Kurt Knutsson talks about a soft, vine-like robot called Sprout that aids safe survivor rescues in collapsed buildings. A Parisian restaurant once promised a pizza experience unlike any other. Order your pizza and, within five minutes, a robot would craft your pie from scratch, no human hands required. This was the vision of Pazzi Robotics, a French startup that merged advanced automation with Italian culinary tradition. For a time, the company seemed poised to redefine how people view pizza.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a long-term impact on industries worldwide, with the hospitality and food industry facing significant challenges, leading to the permanent closure of many restaurants and the loss of jobs. In this study, we developed an innovative analytical framework using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for predictive modeling with Bayesian regression, aiming to estimate the change point in consumer behavior towards different types of restaurants due to COVID-19. Our approach emphasizes a novel method in computational analysis, providing insights into customer behavior changes before and after the pandemic. This research contributes to understanding the effects of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry and is valuable for restaurant owners and policymakers.

A restaurant in a rural Oregon city couldn't find enough servers to stay fully staffed. So the owner hired a robot named Plato. She had no idea how much pushback she'd get from the community. ESTACADA, Ore. – An Oregon restaurateur who sparked an uproar in her small town when she rented a robot to help her short-staffed servers said artificial intelligence is here to stay in the hospitality industry. "Plato works 12 hours a day," Sherry Andrus said of her new server, programmed to take plates of food from the kitchen to their destination table.

You may have already seen them in restaurants: waist-high machines that can greet guests, lead them to their tables, deliver food and drinks and ferry dirty dishes to the kitchen. Some have cat-like faces and even purr when you scratch their heads. But are robot waiters the future? It's a question the restaurant industry is increasingly trying to answer. Many think robot waiters are the solution to the industry's labor shortages.

The restaurant industry has evolved significantly over the years, but technology has transformed it in ways that few could have predicted. With the emergence of machine learning, restaurants are leveraging data analytics to improve operations, customer experience, and profits. Machine learning algorithms enable restaurants to analyze vast amounts of data, from customer preferences to inventory levels, and make data-driven decisions. In this article, we will explore how machine learning is improving restaurants through various examples. One of the ways machine learning is transforming restaurants is by improving customer experience.

The use of robots in the food service industry is on the rise, from robotic steak-flippers to robotic bartenders. Certainly, advancements in robot technology have played a substantial role in its widespread adoption. However, inflation and rising labor costs have also played important roles. Regardless of the impetus for the shift, the introduction of robotics into restaurants will alter the landscape of the food service sector. The field of restaurant robotics focuses on the automation formerly performed by human workers.

As the Chief Revenue Officer at HungerRush, Olivier Thierry is influencing customer expectations with AI as the restaurant industry has begun experimenting with it, he tells Spiceworks News & Insights' Technology Editor, Neha Kulkarni. Restaurants have realized taking on new technology will help them not only survive the challenges but achieve results, he notes. From labor shortages to improving customer experience, in this edition of Tech Talk, Olivier discusses how AI can overcome these challenges and allow restaurants to reduce human error. He also shares how natural language processing can interpret customer attitudes in phone orders and have a real place in understanding customer experience. Olivier: The pandemic turned the restaurant industry upside down, and many of its setbacks are still being felt today.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has paved the way for new, successful routes for many industries, including quick service restaurants (QSRs), to flourish. A Forrester survey reported that 69% of companies said they reduced operating costs with chatbots and automation using AI. A QSR is often defined as a fast-food or minimal table service restaurant, with limited menus, quick service, drive-throughs and tablets for ordering your food. Whether you're on the sales team at a QSR or just hungry for some burgers and fries, from the workforce to consumers, we've all used them. From improving customer experience to managing procurement expenditure and the supply chain, AI helps the restaurant industry improve its functions in multiple ways.

SYNQ3's Conversational AI ordering technologies and ACRELEC OrderMatic's intelligent audio system work in tandem to help restaurant operators navigate the new drive-thru landscape amidst labor shortages, rising costs, and strained order-taking environments. Drive-thru restaurants nationwide have had to re-evaluate their order-taking strategies since the pandemic hit. To help combat these operational challenges, ACRELEC OrderMatic and SYNQ3 have teamed up to provide enterprise drive-thru brands with advanced AI voice ordering. This new solution radically enhances the guest experience through fast and accurate automated order processing? Already realizing unprecedented results, with industry-leading rates of real ordering automation, SYNQ3 and ACRELEC OrderMatic are taking the restaurant industry by storm with an end-to-end, automated order-taking solution redefining the guest experience.

Artificial Intelligence AI has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, and the restaurant industry is no exception. Miso Robotics’ AI kitchen assistant, “Flippy,” assists with grilling, frying, prepping, and plating. Restaurants that integrate AI into their POS systems benefit from analyzing data generated by the system. In 2019, McDonald’s began using predictive AI technologies and projecting orders in drive-thrus. By analyzing past data, stores could reduce wait times by 30 seconds on average. KFC uses face recognition technology at kiosks to recognize return customers and personalize their experience. It employs artificial intelligence face recognition technology to determine what a client might be interested in purchasing based on gender, facial expressions, and other visual characteristics. In the restaurant industry, artificial intelligence has played the most important role in improving the customer experience. Restaurants have a lot of data that isn’t being exploited, and as a result, owners aren’t getting a decent return on their investment. AI and ML work together to provide personalized suggestions to users by analyzing individual search histories.