5 Easy Ways to Use AI for Restaurants

Generally, having a restaurant in your name is a sure-shot way to create a legacy for yourself across generations. But in today's day and age, running a restaurant isn't getting any easier in the UK. With fewer staff to rely on, food costs climbing, and guests expecting a picture-perfect meal without sky-high prices, restaurateurs in the UK are under serious pressure. This has led to a recent shift where more and more restaurant owners are turning to AI, not as a gimmick, but as a practical way to tackle the day-to-day challenges that come with the job.

The restaurant industry has been seeing upgrades not just in terms of the food but also the kind of tech restaurateurs have been using. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is slowly becoming the go-to tool for restaurants, no matter their size or scale. While some businesses have been using it as their all-rounder marketing strategist, the restaurants currently turning heads have inculcated them for automations as well. Slowly and gradually, the misconceptions people have had about AI have been reducing. They're now realising that it's working towards supporting the human element of the industry, not replacing it. People are still a crucial part of the workings; that's why the tech is built to ease operations for employees and not the other way round.

Tools like AI for forecasting and recommendations, labour scheduling, food waste reduction, and voice ordering are some of the popular uses of this tech in the hospitality industry. Currently, the burden is not upon the smaller startups to start adopting the technology industry. It's to integrate it within their systems in smaller, bite-sized ways. When you're vigilant about how it impacts the UK restaurant industry, you can find the right balance between using AI for support and humans to run the key processes.

Why is AI for Restaurants the Next Big Thing?

With the upgrade AI has received in the past few years, it has now become more adept at understanding humans and buyer psychology. From just being as chatbots, now we're able to see its ability to analyse, define, and apply data in real time so you can keep up with trends. Whether it's outsourcing analytics or marketing with the right amount of data, it can produce results quickly. In today's age when time is everything, with the use of AI, you can improve your turnaround time across departments.

As UK businesses strive to achieve efficiency while managing their current costs, 85% of restaurant leaders are inclined to invest in new tech like AI and automations. When it comes to UK's restaurants, AI's major usage has been in the areas of staff marketing and promotions, inventory management, payments, and menu optimisation.

Your new-age customer is not waiting around to explore niche restaurants on their own. They want systems that preempt their needs and direct them towards something that fits the bill. AI tools help you navigate those needs and create experiences that would ensure your customers keep returning to you. Here are some consumer statistics you should be aware of before you start investing in AI.

• Due to price inflation, the average consumer spend per visit has increased by 5.5% year on year in Q1 2026. (Source)

• 52% of Brits find the restaurant more appealing if it has a cosy/local charm to it. (Source)

• Over 40% of UK consumers have started seeking out healthier options when they're eating out. (Source)

• 31% of operators said they would be making improvements to the customer experience. (Toast)

• Consumers between the ages of 25 and 30 hold a lion's share when it comes to spending on eating out. (Source)

• Experiential dining is more than a trend now; 31% of Brits would like to see more of it in 2026. (Source)

• Approximately 10% of customers are willing to pay a sustainability premium on their food in 2026. (Source)

The big decisions still fall under the purview of human employees. That's where the core tasks lie. AI is just used to facilitate smoother processes and quicker output. If you're still a newer restaurant startup, a good idea would be to implement more basic tools to begin with and not jump to tedious automations. This would help you actually see the difference and benefit of using AI in real time.

Top 5 Ways to Use AI for Restaurants

From marketing to order management, AI has been adapted for all kinds of tasks for your restaurant. Depending on your budget and team, you can implement it to create processes or train your staff. Here's how to harness AI in your restaurant and what some of the country's top operators are doing already.

1. Automate marketing campaigns that bring in results

Marketing is an important part of selling anything, whether it's a product or a service. In today's day and age, no matter whether you're a small restaurant or a large quick-service chain, you need to have a presence online and offline. This is how you remain at the top of mind for your potential customers. Everywhere you go, social media has made its way into the minds of your target audience. So it is impossible to not pay heed to digital trends and marketing when a large portion of your audience spends their time there. When it comes to small businesses, they don't have the luxury of hiring a full in-house marketing team.

This is where the gap started to widen until the introduction of AI. Small businesses were spending hours on end just to figure out one aspect of their marketing campaign. Some of these restaurants were just relying on word-of-mouth to save on the expenses. Now, with the advent of AI, this gap has reduced and made complete marketing campaigns possible with a single prompt.

Let's not forget that the output you would receive from AI would need to be further polished. This is where your humanness comes into play. You can shine across platforms quickly while also adding your personal touch to it. The ease of access definitely makes it one of the top-most reasons why AI is being used widely across different levels. People don't need to know all the creative avenues or have a content powerhouse under them; AI automations can support them while they're building from scratch.

With Toast Marketing, restaurateurs can build data-driven guest lists, write high-converting emails, and automatically send the right message at the right time. Toast's new AI-powered Marketing Assistant can even detect slow days and launch targeted cross-channel campaigns (email, SMS, social) to help boost traffic without any tedious work.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, 6 out of 10 UK diners consider loyalty programmes a key factor when deciding whether to give a new restaurant a try. This suggests that offering rewards and perks can be a powerful way to attract customers who might otherwise stick with their usual dining spots.

As a starting point, you could create automated campaigns for birthdays, first visits, and VIP rewards. Let AI do the heavy lifting when it comes to writing the copy or sending it at just the right time. Just remember to check whether the messaging is up to your brand values and communication standards.

