Who doesn’t love a bandwagon!? Let’s be honest, AI stories are sweeping the world by storm. Every day there are new stories about massive software upgrades, huge overhauls and business in every single industry doing everything they can to be at the front of this tech race.
And, frankly, most of them are in just for the novelty. But that’s not to say there aren’t some truly valuable ways that this latest revolution can impact the restaurant industry. As both a restaurant manager and a total geek who loves novel tech, here are 5 practical ways I’ve started leveraging AI in restaurant management.
1. Daily Reporting Reviews
Restaurant Management comes with a LOT of numbers to review. Cover counts, AGCs, labor hours, forecasts and variances – it can quickly become a HUGE part of your day. At least, it was definitely too much of mine.
Setting up an AI workflow to record, review and analyze these numbers on a daily and weekly basis has freed up a couple of hours a week on data management – taking what used to be a solid afternoon down to daily ritual of a few minutes. I can see trends between days, commonly QSA’d items, labor spikes, and opportunities for streamlining all without the previously necessary grind to get those numbers lined up in the first place.
2. Performance Review Planning & Follow Up
Feedback and one-on-one time with employees is (in my humble opinion) one of the highest leverage activities you can do as someone in restaurant management. Preparation is key to making these meetings impactful and meaningful.
I recently did a round of one-on-one meetings with my leadership team. For each meeting, I was able to prepare for each review by having a discussion with an AI agent and nailing down the critical points relevant to each persons role (think Beverage Manager, Breakfast Manager, Head Chef, Sous Chef etc.)
But the REAL value came from analyzing the responses after the meeting. By uploading my notes from each meeting and consolidating them, I was able to identify critical themes and insights that were common across multiple departments (communication issues, for example) as well as create meaningful action plans and steps forward personalized to each manager. Now, each one has a set of short term, long term and growth goals tailored specifically to their feedback while also steering them in an overall direction in line with the business goals.
And I was able to turn this around in under a week…
3. Recruiting
Ahhhh, the age old cycle of restaurant staffing. We all know that it’s never going away. But there are certainly ways to speed up the routine and close the loop. With the help of some relatively simple automation, here’s what I was able to do:
- Review resumes and score them against job descriptions that I wrote specific to the business
- Create and share a calendar booking link that allows applicants to book a call or interview in my pre-approved available hours
- Design a series of questions relevant to the job in the 3 minutes prior to the interview (I know, I should be more prepared, sue me…)
- Follow up automatically with reference checks.
4. Personal Task Management
Remember that daily report that summarizes all the numbers? Well, I thought it would be a good idea to take it one step further. So I set up an automation to read the written reports from our closing supervisors every day, and use it to build my follow up list. My agent reads the reports, identifies action items, then adds them to my task manager as well as messages me on Telegram each morning with high priority items.
If you’ve ever felt that there are too many fires to keep track of, this step is a GAME changer for helping you stay on top of that ever growing list.
5. Individual Sales Analysis
Tracking each servers AGC day by day sounds like a lot of work. And it is. But it’s also incredibly valuable, and is key to focusing your attention on areas that truly move the needle.
So instead of taking hours or even days to review this, only to do it all again next month, leverage the massive computing power in AI to fast track this.
I was able to export and analyze three months worth of sales data per employee in less than an hour and come up with meaningful, actionable recommendations, such as “Jenny’s food sales were steadily climbing over the past three months, but beverage sales remained steady – consider reviewing drink upselling techniques” or “Mark has the highest number of covers, yet only average total sales, indicating a low AGC – work on romancing higher ticket items to take advantage of Mark’s ability to turn tables quickly”
It’s not about the tech, it’s about the TIME
All of these approaches had one critical approach in common – in each case, it’s not about taking away the personality that comes from restaurants, it’s just about getting back my time. Time spent on important, yet slow activities has been massively accelerated by making use of the technology that is currently emerging.
How are you winning your time back?
