The pandemic may be mostly behind us, but its staffing impact certainly isn’t, especially in the restaurant industry. Unfortunately, the patience guests once had for restaurants grappling with the labor shortage is waning: a Modern Restaurant Management study found that the top three pain points for customers are longer wait times to receive food (33 percent), diminished customer experience due to overstressed staff (32 percent), and longer wait times just to place an order (17 percent).

As a result, many operators are seeking alternative solutions, such as artificial intelligence to streamline operations, improve financial results, and enhance the customer experience. But where should operators new to AI begin? Keep reading to discover how to easily integrate AI into your restaurant!

Not all AI solutions are created equal!

If you’re new to AI, it can be confusing and overwhelming to wade through the options available today and pick the right ones for your restaurant. Here are the top X things to consider when selecting AI solutions for your business:

1. AI should be easy to use.

The most important factor to consider when choosing an AI solution should be ease of use. The last thing you want is to procure a tool for efficiency, only to spend way too much time learning how to use it and integrating it into your systems.

For instance, free tools like ChatGPT are enticing for their price point, but he time it takes to implement it effectively can cost more than paying for a refined alternative. OpenAI's Prompt Engineering Guide outlines the best ways to effectively use their tools. One look at these six prompting strategies required to get the most out of ChatGPT would make most people’s heads spin. 

^{Source: OpenAI}

2. Use AI that integrates with your existing solutions.

Another important factor to keep in mind when seeking AI tools is to find one that can pull information from your existing systems, like your website, events calendar, and online ordering. This makes it easier to create content that’s unique to your restaurant and more likely to resonate with guests, like best-selling dishes or upcoming events.

3. Find solutions that support your staff.

It’s also important for restaurants to identify AI solutions that aim to support current staff, not replace them entirely. AI is nowhere near advanced enough today to replace the full functions of a restaurant staff–nor should it ever, since human interaction is part of the dining experience. 

What it can do, however, is streamline or fully manage repetitive, mundane tasks that take up time, and take away from the fun of working in a restaurant environment. This includes answering the phone, writing social content, and planning a marketing calendar, to name a few. The good news is customers are open to having interactions with AI if it helps create a better experience: 72 percent said they would opt to use an automated phone bot to place an order.

4. AI should drive sales and show results.

Last but certainly not least, you’ll want AI that drives online revenue for your restaurant and helps grow relationships with your guests. Whether it’s automating phone answering that texts guests a link to place an online order or building emails that invite customers to secure a reservation, the more sales the tool can generate for your business, the faster it will pay for itself.

That’s why you want to ensure any AI solutions you select come with analytics dashboards that measure their impact and make it easy to identify growth opportunities. When you select tools that integrate with your existing technology, they will help you identify your digital strategies’ ROI.

How restaurants are using AI successfully

If you’re just dipping your toes into the AI pond, it can be hard to fully understand the impact it can have on your business. So, we’ve curated some examples of how restaurants like yours are currently using the technology to inspire you to dive in. 

• Locals Pub leans on AI Answering: This Alaska-based pub and pizzeria implemented AI answering to help create staffing efficiencies and get a bigger slice of online revenue. AI Answering is an easy-to-use, automated phone service that utilizes data from the restaurant's website to answer common questions and allows the restaurant to customize responses. After using this solution, Locals increased their online orders by 162% year over year.

• House of Pizza bakes AI Marketing into their strategy: This Laurens, S.C.-based pizzeria turned to Popmenu’s AI Marketing – pre-crafted emails, texts, and social posts that are unique to your restaurant – to help them reach more customers in less time, and using fewer resources. As a result, they more than tripled the number of marketing impressions in one month and saw a 32% increase in online orders within two months.

• Kelly Operations Group saves time with AI Social Posts: Kelly Operations Group has 11 concepts under their umbrella with just a few people managing the whole of their marketing efforts. They turned to Popmenu to implement AI Social Posts, which uses the restaurant’s website data to generate suggested posts for Instagram, Facebook and/or Twitter. 

Now that we’ve whet your appetite for AI, check out our AI Marketplace for more information on how our tools can make growing sales and streamlining operations as easy as pie!