Most operators I speak to know AI is important. What they’re less clear on is what outcomes it should actually be delivering in the products they already use - and what their vendors’ plans are to get there.
AI is moving fast and every software vendor in hospitality is under pressure to ship something. The result is a lot of new “AI features” landing in products - some genuinely useful, some half-baked, and some that aren’t really AI at all. For operators, that makes it genuinely difficult to know what’s worth paying for.
Toast surveyed over 700 restaurant operators in 2025 and found that 86% are comfortable with AI but only 24% are actually using it for core operational tasks. The gap between knowing and doing is the most honest summary of where the industry sits right now.
You don’t need to be techy to navigate this. But you do need enough understanding to ask the right questions. Three to start with:
- Is this genuinely new capability, or does it use functionality that already existed in the product?
- Can you show me outcome data from existing customers - covers filled, no-shows reduced, revenue per cover?
- Is this included in my current contract, or is it an upsell?
Those three questions will tell you more about a vendor’s AI claims than any product demo. Because the point of all of this isn’t AI for its own sake. The operators who get this right will have teams spending less time on admin and more time actually looking after guests.