How restaurants will use artificial intelligence to boost sales
Tracking technology can help restaurants plan efficiencies around staffing and serving, as well as help them market their restaurant effectively.
Artificial Intelligence is going to impact us in many ways in the future.
But don’t think you’ll escape from it on a night out with friends at your favourite restaurant.
It might feel like it’s just fun eating and drinking good things, but there could be a lot more going on behind the scenes than you realise.
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Thump, thump, good times, yeah! Desserts and another round of drinks keeps the buzz going.
But in the morning the receipt on the kitchen table shows you spent way more than you had planned. Once again.
In future if you ever wonder why a restaurant seems to fit uncannily well into your life, it might be you are being helped or played (depending on your point of view) by artificial intelligence.
AI is coming to New Zealand’s restaurants and bars.
Restaurant Association president Mike Egan made that clear in a report to the recent combined association and Eat NZ conference in Christchurch.
Egan, a Wellington restaurateur, outlined some of the technology and analysis that will bring sweeping changes, based on the work of Swedish company Livit, which has designed 13,000 restaurants in 43 countries.
It left the audience of about 200 hospitality leaders partly shocked, partly dismayed and partly excited about its possibilities.
One audience member called it a dystopian vision, but others said just using some of what was possible might help in a tough industry.
Livit has put huge resources into studying how to make restaurants more attractive and profitable, including launching a test pizza restaurant called Fast Fine 18/89 in Stockholm.
Egan said restaurants would increasingly be driven by what Millennials (born 1981-1996) wanted and 78 per cent of them wanted this: they would rather spend money on a desirable experience than spend it on something desirable.
It’s the experience that counted, “so we have to rethink our restaurants as gathering places to socialise”, Egan said.
The 18/89 restaurant aimed to provide that experience.
Even though it was a fast pizza and salads place, it was given a beautifully ornate yet contemporary fine dining look which created the right mindset and backdrop for Instagram posts.
The pizza toppings were designed by a Michelin chef, yet no chefs or cooks worked on the site – it was fast production run by untrained students.
It used a pizza box that cost a crazy $1.75 each to make, but it was worth it because it wowed diners. It was silky to touch. It slid open with smooth friction, just like a high-class Apple product box, giving a luxury feel.
Style over substance? Not at all. Surveyed diners said they would pay 27 per cent more for a pizza coming from a box like that rather than from an ordinary box. And it ‘s the same pizza.
Even better, 80 per cent of the boxes sold ended up being photographed and posted online by impressed diners, creating a big free online marketing effort.
The test restaurant was packed with measuring and tracking technology to increase efficiencies what worked in helping restaurants do what they do better.
It covered everything from tracking customers movements (their cell phones) inside and outside the restaurant, even to where they worked and lived. Their eye movements in the restaurant were tracked using Google Glasses, heat sensors on all seats helped establish different daily seating preferences (some days more group tables needed setting up), and the usual ordering trends were analysed.
Because the design was so nice and clean, customers felt happier ordering alcoholic drinks. So booze sales were 21 per cent of turnover instead of the usual 2 per cent for a pizza restaurant.
