Save Time, Run Smarter: AI for Hospitality Owners
Running a hospitality business in Aotearoa is a constant balancing act. Between staff rosters, supplier emails, marketing, and customer service, there are never enough hours in the day. That’s why we’re launching a 12-week series on AI Time Savers for Hospo — practical tips and real-world examples of how artificial intelligence can help you reclaim time, reduce admin, and keep your focus on what matters most: your guests.
Each week we’ll spotlight one small, practical way you can use AI in your business — no jargon, no big budgets, just tools and ideas you can start using straight away.
Week 3 – Menu Engineering Made Simple: Let AI Optimize Your Offerings
Turn AI into your menu consultant
Last week we covered how AI can handle your customer communications in seconds. This week, let’s tackle something that directly impacts your bottom line: your menu.
Menu engineering — the art and science of designing your menu for maximum profitability — usually requires spreadsheets, complex calculations, and a lot of guesswork. But AI can analyse your sales data, spot patterns you might miss, and suggest changes that could boost both customer satisfaction and your profit margins. This isn’t about replacing your chef’s creativity or expertise — it’s about using data to spotlight their best work and help customers find dishes they’ll love.
Three ways AI can optimize your menu right now
- Sales Pattern Analysis – Upload your POS data and ask AI to identify your stars (high profit, high sales), your plowhorses (low profit, high sales), puzzles (high profit, low sales), and dogs (low profit, low sales). It’ll spot trends you might overlook.
- Description Writing – Good menu descriptions can increase sales. AI excels at writing mouth-watering descriptions that highlight key selling points without sounding over the top. Give it your dish ingredients and it’ll craft copy that sells.
- Price Point Suggestions – Feed AI your costs, competitor prices, and target margins, and it can suggest optimal pricing strategies. It considers psychological pricing principles and local market conditions.
Try this week: The “menu description refresh” method
Pick three of your lower-selling dishes and try this AI prompt:
“Write an appealing menu description for [dish name]. Ingredients: [list key ingredients]. Cooking method: [how it’s prepared]. Target audience: [your typical customer]. Keep it under 25 words, focus on flavors and textures, avoid clichés.”
For example: “Write an appealing menu description for pan-seared salmon. Ingredients: salmon fillet, seasonal vegetables, lemon herb butter. Cooking method: pan-seared. Target audience: health-conscious diners. Keep it under 25 words, focus on flavors and textures, avoid clichés.”
The result? Fresh, appetizing descriptions that could nudge customers toward dishes you want to sell more of — all created in under a minute.
The bigger picture
Your menu isn’t just a list of dishes — it’s a profit roadmap. AI can help you read that map more clearly, spotting opportunities to increase margins without raising prices or alienating customers. Think of it as giving your chef’s creativity and expertise the data-driven spotlight it deserves, helping customers discover the dishes that showcase your kitchen’s best work.
More reading:
- Week 1: What Is AI (and Why Should You Care)?
- Week 2: Your AI Writing Assistant: Customer Communications Made Easy
- Training: Take a deeper dive on this topic – Prompting AI to Work Smarter in Hospitality.