No feelings. That's the point!
Restaurant AI is tech that doesn’t feel overly technical.
This look at the future of hospitality is sponsored by Square.
Recently, I interviewed two multi-unit restaurant operators for Counter Trends, my series on The Bottom Line for Square, hoping to unearth examples of artificial intelligence dramatically changing their work and business. Big new tech should equal big new changes, right?
Not exactly. Instead, these operators told me about some of the… less flashy benefits of AI inside a point of sale system: comparing year-over-year item sales and identifying trends in large-format catering orders, for example. It’s easy to humanize artificial intelligence — we see robots prepping food, chatbots conversing with diners and staff — but for everyday operations, restaurants seem most excited about tools that help them make sense of the information that’s already in front of them. Then they turn that info into even better service.
In recent surveys, restaurant operators and executives say customers are already benefitting from AI. Eighty-four percent of operators surveyed by Deloitte last year said they’re currently seeing high customer experience impact. A 2024 report from Square found that, among restaurants that used AI inside their restaurants, nearly all were using AI chatbots or virtual assistants to help with guest relations. Half of AI users then said these tools enhanced the guest experience. In a 2026 analysis of Square AI data, questions about consumer preferences came second only to business performance questions.
When I asked Andrew Cosaris, vice president of digital at New York’s Partners Coffee, if he was concerned that AI might take away from or challenge an operator’s own particular specialty knowledge, his answer surprised me. Was he worried that smarter tech might contradict his gut instincts, honed by years in the industry?
“I don’t want my gut involved in things,” Cosaris answered. “My gut is involved with too many other things. I want to make decisions based on the data we actually have. I want to remove all personal opinions from these sorts of queries.”
He told me about a seasonal salami sandwich that the Partners’ staff loved, but customers ignored. They imagined the sandwich to be a top seller (and still think it could’ve been), but, Cosaris said, “every time we put it on the menu, it never sells.”
The numbers don’t lie. Partners Coffee 86’d the salami before it started using AI, but Cosaris’s point stands: it’s a lot easier to make good decisions when the numbers are staring back at you, delivered by a machine that can’t have strong feelings about a salami sandwich.
Read More: Partners Coffee’s AI Chatbot Is Like a Friendly, All-Knowing Employee Ready to Help
The technology lead at a San Francisco pizzeria chain had a similar response. “Does the AI ever do anything that surprises you?” I asked Alexander Leniv, who also manages North Beach Pizza’s flagship location. “Have you gotten any unexpected insights or conclusions?’
Not really, he answered. It’s not surprising that North Beach Pizza’s original location, just north of San Francisco’s financial district, does a brisk catering business delivering extra-large pizzas and platters of wings to nearby businesses. Or that customers at its location near the coastline in Half Moon Bay, California, prefer to linger over lighter fare, like salads and small pizzas. After years in the business, he knows what works — but he taps AI to analyze granular sales data to inform localized marketing, advertising, and menu strategies.
“By the end of the day, when I have a lot going on in the restaurant… [I can ask] a broad question and getting a straight answer,” Leniv said.
I think I was pushing for some sort of epiphany or undiscovered insight that only new technology could find. But really, it’s just there to serve.
Read More: Why This 43-Year-Old SF Pizzeria Is Really Excited About AI
Thanks to Square for sponsoring this coverage, supporting my deep dives into the top challenges (and wins!) for local restaurants. Here’s a fun fact I learned while reporting these stories: According to internal company data, Square recorded over 36,000,000 sales transactions at pizzerias last year. That is… a lot of pie.
Read more about these and other trends in my series Counter Trends, published on The Bottom Line.