How can AI help foodservice operators?
These are just a few of the ways various platforms can minimize work and optimize success.
- Automate tasks like order taking and reservation management, reducing human error and improving speed and accuracy.
- Forecast demand, which optimizes inventory levels, minimizes food waste, and reduces overall costs.
- Personalize marketing efforts and offers, tailor menu recommendations, and streamline the customer journey from booking to service.
- Analyze customer feedback and market trends to understand what’s popular and make informed decisions on menu development and marketing strategies.
- Assist with scheduling and task automation, helping to bridge staffing gaps and reduce increasing labor expenses.
- Create engaging content for websites and social media, improve online reviews, and build a stronger brand narrative based on customer data.
- Monitor cooking processes in real-time, ensure consistent food preparation, and even suggest new recipe combinations to staff.
Tips & Tricks for AI Success
- Start with precise prompts — tell AI exactly what you want (“Analyze this menu for gaps in vegetarian offerings and suggest three dishes.”)
- Layer your requests — ask for data summary first, then drill into specifics.
- Ask for multiple perspectives — menu optimization from both profitability and customer experience viewpoints.
- Feed AI quality data — the cleaner the menu or sales report, the more accurate the insight.
- Use follow-up questions — refine output instead of starting over.
AI for Customer Menu Reviews
- Menu Gap Analysis: Identify missing categories (e.g., gluten-free, plant-based, trending flavors).
- Item Positioning: Recommend re-ordering items for higher upsell potential.
- Pricing Optimization: Suggest price adjustments based on popularity and food cost data.
- Competitive Benchmarking: Compare customer menu to local competitors’ offerings.
Spotting Ordering Trends with AI
- Seasonality Tracking: Detect which items sell better in certain months.
- Volume Shifts: Flag declining items before they become dead stock.
- Cross-Sell Opportunities: Find items that are frequently ordered together.
- Forecasting: Predict high-demand periods for better inventory planning.
Quick Win Workflow
- Upload: Customer menu & last six months ordering history into your AI platform.
- Ask: “What three menu changes could boost profitability by 10%?”
- Review: Trends dashboard for sales spikes & declines.
- Recommend: Share top two to three AI-driven suggestions with customers.
AI Platforms & Their Strengths
| Platform | Best Use | Key Features |
| ChatGPT, GPT-5, Google Gemini | Quick insights, idea generation, customer menu analysis | Conversational queries, natural language understanding, ability to summarize & recommend. Create marketing materials. Calculate and track food and labor costs. Identify industry trends. Generate visuals. Brainstorm LTO sales campaigns during slow seasons. Identify customer service feedback trends. |
| Excel + AI Plug-ins | Data cleanup, ordering trend analysis, pattern recognition, automated chart creation, anomaly detection. | Inventory management by predicting needs and reducing waste, sales forecasting to anticipate trends and optimize staffing, and menu optimization to analyze dish performance. |
| Power BI with AI Insights | Visual dashboards, predictive analytics | Trend forecasting, seasonality mapping, category growth analysis, customer behavior analysis, personalized promotions, menu engineering, demand forecasting, smart staff scheduling, and inventory management. |
| Menu Engineering AI Tools like Loman AI, Polaris ERP, Dynamic Yield | Menu item performance scoring | Highlight high/low profit dishes, suggest pricing adjustments, analyze sales data, customer preferences, and market trends to optimize menu pricing, identify popular and profitable items, where to reduce food waste, and create compelling menu descriptions. |
| Image Recognition AI | Scanning menus or POS photos for analysis | Auto-extracts dish names & descriptions into editable text. Ensure food quality and consistency, optimize operations through data insights from visual data (e.g., waste, inventory), enhance customer experience by understanding food trends and preferences, and automate marketing and branding by analyzing images for promotional materials. |
| Fourth iQ | Simplify operations and maximize profitability, optimize labor costs, enhance customer experience, and increase revenue. | Labor management and scheduling, inventory management and cost control, predictive ordering, recipe costing, waste reduction measures, real-time insights and recommendations |
| Winnow AI, Orbisk, Leanpath, etc. | Reduce kitchen food waste. | Monitor trash to identify and reduce food waste, repurpose scraps and trimmings into menu items that create revenue. |
AI policies vary by company—readers should follow their own organization’s best practices.
