How AI Helps Restaurant Owners Make Smarter Menus
How AI Helps Restaurant Owners Make Smarter Menus
In today’s competitive food industry, your menu isn’t just a list of dishes it’s a powerful business tool.
A well-designed menu can increase profits, reduce waste, and improve customer satisfaction. But how do you know which dishes
to keep, cut, or promote? That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.
Just as AI is already helping restaurant owners choose the best equipment and optimize kitchen layouts, it’s now transforming
how menus are created — making them smarter, data-driven, and more profitable.
What Is a Smart Menu?
A smart menu is one that’s crafted using real data — not just gut feeling. With AI-powered platforms,
restaurant owners can analyze:
- Customer preferences
- Sales trends
- Profit margins
- Seasonal availability
- Dietary demand (e.g. vegan, gluten-free, keto)
AI Helps You Understand What Sells (and What Doesn’t) AI can analyze your POS data and identify:
- Top-selling dishes
- Low-performing items
- Menu combinations that lead to higher sales
- Time-based trends (e.g., breakfast items that underperform at dinner)
This allows you to spotlight high-margin bestsellers and quietly remove the slow movers. Smart Pricing with AI AI can recommend dynamic pricing strategies based on:
- Ingredient costs
- Customer demand
- Competitor pricing
If the cost of salmon rises, AI can automatically suggest pricing adjustments or alternative menu options — helping you stay profitable without compromising quality.
Smarter Menus for Smarter Marketing
Your menu is one of your most powerful marketing tools. AI can:
- Test dish names and descriptions for emotional impact
- Suggest language that drives appetite and conversions
- Recommend design layouts that improve readability and decision-making
For example, AI might suggest changing “Vegetable Soup” to “Hearty Garden Vegetable Soup” — a small tweak that could
lead to more orders. AI can help create rotating specials based on available local ingredients, or generate kid-friendly, gluten-free, or vegan menus on the fly.
Real-World Example
One Vancouver café used an AI menu optimization tool to remove 5 underperforming dishes,
update descriptions for its 3 bestsellers, and introduce 2 high-margin seasonal specials. The result? A 15% boost
in weekly revenue within 30 days — with zero added staff or marketing spend.
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