The increasing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in daily life has stirred up concerns about the “rise of the machines” over humans in many creative industries. When applied correctly in a hospitality context, however, it can free restaurant and bar operators to shift more attention to human creativity that drives innovation, which attracts and inspires customers.
“AI is no longer just a back-of-house tool, as it’s transforming the front-of-house experience too,” says Kanchan Ray, CTO, of Nagarro, offering consulting, software design, development, and implementation services to help clients integrate AI into their operations. “Generative AI and computer vision can accelerate interior design concepts and brand storytelling. Intelligent reservation systems with AI use predictive analytics to optimize table turnover and reduce no-shows. Natural language processing and sentiment analysis help staff anticipate guest needs in real time, enhancing service quality. It also helps operators create memorable, personalized experiences while running leaner, more efficient operations.”
Although it is not yet fully assimilated across the industry, it is evolving into the rule rather than the exception. Although there is no “one size fits all” in terms of AI technology designed for bars and restaurants at the moment, operators and marketing companies present evidence that selecting the right application (or applications) can open up restaurant and bar personnel to do more of what they do best.
“To understand how AI is actively transforming food service marketing, one should look at how it’s being applied in real-life scenarios across the industry,” says Alon Chen, CEO of Tastewise, a consumer intelligence platform bridging the gap between data and action with AI. “Distributors can quickly generate a set of 15 menu ideas tailored to the operator clients’ products and the ingredients already available in-house. Menu ideation, once considered an overwhelming task, can now be personalized to local audiences based on what people in specific ZIP codes are craving. In the kitchen, chefs can experiment with trending ingredients with greater creativity and speed. On the business side, restaurant owners can use AI to efficiently execute limited-time offers, build compelling sell stories, and generate full marketing playbooks, from menu copy to promotional assets, in just minutes”
AI by the Numbers
Epsilon Data Management’s 2024 “AI Marketing Report,” showed 94% have fully or partially integrated AI into their marketing strategies. This reflects there is room to grow as those in restaurant marketing are feeling increasingly well-versed in AI tools and technologies.
- Just over 20% of restaurant marketers have fully integrated AI into their efforts while over 70% are in the process of integrating AI into their efforts.
- Within the 65% of restaurant marketers surveyed, 20% feel that they are fully mature when it comes to AI adoption, while 45% say they are somewhat fluent in the knowledge.
- According to 34% of marketers, AI is used in the restaurant industry for customer service automation to optimize operational efficiency.
- 62% of those marketers report AI has had an impact on personalized dining experiences.
- Key areas of restaurant marketing most impacted by AI:
- 62% Personalized dining experiences
- 54% Social media marketing
- 54% Mobile apps and/or online ordering.
- 36% Customer loyalty programs
- 34% Online reservations
Technology for All Mankind
In line with Tastewise’s findings, there is a general consensus among the restaurateurs, operators, and marketing firms we interviewed for this article that AI platforms they adopted improved efficiency of operations, but never at the expense of the employees, customers, and other humans defining their identity in the hospitality marketplace.
“The turning point for us came when we noticed a dramatic shift in customer behavior and expectations—especially after the pandemic,” says John Mootz, Corporate Director of Food and Beverage at Springboard Hospitality in Encino, California, on how his team introduced AI into Springboard’s food outlet operations.
“AI gave us tools to automate follow-up and guest preferences more effectively,” Mootz said. “This allows us to stay relevant as traditional marketing channels aren’t as effective on their own anymore. Our customers expect highly personalized, real-time engagement, and by leveraging technology, we can streamline and accelerate menu engineering, product mix analysis, and ordering efficiencies processes. This saves time and empowers our teams to make faster, better-informed decisions that improve both the guest experience and our bottom line.”
Alex Mendelsohn, operating partner at New Jersey-based Hecho Restaurants, says exposure to AI through technology partners OpenTable and Toast (which has AI-driven tools integrated into their platforms) drove company decision makers to look more closely at how AI could support its operations beyond reservations and point-of-sale (POS). The next step was to vet platforms and partners potentially aligning with Hecho’s operations needs and objectives. While AI is used to brainstorm campaign ideas, polish copy, or test food concepts, Mendelsohn stresses that Hecho’s brand voice and storytelling need to remain “authentically human.”
“AI has definitely improved our efficiency, especially in digital communication and administrative tasks,” he says. “We now can concentrate more on developing new ideas, refining guest experiences, and tackling bigger-picture projects that require human creativity. However, we’re mindful to keep AI’s role limited to supportive tasks. Every AI output such as customer feedback is reviewed and refined by our team to ensure it aligns with our brand standards. It’s a productivity booster, not a replacement for human judgment.”
