Part 10: AI in your industry, and on the floor

Where does AI help a restaurant or hospitality business?

Written lesson · about 4 minutes to read

The short answer

AI helps a restaurant or hospitality business mostly in the back office: taking bookings and answering routine questions, drafting the staff schedule, and reading supplier invoices and the stock count. Guests still get a person for allergies, complaints and the welcome, so the tools free up time for exactly those moments.

Three things to remember

01Let a tool take bookings and routine questions, but send every allergy question to a person.
02A drafted schedule and matched supplier invoices take desk work off the manager, who still decides.
03Keep the tool out of the welcome, the complaint and the special occasion.

Bookings and questions

The phone rings at eight on a Friday and the person nearest it is carrying three plates. A tool can take the booking by phone, message or website, check it against the floor plan and the turn times you set, confirm it in writing and remind the guest the day before. Cancellations and changes go straight back into the book. It should say that it is automated.

It can also answer routine questions, such as whether the terrace is covered, whether there is parking and whether you do a set lunch, but only from what you have written down. Allergy questions get the written allergen information and a hand-off to a person, every time, because that is not a question to get nearly right. Large parties and complaints go to a person too.

The schedule, drafted

The rota is often built on Sunday night from memory, availability texts and a guess about Saturday. The bookings already know about Saturday. The tool reads the bookings, the forecast, staff availability and the rules you set, such as maximum hours, minimum rest and who is trained to close, and drafts a rota that covers each service, with the cost shown.

The manager adjusts instead of building. Only the manager knows who needs the Saturday for the money and which two people should not share a shift this week. When someone calls in sick on Friday afternoon, the tool lists who is available, trained and under hours, and drafts the message. Write the rules down first, because most of them never have been.

Invoices and the walk-in count

Food cost is where a restaurant's margin lives, and it hides in a pile of supplier invoices and a stock count nobody has time to do. An invoice photographed at the back door is read line by line, matched to what was ordered and signed for, and priced against the last one from that supplier. A price that moved or a short delivery is flagged, and the invoice goes into the accounts without being keyed.

The count in the walk-in fridge is entered on a phone, by voice or by tapping a list the tool prepared, then reconciled against deliveries and sales. A person confirms figures read off a crumpled invoice against the image before they become a payment, and looks into any gap that seems like theft, because it is sometimes a menu change nobody told the system about.

The guest still gets a person

Guests can tell when they are being handled by a system, and in hospitality that is what they came to avoid. So the tool lives in the back office. The greeting, the recommendation, the read on the table that wants to be left alone and the apology when the kitchen is slow stay with people. A booking confirmation can be automated, but the welcome cannot.

Decide up front what a tool may never handle, such as allergies, complaints, special occasions and the regular, and write it down. The aim is to take admin off the front of house so they look up more.

Where to start this week

Pick the one desk task that eats the manager's evenings. If it is the phone, write down how many calls come in during service and how many bookings are lost to voicemail. If it is the rota, time it. If it is invoices, count how many arrive each week and who keys them.

Write the never-list before any tool takes its first call. Try one task with a person checking every result, and see what your booking system and point of sale already offer before buying another tool. Read a sample of its bookings and messages each week.

Next lessonWhere AI meets the plant floor

More in part 10

Next step

Where does this fit your business?

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