Role of AI & Machine Learning in Restaurant Business

In this blog, we have made it more accessible for you to understand expectations of AI and ML in the food industry, real-world examples of AI and ML acceptance, and how AI & ML could assist your current and futuristic restaurant business.

We will discuss AI and ML-driven analytics, intelligent food ordering, hygiene monitoring, AI-steered kiosks, and enhanced food deliveries with AI Integration.

Hello mates!

We are back with the continuation of our last blog. Just in case you missed it, here it is – Importance of Restaurant Mobile App & BLE Integration. It showed about the current scenario and existing problems for restaurant businesses, especially post COVID-19, and ways to overcome most of them with BLE / iBeacon devices along with a restaurant mobile app.

In this blog, the spectrum of the technology based smart restaurant solutions is stretched further. Here, we focus on one of the most anticipated technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in restaurant industry.

AI & ML in Food Industry – Expectations

In the old ages, talks of the technologies and food did not go hand-in-hand. However, things have changed drastically with the invention of technologies and increasing volumes of food business owners adopting them to stay ahead of the competition or at least to stay into the mix.

However, digitization all over has led business owners to be on their toes to improvise on many aspects. Two stand out factors are the overall customer experiences and business operations resulting in better ROI.

Machine learning and AI in restaurants are potentially transforming technologies which could be used to optimize and automate processes, save money, and reduce human error for many industries.

Real World Examples of ML and AI in Restaurant Business

Swiggy’s Adoption of AI & ML

Swiggy is a top online food delivery marketplace across India. With its presence in over 500 cities and towns of India and over 140,000 restaurants registered, Swiggy clocks close to 1,4 million daily orders. Staggering, isn’t it?

This online food delivery platform has excelled in upbringing the overall customer experience by achieving unparalleled food delivery ordering and excellence. They did this by operating a 3-way hyper-local marketplace where consumer demands (food orders), supply from restaurants or cloud kitchens, and delivery boys operations are matched using data analytics.

Swiggy platform gives tons and terabytes of quality data every week which is used to run the AI & ML algorithms for two main goals. First is to connect the customers to the right restaurants without letting them roam around for the perfect meal. Second is to increase the efficiency of the food delivery operations. There is no doubt Swiggy has become an enterprise and has led investments in Catalog and Customer intelligence, Personalised customer experience, and Dynamic driver capacity.

AI & ML implementation has fostered Real-time, micro-optimization of dynamic demand-supply, done millions of times every day. Using AI and Machine Learning for restaurants has resulted in Swiggy to grow its order value by 200%.

KFC Kiosks

KFC has installed AI Kiosks with facial recognition technology in some locations in the trial phase. These kiosks help to deliver personalised customer experience to the returning customers by showing recommendations and menu suggestions based on physical attributes of the customers before they finalise their orders.

How AI & ML could help your Restaurant Business?

If you own a restaurant, a cloud kitchen, or even a bar/ cafe, AI & Machine Learning solutions are unmissable. Let us have a look at some AI & ML applications now. You will find it inevitable if you want to dream big. Following are the applications enabling artificial intelligence in restaurants and food businesses.

1. Advanced Analytics for Better Customer Experience

It can be carried out using various applications based on Cloud Big Data technology and Restaurant Management Platforms using website development. AI & Machine Learning in restaurants helps in analysing the visitors data and behavior during different seasons and events. Using the quality data to result in predictive parameters, it helps restaurant owners with the data that presents forecasts on food orders and relevant inventory for a certain period of time. It helps in reducing the waste and cost as a result.

2. Smart Food Ordering Website or Mobile App

Having a website or a mobile app will enhance your food business visibility. But it is equally important to provide the best online service experience. Making the best dish recommendations or most selling dishes of the week for new customers or fast reordering for returning customers make the order process slick and smooth. Your food business success also depends on the online ratings and feedback, existence in Google Map and Search Engine Results. AI in restaurants offers to unite the data from various food delivery programs to give the user a hint for a café or a restaurant that might appeal to his tastes and be relevant to the location.

3. Quality & Hygiene Monitoring

To support the customers’ demands and establish assured quality standards post COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for restaurants to maintain hygiene levels at each and every move in food preparations too. Whether it is about cooking food or cleaning the kitchen. AI integration in surveillance systems and cameras help in monitoring the workers and staff using the face detection technology. It detects and alerts if a staff member is working without hat or a mask by violation of the safety guidelines. Images of the actions are auto recorded too.

4. Intelligent Self-Serving – AI-driven Kiosks

Imagine that your customers are given the control of the ordering process by providing a complete check on the number of flavours and spices put into their selected dish. The best thing about this concept is that it could be applicable to small as well as large restaurants. AI powered apps or terminals fostering intelligent self-serving systems can reduce wait time, increase engagement, and deliver precise orders as per the selected tastes and spices. Such ordering kiosks make the ordering process simpler for the customers and such systems act as the point-of-sale system. Depending upon the behavior and buying patterns, the AI Kiosks can also upsell recommendations and suggestions for impulse buying.

5. Smart Deliveries with AI Integration

AI technology helps delivery systems to gain instant ability to optimize the existing delivery routes in real-time. The goal of this advanced delivery mapping system is to deliver food packages with greater speed, efficiency, and fresh quality. AI integrated delivery management software can give real-time suggestions to the delivery boy about the best possible routes which can save time and fuel. It also gives precise feedback to the customers about the real-time locations of the delivery boy and estimated time of delivery.

Summing up a Few Benefits of AI & ML:

Significant Savings

Reduces the expense and stress associated with hiring and managing resources, procurement, inventory, and food waste.

Operational Efficiency

Optimizes and streamlines supply and demands, ordering, preparation and delivery process enhancing overall customer experience.

Excellent Dine-in Experience

Facial recognition leads AI-driven kiosks to give a personalised experience to customers, speeds up selection and ordering process and decreases wait time.

Multitasking Machines

AI can be used in restaurants to do monotonous and repetitive jobs like prep work, faster than humans with even more precision.

“Takeaway” from this Article

Now is the time to invest in your restaurant. If you own an online restaurant website or a mobile app, AI engineers at IndiaNIC will help you understand and visualize the new spectrum of possibilities to take it to the next level and increase your order value. Interested? Then contact the team of AI experts now.

In the next blog of our series on smart restaurant solutions, we will learn the advantages of virtual, voice, and physical AI-powered assistants and how they help food and beverage businesses.

Cheers!

FAQs on Involvement of AI & ML Technology in Restaurant Business