Tobias Froelich, general manager of MAASS at Four Seasons Fort Lauderdale, says Hive Hospitality, its management company, began exploring AI because to improve time management tied in with customer service. Hive Hospitality restaurants now use stools like ChatGPT, but with a human operator at the helm.
“Our work is deeply human, and we wanted a tool that could act more like a collaborator than an engine,” he says. “A guest’s full experience in our restaurants can last anywhere from one to three hours, but the window to execute meaningful, personalized touches may be as short as two minutes or stretch across the entire visit. We found ourselves coming up with thoughtful ideas that could elevate the guest experience, but often didn’t have the time or resources to bring them to life before the moment passed.”
From behind the scenes to the front-of-the-house
“I believe that AI will replace the people who aren't using AI,” states Eddy Dolan, Director of Client Impact at Charlotte, North Carolina-based agency Plaid Penguin. “Our work in restaurant branding and marketing is about the human connection, and it’s human creativity that informs the final output for our restaurant clients. The hardest part for our designers or copywriters is to get that spark going, and AI helps drive that process. On the marketing end, it improves our speed, efficiency, and serves as a jump-off point for us to come up with ideas faster and customize them to our clients’ needs.”
Sam Trotter, head of digital marketing at The Indigo Road, a hospitality group with restaurants in the southeastern U.S., agrees with several of Dolan’s insights, noting AI has given his workers more bandwidth to focus on guests and troubleshoot coding problems affecting its clients’ websites. His marketing team leveraged this capability to analyze guest feedback and understand broader patterns in guest concerns.
“[AI] helps us prioritize improvements that will have the greatest impact on guest experience,” Trotter says. “It has been helpful in learning various brand voices [of our restaurants] to generate on-brand copy and taglines. We can ask AI to brainstorm 20 different versions for a client, tell it which direction we prefer, and have it develop that further. We concentrate on maintaining authenticity in everything we do, and the guests notice this.”
Adam Karveller, Chief Technology Officer at Newk’s Eatery, found his challenge was to find AI solutions that could better support the needs of locations throughout the South as well as Colorado and the District of Columbia. As the current economy and labor market has presented the prolific restaurant group a number of challenges, AI proved helpful for prioritizing what investments should be made in the locations and helping individual restaurants’ managers focus on guests rather than answer calls and take orders during busy times.
“We started looking into AI voice ordering to tackle the problem of missed phone calls because we ultimately want to focus focused on the folks within our four walls,” he says. “Our managers and crews love it, and the biggest advantage of implementing AI ordering technology is that they can spend less time dealing with ringing phones. This is important because we want Newk’s customers feel like they've got (the staff’s) attention. If someone is dealing with a difficult situation in the restaurant or a tight timeline to execute a catering order, phones ringing off the hook can be challenging and stressful for the crew.”
Adding the AI order bot to answer calls, in turn, has ensured more orders would not be missed because team members were too busy to answer phones or the lines were tied up. Other benefits for Newk’s include reducing the number of traditional voiceover IP handsets for phones in the restaurants, resulting in cost savings and smoother traffic within the restaurants. A Newk’s manager more readily intuits that a call is urgent if it is not picked up via the API.
Springboard Hospitality’s Mootz found the biggest challenge of implementation was making sure training was available to get all employees up to speed on how AI tools work. As hourly staff enters customer data to maintain the company’s database, different levels of mastery of the technology can be a hurdle since AI is only as effective as the quality of the data it receives. Integration with its existing systems was another significant hurdle.
“We couldn’t implement a new AI tool and expect it to work seamlessly,” Mootz says. “There was considerable collaboration with our IT team to ensure our marketing platforms and POS systems could share data effectively, especially with syncing with our reservations. Follow-up is also key, as our F&B systems in place track guest frequency and preferences, allowing us to tailor and personalize the experience.”
An “Authenticity Investment”?
So how much time and investment is necessary in AI integration? It depends on the company and who is making the decisions.
Plaid Penguin’s Dolan keeps AI use minimal, relying on the AI built into current versions of Adobe Adobe Suite with Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as ChatGPT. He says his designers, copywriters, and marketing managers use it as a starting point for the brainstorming process after grabbing insights on a given clientele’s demographics along with their geography, food trends they’re adopting, and money they are willing to spend. This can be applied to develop messaging for social media posts, promotional materials, email blasts, and so on.
“[AI was] slowly integrated into our work flow, and as our output got faster, we became more adaptable,” Dolan says. “Our project managers, who concentrate on marketing and write social media or email copy, spent a lot of time generating ideas. However, putting prompts into ChatGPT provides them a great jump-off point and allows them more time to develop material.”
