• Restaurant Marketing

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in the Restaurant Industry

by: Allen Graves
4 min read

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become somewhat of a buzzword in almost every industry including the restaurant industry – and rightfully so.

For restaurant owners and marketers, using artificial intelligence (AI) can be a great way to improve business and get more guests.

With AI, you can target current regulars and potential guests with personalized ads, track guest behavior to better understand their needs and preferences, and automate marketing tasks.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how AI can help you run a more successful restaurant business.

artificial intelligence in a restaurant

Artificial Intelligence in the Restaurant Industry

Artificial intelligence in restaurants is gaining traction as a new way to improve the guest experience while saving precious time and lowering costs.

AI technology can be employed to enhance ordering accuracy, engage guests online, improve marketing, and increase operational efficiency. Its utilization can range from basic menu item recognition for kitchen staff to advanced guest analytics for restaurant management.

AI also helps fine-tune daily predictions such as expected guest count, dwell times, waitlist, and table reservations.

By utilizing these tech-savvy tools effectively, restaurants can deliver a better overall experience for their patrons and remain competitive in today’s challenging marketplace.

Restaurant Analytics Using AI

How AI Can Improve Guest Experience

Artificial Intelligence can improve day-to-day customer service operations in a number of ways. AI-powered solutions for customer service like chatbots can provide automated, personalized responses to patrons anytime, anywhere.

Even complex inquiries can be answered quickly by leveraging AI features like natural language processing and machine learning.

AI can also help streamline restaurant marketing campaigns by allowing you to accurately target guests with customized notifications based on their preferences, behaviors, and interests. For example, virtual assistants use data from multiple sources to answer questions and offer recommendations tailored to each individual user.

On the marketing side, a restaurant customer data platform also collects data from multiple sources to give you a full 360-degree view of your guests, individually and as a whole. Then you can use the data to automate personalized marketing campaigns that guests are more likely to engage with.

With AI and marketing automation, you will be saving a great deal of time and energy that you can focus on other aspects of your business.

Additionally, AI is improving the efficiency of operating processes by helping to detect patterns in data faster while automating mundane tasks. By predicting guest needs and preferences before they arise businesses can benefit from reduced costs and increased guest satisfaction.

Overall, AI technology is making it easier, faster, and cheaper for restaurants to develop stronger relationships with their guests while optimizing operational resources at the same time.

AI can improve guest experience

How Restaurants Are Implementing AI

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in restaurants is growing rapidly in popularity across the world. Restaurants are using AI to enhance the guest experience by streamlining processes such as taking orders or providing assistance where needed.

Likewise, AI can be used to understand guest sentiment based on first-party surveys and online ratings and reviews. Then, marketing automation can engage each guest individually automatically, saving you time and lowering marketing costs.

Other examples include:

  • ordering kiosks at fast food establishments
  • automation software for seat management and waitlist administration
  • robots that deliver dishes or produce drinks
  • AI-driven chatbots that provide customer support
  • voice-controlled devices to navigate through menus and ordering systems
  • AI-powered dish recognition to accurately detect ingredients on a plate

All these technological advancements serve to simplify tasks for restaurant staff while helping guests during their dining experience.

Another example is the Bloom Intelligence AI-driven word cloud based on online guest reviews and first-party surveys. Users are using the word cloud to quickly gauge guest sentiment and make data-driven changes to improve the guest experience and inherently improve ratings and reviews.

AI-driven word cloud

Restaurants are continuing to explore ways they can leverage AI to help make operations more efficient while also creating a more enjoyable guest experience.

In our next post, we will discuss how to use AI to improve marketing ROI, raise your restaurant reputation, and lower costs while saving a great deal of time to concentrate on other areas of your business.

Discover Bloom Intelligence

Get your ratings to stand out online! Keeping a focus on ratings and reviews using AI-driven tools can boost the visibility and reputation of your restaurant, helping you drive new guests into your restaurant – all while saving time and lowering marketing costs.

Call us or schedule a free demo online and Bloom will show you how our restaurant marketing and customer data platform can help you save time and increase your customer lifetime values by automatically building first-party customer databases, unlocking important guest insights to trigger marketing at the right time and place, showcase your positive ratings, save at-risk guests, increase your current guests’ frequency, and find new guests.

Click Here to Schedule a Free Online Demo or call Click To Call 727-877-8181 to see how we can help you save time and drive tangible results for your restaurants

restaurant guest data collection demo

 

Restaurant Marketing FAQs

What is Restaurant Marketing?

Restaurant marketing is the process of getting people to visit your restaurants. Restaurant marketing creates loyalty, provides data to research, analytics, and allows restaurants to gain a better understanding of their ideal customer profile. It utilizes all customer channels: guest WiFi, website, social, rating sites, mobile apps, email, text, and advertising.

Learn More About Restaurant Marketing Here

What is WiFi Marketing?

WiFi marketing is a marketing technique that uses guest WiFi to collect & clean customer data such as names, emails, phone numbers, customer behavior, and demographics. This data is used to personalize marketing campaigns to increase customer loyalty, build online reviews, and save at-risk customers. The performance of every campaign can be tracked down to the tangible ROI of a customer walking back in your door.

Learn More About WiFi Marketing Here

What is Restaurant Reputation Management?

Restaurant reputation management is the process for restaurants to manage customer feedback and creating systems to improve customer experiences, passively build positive online reviews, and save at-risk customers. It is a very important aspect of running a successful restaurant business.

Learn More About Restaurant Reputation Management Here

How Does Bloom Identify and Bring Back Lost Customers?

Bloom Intelligence uses machine learning to identify at-risk customers. When one is recognized, the system will send them a message with an incentive to get them to return and re-establish their visit pattern. Bloom users are seeing up to 37% of churning customers return.

Learn More About Saving At-Risk Customers Here

SAVE TIME, INCREASE CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUES, CREATE NEW CUSTOMERS

What our happy customers
are saying

Austin Eggleston
Bob Cross, Vice President of Operations
Ron Murray
Matt Thompson, Managing Partner

“I highly recommend restaurants, dental/medical offices, and other businesses look into Bloom Intelligence as 1) their marketing technology is very powerful and 2) their team is AWESOME. As a marketing agency, Bloom has helped several of our clients grow their businesses via building their database and re-targeting them at the right time. Thanks Again!”

Austin Eggleston

“We’re extremely pleased with the wealth of customer data that we’re able to gather, at a very attractive price.  In addition, we’re able to communicate our new product promotions by using  the landing page as a digital billboard.  A “no-brainer” for anyone working with limited Marketing $$.”

Bob Cross, Vice President of Operations

Atlanta Bread Company

“This is an integral part of our local store marketing program. We use the e-mails we collect to tell our existing customers about various promotions, specials and discounts, and the analytics tools are amazing at capturing and displaying smart device activity in and around our store.”

Ron Murray

Atlanta Bread Company

“They have always been attentive through whatever needs and questions we have.

They go above and beyond to make sure our team and customers stay connected while helping us with our marketing efforts.”

Matt Thompson, Managing Partner

Madison Social

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