2. Train and retain your labour support

The UK is going through an economic hurdle that's directly creating a labour shortage in the industry. For hospitality and restaurants specifically, this is difficult, and humans are the lifeblood of this ecosystem. Their thinking, creativity, and intention are what make each restaurant different from each other. But that doesn't ignore the fact that there's a clear imbalance between the expectations and the costs for the labour requirement in the industry. The restaurant owners are realising that if the processes cannot be slowed down, the current staff needs tangible support that can actually improve the systems at the establishment.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, 89% of former hospitality staff said a structured onboarding process is either extremely or somewhat valuable. It makes sense that restaurateurs want to use AI tools to match up with the current demand. AI scheduling software could help you cut down overtime costs, avoid understaffing, and give your team more balanced shifts.

You can implement digital checklists, auto-scheduling tools, and training prompts built into your POS for your staff so they can hit the ground running. The best part? Since these training systems would already be in place, you can spend less time micromanaging. While this may not be the end all and be all, it's still a starting point for your employees. It shows that you're listening to them and care about how well they can work at your restaurant.

3. Inventory and wastage management

Food wastage is the silent killer in most restaurants. When you're a small or mid-sized restaurant, you really cannot afford to have any inventory go to waste. Every expense could've been a meal saved and costs reduced. With AI forecasting and predictive tools, you can monitor trends, understand demand, and even flag unusual patterns that could point to waste or theft. This works wonders when you have multi-location operators or restaurants with complex menus.

You don't need a complete overhaul to manage your inventory better. With smarter inventory management tools and adequate training your staff, you can easily implement sustainable practices. Less food goes to waste, and you can still deliver quality food without an added cost. In fact, this can also help you plan your menu better. This promotes cost-effective kitchen operations without burdening your staff further. According to the Voice of the Restaurant Industry UK report, one in four UK operators plan to adopt new tech like inventory systems and kitchen display screens to run their businesses more efficiently.

Your first step while figuring out AI for inventory management should be integrating it with your POS. You can easily keep tabs on real-time patterns, customer psychology, and order processing. For back of house, this means the orders are systemised and there are fewer chances of orders getting messed up. All the allergens and customisations directly appear in the order receipt, and your staff can take it from there. You still retain the humanness of the establishment while enhancing efficiency.

4. Improve customer service speed

AI is changing the game across departments in the restaurant industry. Whether it's front of house or back of house, yelling across the restaurant for orders and scribbled tickets can only go far. A more sophisticated and upgraded way is using AI voice ordering and self-ordering kiosks. Gen Z and millennial customers especially like taking more control of their orders.

When you have an AI-supported POS system in place, you can easily update your customers once their order is ready. Even if it's a dining experience, they can still get an update on the progress of the food preparation. Once the customer places an order through your AI systems, it goes directly to the kitchen and gets assigned to the staff member ready to pick up a new order. Nothing gets lost in translation because everything gets recorded: allergies, food customisation, servings, etc. Your staff can directly look at those details and work from there. It also helps in spending less time to figure out what was ordered vs. the final outcome.

Some AI systems also let your customers explore the making of the specific meal they've ordered. For example, Folio3 integrated an AI-based object‑detection checkout solution and trained it to recognise different food items with the restaurant's POS system.

5. Upgrade guest experience at scale

When designing a customer experience, you need to put yourself in their shoes and actually imagine what they would love as soon as they enter your establishment. When you familiarise yourself with their world and needs, you'd automatically know how to support them and tailor your services accordingly. While you could initially keep track of everything in your local neighbourhood, as your restaurant scales, you'll need something to keep track of guest preferences.

That's where AI forecasting and data analytics come into the picture. Smart customer management systems track dining preferences, celebrate important dates, and even suggest menu items based on past orders. It's like having a photographic memory for every guest who walks through your door. With a click of a button, you'd know exactly what their allergies are, what they can experiment with, and what offers you should introduce them to.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, 36% of diners said they're more likely to return to a restaurant if they receive personalised offers or messages. With AI, you can create a customer loyalty programme to provide more benefits to the consumers who shop with you often. In fact, this gives them an opportunity to explore more unique items on your menu. You can even ask them for feedback on newer dishes in exchange for rewards. Additionally, AI also keeps past purchase data and loyalty profiles to personalise digital receipts and menu items for your customers.

The Future of AI in Restaurants

While we got into some of the ways restaurants can use AI to optimise their establishment in the present, it'd be interesting to see how it all unfolds. If you're curious to explore a full-service POS system, now would be a great time to do so. When integrated with AI, it handles orders, inventory, payment taking, etc., while speeding up processes at your restaurant. This doesn't mean that your human staff wouldn't be of help. They're the ones who would ensure the patrons still experience a great dining experience.

We're not at the stage yet where AI won't make any mistakes whatsoever. Which is why it's important to keep an eye out on what your fellow restaurateurs in the UK are up to. For example, if you're a fast-food chain, you'd probably need the AI tools to focus a lot on inventory management and sustainability due to the scale of your operations. However, when it comes to cafés or fine-dining restaurants, you'd focus more on something else entirely. You need to decide whether you're focusing on efficiency or experimentation.

Smaller restaurants would probably need more AI support for data forecasting or understanding customer psychology. This means allocating them tasks that truly need the human touch vs. the ones that can be automated. For example, you could outsource a small part of your marketing strategy to AI so it could create something depending on the historical data. But you would still need human intervention for recipe development.

The evolving restaurant landscape basically makes investing in AI very appealing, as it can support you in creating memorable experiences while balancing costs. But before you go ahead and change all your systems, remember to consider your customers in the full story. Where do you think they'd need more human interaction or support? Where can it be easily skipped? This will help in determining and creating a case study customised to your establishment. The change should help everyone while making it seem like nothing has changed for your customers. And that can only be achieved through trial and error.

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