AI tools that have a holistic view of restaurant operations can make operators more efficient, improve margins and even drive same-store sales growth, Par’s head of AI said.
Artificial intelligence is supposed to be the wave of the future. SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO claimed its AI segment had a total addressable market of $26.5 trillion, according to the Financial Times. Other AI-forward companies are pursuing IPOs at trillion-dollar valuations, and OpenAi claims ChatGPT has 1 billion active monthly users.
But there seems to be something of a breakwater between restaurants and the wave of the future: Starbucks abandoned its AI inventory counting system after less than nine months in May. McDonald’s eased up on voice AI testing in 2024, but may test similar tech under its new strategic plan. Pizza Hut’s AI order management system allegedly cost one franchisee $100 million in sales. And at the National Restaurant Association show, earlier this year, restaurant tech executives cautioned against expecting AI to solve too many problems.
So what does it take for artificial intelligence to be successful in a restaurant?
Oliver Ostertag, president of growth and AI at Par Technology, a restaurant tech company, said that the technology’s continued maturation and its ability to integrate a wide range of restaurant data matter more than finding individual tasks for which the tech is especially suited.
