You run service. Let the back office run itself.
Restaurants, hotels, catering, and venues: operations that live or die on who shows up tonight and what got prepped before the doors opened.
Where does AI actually pay in hospitality?
Three places, in our experience. These are the clearest wins we see in operations like yours, not results we promise. In every one of them the machine handles the tireless part and the person on the floor keeps the judgment call.
The schedule is drafted against the week you are actually about to have.
Schedules get built from last week’s memory while covers swing with weather, events, and season. An automation drafts the schedule from your real patterns, and the manager still signs off on every shift and every swap. How that pattern-finding works is the subject of How the Machine Learns.
Confirmations, waitlists, and no-show follow-ups run themselves.
Every empty table that could have been filled is revenue gone for good. An agent confirms bookings, works the waitlist when someone cancels, and drafts the follow-up. The host still decides who gets the window seat and how to handle the regular.
Prep, ordering, and the end-of-day numbers in one view.
POS, scheduling, and ordering systems each tell a different story, and the manager reconciles them at midnight. An integration puts the day’s numbers in one place and drafts the order list from what actually sold. What gets ordered is still the chef’s call.
For most operators the right first move is the AI Readiness Audit: two to four weeks mapping where the hours actually go before anyone builds anything. Pricing is published, in plain numbers: audits run $3,500–$8,500; sprints $18,000–$60,000, fixed quote in writing.
Two piles every operator knows. Drawn before and after.
Illustrative vignettes, not client claims. In both, the machine prepares and the manager who knows the room decides.
The week’s invoices are coded and matched before you open.
Before. Monday morning and there are thirty-one invoices: produce three times last week, protein twice, dry goods, linen, beer and wine on separate accounts, and two that arrived as photos on somebody’s phone. The manager keys them into the accounting system between deliveries, codes them by memory, and does not catch that the protein supplier raised the price eleven percent or that Thursday’s produce was short two cases against the ticket. Food cost drifts a point and nobody can say which week it started.
After. Every invoice — emailed, PDF, or photographed — is read on arrival, coded to the right account, and matched line by line against what was actually received. Price changes above your threshold get flagged with the prior price beside them. Short-ships get flagged against the delivery ticket. The week’s cost-of-goods picture assembles itself. A manager approves the batch; nothing posts to the books unapproved.
The win: the price creep and the short-ships get caught in the week they happen, not in the quarter they show up.Tip reporting and health-department paper stop being fire drills.
Before. Tip allocation is worked out on a spreadsheet the night before payroll, from POS exports somebody has to remember to pull. Temperature logs and cleaning schedules live on clipboards; certification expiry is discovered when an inspector asks.
After. Tip reporting and allocation are prepared from the POS data in the format payroll needs, ready to review rather than assemble. Health-department documentation is tracked continuously, with expiring certifications and missing log entries surfaced before an inspection rather than during one. A person signs; the machine keeps the calendar.
The win: two recurring fire drills become two reviews.Illustrative builds, not client claims. What we would actually scope is whatever your free assessment shows is worth automating first. The one build we can name is MARCUS, a private AI back office for a regulated lender — the same architecture, a different set of nouns.
AI for restaurants and hospitality operators.
Want the numbers?
The full price list is published — audits, sprints, managed services, all on one page.
Read the price list →01What can AI do for a hospitality operation?+
The back-office paper that piles up while you run service: supplier invoices coded and matched to deliveries, tip reporting and allocation prepared for payroll, health-department documentation kept current, and the weekly cost-of-goods picture assembled without anyone keying it twice.
02What about the Monday invoice stack?+
That is usually the first build. Invoices arrive by email, PDF, and photo from a dozen suppliers. An agent reads each one, codes it, matches it to what was actually delivered, flags the price changes and short-ships that would otherwise pass unnoticed, and stages it for approval. Nothing posts until a manager approves it.
03Does it handle tip reporting and health-department paper?+
Tip reporting and allocation get prepared from the POS data you already have, in the format payroll needs. Health-department documentation — temperature logs, cleaning schedules, certification expiry — gets tracked and the gaps flagged before an inspector finds them. A person signs off; the machine keeps the calendar.
04How much does it cost for a restaurant group?+
The AI Readiness Audit runs $3,500–$8,500; an AI Implementation Sprint runs $18,000–$60,000, quoted fixed in writing before work begins and guaranteed live within 90 days. For most operators the first build is the invoice stack, because it is the one that quietly moves food cost.
05How long does it take?+
Audit: 2 to 4 weeks. First build: 4 to 12. Both sit behind the same delivery guarantee — live within 90 days, or we keep building at no charge until it is.
06Do you work remotely or on-site?+
Operators near our Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona hubs get in-person time; the rest of the US is remote. Either way the work runs off the invoices and POS exports you already have, and the fixed prices do not move.
See the wins in hospitality.
30 minutes with a senior advisor who walks your staffing, reservations, and ops workflows and tells you what is worth automating, and what is not.
A fixed price, quoted in writing before we start, and a straight answer within 24 hours.
— Christopher Myers, Founder