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Artificial intelligence continues to make an impact on nearly every industry and the restaurant world is no exception. This month, we’ll take a look at probably the most popular AI tool to date: ChatGPT by OpenAI.
It’s now been just over a year since ChatGPT, still the most popular AI tool on the block, was launched. In that time, the text-based tool has grown to over 180 million users (you’ll have to sign up for a free account to use the tool) and just shy of two billion hits a month.
Like nearly every profession, restaurant operators can make use of the internet’s most famous AI chatbot. It can help save time and make your team and restaurant more efficient. Let’s look at some restaurant-specific examples of last year’s fanciest tech tool.
There’s a surprising amount of copywriting and content involved in running a restaurant. Menu descriptions, websites, social media updates, marketing emails, promotional materials… the list goes on and on. If you’re not a marketing professional – or simply don’t enjoy writing content on a recurring basis – ChatGPT is a great assistant to take some of the workload.
Let’s say I own a burger joint called Jenny’s Burgers, and I want a series of Facebook and Instagram posts to promote a special I’m running: Free drinks with every burger order on Tuesdays. I input this information into ChatGPT and voila! A series of posts I can copy and save into Word (or anywhere) and have at my disposal each Tuesday morning.
Remember that the more descriptive you are with your prompts, the more accurate results you’ll get. Use a few adjectives to describe the kind of content you want. Are you going for something fun and light? Do you want to highlight your low prices? Include any prompts or directions you think might be important.
Edit & Alter Existing Content
Odds are, you probably have some existing copy on your website, social media, and elsewhere. ChatGPT is a great tool to repurpose your existing content in any number of ways. Input your existing content, and add a prompt:
“Make this copy more fun and playful.”
“Change this to the past tense.”
“Translate this text into Spanish.”
Using your existing content to start will always be better than having the AI work from scratch. It gives the tool much more information to use, and specifics about your restaurant (e.g. menu item names, cuisine) that in can incorporate into the response.
ChatGPT can be used to generate a list of ideas or names for any number of topics. For restaurant operators, that can be a big help with inspiration for new menu items. Want to name your new mushroom burger after a famous athlete? No problem. ChatGPT is on it.
Or maybe you’re creating a new concept or a specialized menu for an event? The chat tool can be used to create any menu of any fusion you can think of (no matter how disgusting). You can also input your restaurant’s existing ingredient list and ask the AI to come up with ideas for new dishes.
If you promote your restaurants through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), ChatGPT is a great way to get prompts, keywords, and make sure your content meets the character limitations for Google so that your web content is displayed correctly.
The same goes for optimizing your content for SEO under certain keywords. ChatGPT will take those keywords and rewrite your content as best it can so that you rank as high as possible. That said, on-page content is only one part of search engine rankings. You won’t be outranking the golden arches for “Big Mac near me” anytime soon.
While ChatGPT is certainly powerful, it does have its fair share of limitations in its current format. First and foremost, the AI is only trained through January of 2022. Because of this, it can’t be used in conjunction with any recent trends.
The tool also is still in its early stages and one of the first modern AI configurations we’ve seen. Most content returned by the tool still needs to be edited in some way. For now, the golden rule with ChatGPT is to always review and proofread your content!
As with “imperfect content”, the chat tool is prone to errors, slow or empty responses, or rejecting your request all together. Luckily, a page refresh typically works out the kinks. If you’re using the tool during a time of high traffic and get errors, come back at a later time!
New tools and technology continue to be introduced to the restaurant market every year, but very few are expected to drive as big an impact as AI. These tools have wide-ranging applications in the restaurant industry, from AI voice assistants taking orders at the drive-thru to AI that analyzes customer loyalty data to provide more targeting content to customers, promotions, and even personalized menus.
Check back in February for another update on the latest in restaurant AI tools and tech.
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