Personalized Dining Experiences – How AI is Changing Menu Recommendations at Your Restaurant
Competition is fierce in the restaurant space in your community, and your customers’ expectations grow daily. How do you compete in this environment?
The key to thriving in the restaurant industry is through personalization. Using the power of AI (artificial intelligence), you can tailor your menu recommendations to individual customer’s tastes and preferences.
In this article, we look at the key to providing a memorable dining experience that people want to repeat. Let’s look at personalized dining experiences and how AI is changing menu recommendations at your restaurant.
What is Personalization in Dining?
While the marketing world has been talking about personalization for a long while, it’s just now hitting the restaurant scene.
This buzz word should be front and center in your overall marketing strategy. Forget the one-size-fits-all menu recommendations and tailor your marketing so you offer customers what they actually like.
For example, when sending marketing emails, you can personalize each customer’s email and offer them a discount on a menu item they purchase often. Use AI tools to help you do this.
According to EMarketer, nearly 40% of restaurants are planning to use AI for personalized marketing. It’s important that you’re part of this group to help you create the best overall customer experience.
AI can use its vast amount of data, analyze it, and even predict your customers’ preferences and behaviors. This in turn helps you craft personalized dining experiences.
Why is personalization important? It can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and grow your bottom line.
AI Can Help Optimize Your Menu
Menu optimization helps increase your profitability.
You can use an AI tool to leverage data from other restaurants that are similar to yours. The tool can then suggest new menu items based on their popularity and profitability from other restaurants. Then, you can fine tune your menu to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
This again improves your bottom line.
AI can also help you and your chef liven up your menu to make it more exciting to customers. Then, your servers can direct customers to some of your most popular, refreshed menu items.
AI Provides Data-Driven Insights
You can use AI to analyze your historical customer data. AI can look at past orders, customer preferences, and any dietary restrictions people may have.
Then, you can learn more about your most popular dishes and look at demographic information as well. For example, you may find out that one particular menu item is more popular with the 25-35 crowd than it is with the 35-45 crowd.
AI helps you get rid of your poor performers and enhance your best performers using this data.
AI Creates Customer Profiles
You can use AI tools to create detailed profiles of your most regular customers. In these profiles, you can include customers’ favorite dishes, dietary restrictions, and even their preferred levels of spice.
So, when a customer makes a reservation, visits your app, or even orders online, you can provide tailored recommendations for your customers based on their particular preferences.
AI Helps with Menu Modification
It’s a Friday night in April, and everyone seems to be ordering the same menu item.
AI can help you track your sales on a given day, see what’s popular, and recommend it to customers who haven’t tried it.
On the flip side, AI can tell you when an item isn’t selling well, and you can either remove it from your menu or refresh it.
AI Can Help with Inventory Control
Your AI tools can tell you when you’re running low on specific ingredients. So, on a night when you’re running a successful special, you may find you sell out. AI can help you recommend a dish to your customers that is similar to the special.
This way, you don’t disappoint customers and increase their overall satisfaction.
Real World AI Applications
Here are some tangible ways you can implement AI right now and test it with your customer base:
- Use AI to drive your menu boards if you use digital ones. Your boards can make recommendations based on the time or day or the weather. For example, if it’s cold outside, your board may recommend warm desserts. And when it’s warm outside, ice cream and cold drinks show up first on your board.
- In a high-end restaurant, use AI to help you suggest chef’s specials and wine pairings based on your customers’ preferred tastes from past visits.
- In your online ordering system, let AI recommend dishes for your customers based on what they ordered in the past and the star rating they gave the dish. You can even use AI to upsell customers for add-on items.
Implementing AI in Your Restaurant
Here are some final tips for using AI in your restaurant:
- Invest in technology that meets your needs.
- Train your staff well and provide ongoing training.
- Continue to engage with your customers. Ask them for reviews to learn how you are doing.
- Monitor your results. Are you seeing growth by using AI tools? Are your customers returning more often?
Final Thoughts on Personalized Dining Experiences and AI
AI can help you transform your restaurant into a business that caters to each customer’s unique tastes and preferences. Instead of a restaurant guests visit once a year, you become the restaurant they want to visit several times per month.
AI-based personalized recommendations can directly improve customer satisfaction. When your diners feel like you understand their taste preferences, they are more likely to enjoy their meals and visit your restaurant more frequently. (tweet this)
The future for AI in dining looks promising, and with the right tools and training, you can use it to your benefit.
The goal is for each customer to feel like their dish was custom-made just for them. It’s time to explore AI. Do your research and learn where AI can help you redefine your menu and the overall customer experience.
Be a trailblazer and set the standard for what the customer’s dining experience looks like in your community.
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Images: Yanhao Fang and Google DeepMind on Unsplash
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