When a job candidate submits an application to work at your restaurant, how quickly do you respond? Chances are this person is looking at a range of open positions at a variety of businesses. The first company to respond to them stands a great chance of hiring them, assuming the interviewing process goes well. If a slow response time is making you miss out on good candidates, there are tech tools you can harness to automate the process of making the initial connection with potential staff and selling them on your culture. Workstream, for one, created a ChatGPT-powered chatbot that ushers job candidates through the various stages of the recruitment process and helps match them with potential jobs. Consider what tools might help you fill gaps in your communication with potential hires. As the food supply chain has gotten more widespread and more complex, it’s become all the more important to monitor it closely. Artificial intelligence can help with that. As food safety specialist Francine Shaw explained in a recent article for FSR Magazine, operators can use AI-based systems to continuously collect and analyze data from many sources, ranging from the FDA to public records, then verify that suppliers are following correct safety protocols. Such tools are available, affordable and can help build trust across your supply chain. Of course, as with all AI tools, they are only as good as the data they are trained on. It’s important to collect accurate data within your operation and audit your AI applications often to make sure you’re getting the most from them. The fast-evolving developments in generative artificial intelligence have triggered both excitement and anxiety for businesses in recent months. Survey research from Nation’s Restaurant News found that among restaurant operators, there is an appetite for AI but also a knowledge gap when it comes to putting the technology into practice: 41 percent of operators are not using AI but want to, while 27 percent aren’t using AI and don’t plan to. What’s important to realize is that using AI may not even be a choice you have to make. It is already baked into many kinds of software we rely on each day. We are likely using AI without realizing it – and the new technologies and tools we come to depend on to manage all aspects of the restaurant business will evolve to include it as well. Using AI may be as simple as pulling comprehensive forecasts from your POS. Your use of AI may not feel futuristic or flashy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be powerful for your business. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is attracting a lot of attention right now for its ability to create brand-new content – be it audio, video or text. Most recently, ChatGPT, text-based generative AI launched late last year and available for free to the public, has garnered news headlines for its ability to write poems in the style of Shakespeare, publish articles, summarize books, create business plans and even pass medical exams. (DALL-E 2 is the equivalent of ChatGPT for image generation – helping restaurant operators visualize the prospective menu items in their heads.) ChatGPT can deliver curated work, all while sounding conversational. There are huge opportunities for it in businesses – but also risks to bear in mind at this early stage. The conversational tone of ChatGPT’s results make it sound confident and trustworthy, but it requires human intervention to ensure accuracy (and no intellectual property should be shared with it). However, it can be a helpful tool to get the ball rolling when you’re drafting job descriptions, vendor emails, marketing plans or social media posts. Generative AI tools from companies including Google and Meta are pushing the evolution of this technology too and are making it possible for restaurants to quickly generate ideas for audio, video or text content that can be used to run their business and market to guests more effectively. Whether you operate a drive-thru, or your website or phone line could benefit from some tech-driven labor savings, this may be the year that AI voice technology finally takes off. As a recent report from Nation’s Restaurant News says, 2021 marked the launch of AI voice ordering, 2022 marked its spread, and 2023 marks its improvement and perfection. Specifically, a number of companies (SoundHound is just one) are training the technology to respond more readily to natural speech patterns, versus the Alexa-style way of stating a clear demand in a quiet room and having to take turns speaking. To be sure, AI voice ordering has had a shaky takeoff in some places. But if you’re considering investing in it, expect some perfected versions to emerge this year and beyond – and ask your vendor questions about how they will be training their product to continuously evolve and improve. According to a recent survey by the National Restaurant Association, 65 percent of restaurant operators say they lack sufficient staff to support customer demand. As a result, when customers call in orders or reservation requests to restaurants right now, more of those calls are being transferred to lines supported by artificial intelligence. There are clear benefits — it’s easier to collect guest data, and a bot won’t get rattled during a busy shift or miss upselling an order. However, even the most established brands have been experiencing some growing pains with the adoption of this technology in recent months. Would your guests be amenable to connecting with you via AI? If not or you’re not sure, could you incentivize guests to place orders online or via app instead? Artificial Intelligence has been carving out a space in restaurants as a means of delegating tasks and saving labor costs. Though AI-supported ordering is still a work in progress (as McDonald’s has discovered with recent tests), AI is also serving as a kitchen assistant that can nudge employees to catch errors early – before they get the attention of an annoyed customer. One company in this space, Agot AI, places cameras over the food preparation line to watch how orders are being prepared. It connects with in-store, online and drive-thru orders appearing on the kitchen display system and will alert an employee in the line if an order is missing, say, the extra packets of ketchup the customer requested. In the process, the information the technology gathers can help a restaurant flag repeat problems in the line and adjust training to better manage them, and even create a rewards system to recognize employees who successfully move orders through the line with accuracy and speed. There is no shortage of news headlines about the need for restaurants to analyze their data – and to adopt technology that can provide clues about what is going well and what isn’t. But as restaurant operators struggle with labor challenges, adopt new tech to help ease them, and double down on data analysis to better understand performance, it’s important to remember the human element. Specifically, restaurants need to balance their data analysis with a more subjective review of the guest and staff experience. A recent blog post from restaurant consultancy Aaron Allen & Associates relayed the experience of the company’s CEO, who had visited a higher-end national steakhouse chain. He wanted to place a $100-plus takeout order, but there were only two staff members trying to serve the more than 60 guests in the bar area. After waiting for nearly half an hour to place his order, he gave up and left. The especially unfortunate part about this anecdote – and what it could mean for the industry going forward – is that the restaurant’s metrics for the night surely didn’t track the guests who left without food, or the staff members who were burning out from the workload or unaware of the people they didn’t have time to serve. According to their data, it may have been a high-performance night. The industry is at a telling turning point right now: Restaurants are trying to find their footing with smaller teams, and in many cases, are finding ways to use technology to squeeze out profits and otherwise make the current business climate more manageable. But while there are clear benefits to these new systems and ways of working, don’t forget to take a longer view and anticipate the consequences you may not be seeing – the ones your tech stack can’t track. Out of necessity, robotics and automation are finding new places in restaurant kitchens – to help offload mundane tasks and, in some cases, to keep an eye on staff in an effort to minimize errors and maximize efficiency. According to a recent report from Restaurant Dive, technology known as computer vision is gaining ground in the foodservice industry as a means of identifying inaccuracies in orders and notifying staff who can step in and correct them. It also has the ability to gather data about how staff work together, then provide analytics about who collaborates well in which positions. Providers of the up-and-coming technology include Lifestream AI, Presto and Agot AI. Artificial intelligence is set to transform the front and back of the house – both out of efficiency and, due to the labor crunch, necessity. It can help operators manage inventory, monitor waste, identify staffing inefficiencies, adjust production pacing and direct more targeted menu suggestions to guests. But as futuristic as it sounds, it’s only an extension of (and as good as) the data your business has collected about these parts of the operation. Even if your restaurant has no plans to adopt AI tools, it’s important to be able to collect real-time data to build a stronger base for the decisions your business makes day to day. In practice, that could mean tracking sales of each menu item in real time so you’re aware of which customers are ordering them when, if they’re returning for them repeatedly, and if they might pay more for a premium special or cocktail designed with that item in mind if they receive a targeted offer from you beforehand. |
Subscribe to our newsletterArchives
April 2024
Categories
All
|