Dolan cites Chapter 6, a restaurant operated by client Rare Roots Hospitality. His team used ChatGPT as a starting point to develop a cocktail menu that complements its Mediterranean-inspired cuisine. Using AI to generate relevant images, the designers were able to save time they would have spent in the classic form of Photoshop to create the images from scratch. By using prompts, Dolan’s designers were able to define and refine the look of the menu so it perfectly embodied the “Mediterranean Holiday” theme the client wanted to achieve. It was also used for Dogwood, another Rare Roots restaurant, to develop a coffee table book-inspired menu.
“Human creativity is our final filter, with the design team refining it to make it look put together,” Dolan affirms.
Karveller wanted to put more time into researching what was on the market to make sure the applications were the right fit for Newk’s. The process started with attending trade shows to vet different providers to see if their AI approach was a fit to address its objective for better time management in operations to better serve the guests. A period of trials of different AI models with prospective partners followed. The firm initially partnered with KEA, which helped bring more customization to Newk’s diverse menu, especially with the restaurant’s signature pairing element allowing customers to mix and match different items.
He acknowledges that as AI partners update their applications and Newk’s continues to evolve, new partners need to be tested to ensure their product is capable of evolving with his company’s needs.
“It all comes back to best practices for any kind of technology in the restaurant industry, to address whether or not it automate things that are challenging for servers, or those in supporting roles in your marketing or IT departments. And will it free up enough time for other critical projects? There's no sense in adopting a technology that doesn't drive efficiency, improve top line sales, and is difficult to fully support and deploy.”
“[AI] is evolving so rapidly that we haven't committed to a single long-term partner,” concurs Trotter. “We're constantly evaluating new tools and technologies to determine what works best for our operations while keeping our focus on serving our guests better,” he says. “What struck me was that Google wasn't replacing basic operations with AI. There were already full-time engineers working on reducing these costs, but AI simply outperformed them. That's when I realized AI's potential, especially in ways that could help us better serve our guests.”
Trotter saw this play out in real time when Indigo Road launched a new bar in Tampa. During the lead-up, a local influencer used one of the bar’s images and turned it into a video with AI. The beautiful result drove significant engagement to the business's Instagram page, website, and revenue. This showed us how these tools can take authentic content and transform it into different formats to help tell each brand's story. The key is that it all starts with our authentic content...AI just helps us extend our reach to better serve guests.”
Mendelsohn advises prospective adoptees to start small, monitor the results, and keep the guest experience front and center. While his firm’s direct investment in AI-specific tools has been relatively minimal, and much of its exposure comes through existing tech partners, additional AI solutions and providers are being looked at to identify what tools can add value without compromising the brand or guest experience.
Keeping It Real…
Froelich admits the AI assimilation process involved a lot of time, patience, and trial and error. “AI made simple mistakes that slowed us down, and it took time to train ourselves on how to ask the right questions or give the right context,” he says, stressing his business remains intentionally AI-free. Recipes, food, storytelling, guest interactions, menu development, and community partnerships all come from people.
“It’s not magic. It’s a tool, and like any tool, it takes practice to use well and achieve speed without sacrificing intention,” he says. “The idea always comes from us, and the guest insights are always human-driven. For example, if we learn during service that a couple just got engaged, AI helps us quickly create a personalized note or poetic toast—but the sentiment is ours.”
Based on Trotter’s experience, it is challenging for small businesses to implement AI effectively without expert support unless they have dedicated time and resources to properly leverage these tools. He recommends working with outside partners who have the expertise.
“Without proper knowledge, AI-generated content can look obviously artificial, which defeats the purpose,” he says. “We're deliberately not trying to be AI-driven from a guest standpoint, so our financial investment at this stage has been limited. I'm thinking about how guests will begin to expect immediate responses to basic questions, and we'll handle that thoughtfully. AI might help us operate more efficiently behind the scenes, but the human experiences our guests seek—conversations with knowledgeable bartenders, servers who remember their preferences—that's what we're about. People come to bars to connect with other people...we can never forget that.”
Raising Your AI IQ
Tastewise’s Alon Chen offers a few guidelines on how AI can be used most effectively in a restaurant business:
- Start small: Instead of trying to implement a complete AI system all at once, start by incorporating smaller AI tools and gradually expand as you become more comfortable.
- Analyze your data: Before implementing any AI systems, make sure to analyze your existing data and identify areas where AI can make the most impact.
- Stay up-to-date: The field of AI is constantly evolving, so it’s important to stay informed about new developments and technologies that could benefit your restaurant business.
- Train your staff: Introducing AI technology may require some training for your staff. Make sure to provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively use and manage the new systems.
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