There’s a lot of hype right now about AI in restaurants, but we need to be careful not to chase it for the sake of being “on trend.” The reality? AI isn’t a magic fix for every problem. However, when applied thoughtfully, AI can help solve real challenges that impact the guest experience—challenges like complex ordering systems, inefficient kitchens, or poor delivery. The key is to use AI where it’s most effective, and focus on outcomes that elevate how guests interact with your restaurant.

Here are three examples where AI can help transform restaurant operations and improve the restaurant experience.

Ordering: Personalizing the Digital Experience

Your product isn’t just the food—it’s the entire guest experience, from the moment a person lands on your website or app until they order the next time. Many guests may never interact with a real person in your restaurant, so your digital ordering experience needs to represent your hospitality.

AI techniques can analyze guest data—like past orders and dietary preferences—to offer personalized menu recommendations. Every customer can feel like a regular and friend of the owner. When your ordering channels offer a better experience, they’ll naturally choose it because it’s the best option, increasing sales and retention.

Kitchen Throughput: Efficiency Without Sacrificing Quality

As orders increase, your kitchen has to be able to execute on the promises made by your ordering experience. AI solves this by helping you collect and use data in real time. You need to know exactly what’s happening in the kitchen at any given moment—how fast orders are being prepared, what bottlenecks exist, and how to allocate resources effectively.

By tapping into machine learning and resource-aware systems, AI helps streamline kitchen operations so your team works smarter, not harder. AI-driven systems monitor kitchen activity, predict order volume, and ensure that items are fired at the optimal time, so everything finishes right when it should. All of this allows your kitchen staff to do their jobs more efficiently, which in turn guarantees that guests get a consistent, high-quality experience. Increased throughput doesn’t mean sacrificing quality—it means using technology to make sure every part of the process works seamlessly and results in a faster, more reliable guest experience.

Delivery is the most challenging part of the restaurant experience—customers want convenience, but assume they have to trade quality. But AI can flip the script. When you use AI to track driver location, analyze delivery routes, and suggest optimal batching strategies, you’re giving your team the tools to deliver the freshest food faster than ever.

But it’s not just about faster delivery; it’s about creating a restaurant experience that feels premium even at home. AI can provide guests with real-time quote times, letting them know exactly when their food will arrive. This kind of transparency builds trust and improves overall customer satisfaction, making delivery something they can rely on, rather than tolerate.

How to Use AI the Right Way In Restaurant Tech

AI is only as good as the data it’s working with, and to truly leverage it, you need a unified system that captures and connects that data across the entire customer journey. This means everything—from the moment a guest orders, to when the kitchen cooks it, to how the delivery is executed—should be captured in one holistic system.

For AI to optimize each step, your data must be complete, accurate, and available at the point it’s needed. Without this level of structure, you will miss out on the deeper insights and outcomes AI can offer. For example, to provide accurate quote times, your system must have an accurate picture of all the orders from every channel, how quickly they are being prepared, and when the driver will arrive to take the order. With fragmented systems, this level of insight is impossible.

A unified system not only captures all this data, but enables AI to analyze and take action on it. This allows for consistent and accurate decision-making across your restaurant. When all parts of your restaurant operations are connected, AI becomes a powerful tool that drives efficiency and enhances the guest experience at every touchpoint.

Brian Howenstein is Empower Delivery’s Chief Product Officer. Howenstein is a product-focused software engineer, entrepreneur, and innovator with more than 15 years of experience building high- performing systems to solve customer problems, unlock new possibilities, and challenge the status quo across multiple industries. He was one of the early engineers that built ClusterTruck’s revolutionary software system.

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