemented them, they could be worthwhile investments to boost business efficiency and profitability.
So if AI is already embedded in so many tools, why is everyone acting like it's brand new? That's mostly because of the emergence of generative AI in the last couple of years.
Generative AI takes machine learning and deep learning to the next level. Trained on truly vast datasets called large language models (LLMs), it goes beyond simply recognizing patterns in its inputs and can actually produce novel outputs such as text, images, or video. It also revolutionizes the field of natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context of queries in a flexible and intuitive way.
When people talk about AI's incredible new capabilities, they're likely referring to generative AI and the emerging use cases it can unlock for businesses.
Streamlining restaurant operations with AI
Being an early adopter of cutting-edge technology usually entails having enormous resources at your disposal. That's why many of the most newsworthy AI deployments in recent years have been multinational chains of quick-service restaurants (QSRs).
For example, drive-throughs equipped with machine vision technology are able to read license plate numbers and remember returning customers. Self-service kiosks with facial recognition capabilities can address customers by name and serve up automatic add-on recommendations. Advanced combinations of AI and robotics for back-of-house operations, such as kitchen assistants, can even grill and flip burgers.
No matter what type of restaurant you own, how can you take advantage of this nascent technology in a way that makes sense and adds real value to your business?
A good place to start is generative AI. There are so many tasks you have to perform in your day-to-day restaurant operations and business management that detract from your ability to focus on delighting your guests with great food. Generative AI gives you the tools you need to drastically simplify or automate these tasks, often with online tools that can be accessed for free, such as ChatGPT. Here are some possibilities:
1. Writing marketing and ad copy
Your passions are culinary, not literary, and marketing is one aspect of running a restaurant business where generative AI can relieve a great deal of pressure.
If you have a promotion coming up for a specific event or holiday, use generative AI to write some fun, on-theme materials to help you advertise your limited-time offers.
Email marketing is a good way to attract and retain guests, but writing a sequence of emails is a time-consuming undertaking that business owners can easily outsource to AI.
Social media posts often have parameters such as a limited character count, and you can instruct an AI chatbot to produce copy or captions that adhere to each channel's specs.
2. Replying to customer reviews
When confronted with a negative customer review, it can be difficult to think of an appropriate response. You might feel defensive in the moment because the complaint is unfair or related to factors beyond your control, yet you know you need to be prompt, professional, and diplomatic in answering it.
Copy and paste the review into a tool like ChatGPT and tell it how you would like to respond. Ask it for several options, and you can choose and refine the one that you think is most appropriate.
In fact, you could potentially copy and paste multiple customer reviews into a tool like ChatGPT as a way to aggregate insight into what your restaurant is doing well and where it might be struggling. Ask the chatbot to pull out the recurring positives and negatives. By identifying patterns across large, diverse data points, it can highlight the most common complaints from dissatisfied customers, helping you uncover hidden issues in your business so you can take action to resolve them.
3. Optimizing menu descriptions
Do you have an exciting new addition to your menu but struggle to describe it in a way that excites your customers? Or perhaps you have a dish that guests rave about after trying it, and you want to entice more people to give it a taste.
Menu engineering is a good application for generative AI. Tell the tool what the menu item consists of and ask it to provide possible descriptions that meet a certain word count. You can get granular in your request; you might ask for copy that sounds family-friendly, witty and clever, or high-end and sophisticated depending on the type of patrons you cater to.
4. Drafting training manuals for staff
From HR processes to onboarding protocols, business owners often find themselves bogged down by admin. Once again, generative AI can be used to produce the collateral that recent hires need to get up and running. Create guides to help you outline the basics for new talent:
The specific responsibilities of their role
Your restaurant's code of conduct
FAQs around pay, benefits, and time off
All those hours spent putting together employee handbooks and other paperwork can be significantly reduced. And you can have the generative AI tool iterate on its own results until you get the tone and style that best suits your business.
5. Providing a personal assistant
Get accustomed to jamming with a generative AI tool to help you innovate and ideate new ways to improve your business. Because the LLMs that train these models are so massive, they can provide insight on a range of topics. Here are some potential conversation starters for you and your AI assistant:
Use it to help brainstorm restaurant marketing ideas for an upcoming holiday promotion or special event. .
Ask it to conduct competitive analysis and market research to discover consumer and industry trends.
But always bear in mind that generative AI can be wrong. It provides responses to inputs based on probability, not reality. Basically, that means it works like a powerful autocorrect, predicting the next output in a sequence based on what came before, and it prioritizes being articulate over being accurate. If it makes one small mistake, it can continue on a false tangent with absolute conviction.
While the world's best computer scientists are working to minimize this issue, don't take an AI's claims at face value. It's a good idea to do a fact check and proofread the output before adding AI insights to your next pitch deck or annual report.
Enhancing the customer experience with AI technology for restaurants
Of all generative AI's transformative capabilities, perhaps the most notable is its capacity to communicate like a human, which can provide tangible value for restaurants.
Today's AI chatbots are better than ever
Tools like ChatGPT are, first and foremost, chatbots. They're virtual interfaces that let humans have unstructured conversations with algorithms trained on specific data and allow them to address certain needs and subject areas.
As this technology continues to develop, it will allow for more sophisticated automated messaging and notification systems that customers can interact with, as well as the ability to help you boost orders on your website or app.
Create your own low-cost contact center
Not only can generative AI write like a human, it can increasingly talk like a human, too. Speech recognition technology has advanced quite far in a short time, allowing businesses to automate their customer support and voice ordering functions.
With generative AI, no call needs to go unanswered — as automated systems can answer guest questions, take messages, accept takeout orders, and book reservations.
Among the many machine learning-enhanced capabilities that DoorDash provides to merchant partners to enable online ordering and delivery, our new AI-driven phone ordering solution brings powerful new efficiencies to your operations, your customers, and your bottom line. This technology is especially relevant as one in five guests today prefer to order takeout via phone.
As restaurants leverage emerging AI solutions to support their business and customers, a delivery platform like DoorDash is a smart way to access cutting-edge technologies and integrations without the steep costs — helping them maintain a first-mover advantage and stay ahead of the competition.
