For years, Popmenu has incorporated artificial intelligence into its product suite, which helps restaurants grow via interactive menus, automated marketing, AI phone answering, and more. Now, the company is continuing its tradition of improving restaurant margins with new AI technology that provides deeper insights into which marketing efforts are working to inform next steps. In addition to a new offering that can create content on the fly with OpenAI’s GPT, Popmenu is sharing an advance peek at an exciting AI feature that automatically recommends email, text, social, and event marketing campaigns based on guest behavior, order history, previous campaign performance, and other inputs. 

“Popmenu built our platform to be a growth engine for restaurants, and our vision for AI extends beyond current applications on the market,” says Brendan Sweeney, CEO and Co-founder of Popmenu. “Because our platform consolidates guest interactions, we can pair our AI with tens of millions of unique data points, down to the dish level, to make smarter marketing recommendations and automate hyper-personalized outreach. This takes the guesswork out of marketing for operators, gives them more control, and helps them answer the million-dollar question: what should I do next?” 

More than 3 in 4 restaurant operators (78%) say that, when marketing activities don’t produce desired results, it is difficult to determine the right next steps. Most of these operators say they don’t have time or data to properly assess marketing performance, according to Popmenu’s 2023 nationwide survey of 453 U.S. restaurant leaders.

Popmenu’s platform captures complete data about a restaurant’s guests, enables the restaurant to easily connect with guests and nurture relationships, and simplifies operations to ease pressure on staff as the business grows. Everything is built to provide restaurants with more control over their day-to-day with consolidated systems and better guest experiences.

With a fresh brand look, Popmenu showcased its latest AI offerings at the National Restaurant Association Show, taking place in Chicago from May 20-23:

Automated Social Posts: Popmenu has always helped restaurants get more from their menu and website. Now, Popmenu scans the restaurant’s entire website to recommend social posts each week promoting popular dishes, upcoming events, new reviews, opportunities to sign up as a VIP, and more. Operators can easily post an image and caption generated by OpenAI’s GPT on their social channels in a matter of seconds and, if they don’t like the caption, the technology will instantly rewrite it until they do. 

Advisor: Popmenu is showcasing the current version of its marketing recommendation feature as well as an exclusive sneak peek at the advanced version rolling out in the back half of the year. Show attendees can see how Popmenu automatically weaves marketing advice into its platform for guest outreach, ordering events, and other activities based on guest actions, online ordering history, effectiveness of prior campaigns, and more. For example, “This email offer generated $5,000 in online orders in March. You should run it again this week!”

Popmenu will also roll out an automated, preset, monthly marketing calendar with suggested copy and images for social posts, emails, texts, and more based on guest behavior, effectiveness of prior communications, customer input, and best practices. 

Performance Overviews: Popmenu recently released dashboards that not only provide performance data, but make it easy to identify next best actions. They are also available via Popmenu’s app.  

• Marketing: Know which marketing messages and channels are working best. Dashboard aligns marketing impressions with online ordering revenue. It captures top messages based on revenue and top social posts based on impressions. It also tracks VIP follower growth and breaks down email/text open rates, click-through rates, and associated revenue. 
• Ordering: Zero in on the best days/times to message guests to boost online orders. Dashboard tracks online ordering revenue for the week and most popular days for ordering, compares order totals for pickup, delivery, and catering, and identifies top-selling items. 
• Website: Gauge how well the online menu attracts guests and adjust content as needed. Dashboard tracks visits per day and return visits, new reviews, and individual dish likes.
• Answering: Monitor revenue captured through AI and customize more responses to bring guests back. Dashboard measures the impact of Popmenu AI Answering, which has fielded over 1.8 million phone calls for restaurants. It tracks number of calls answered, hours saved for staff, and revenue associated with online ordering links or reservation links sent.