We Asked 32 Restaurant Leaders One Question About AI. Here’s What They Said.
What restaurant leaders are actually doing with AI for guest experience: using it to speed up response times to unhappy guests, decode sentiment across locations in real time, and free up staff for the parts of hospitality that still need a human touch, while treating it as a thought partner, not a replacement for people.
Everyone’s talking about AI in restaurants right now. Fewer people are actually doing something about it.
So Ovation CEO and Founder Zack Oates hit the floor at the National Restaurant Association Show and put a mic in front of 32 restaurant leaders, asking them all the same question: what should restaurants actually be doing with AI to improve guest experience?
No panels. No scripts. Just back-to-back, rapid-fire answers from people who run real restaurants — not people theorizing from a stage.
Below are a few quick highlights of what stood out. Watch the full video here for the full insights →
AI works best as a shortcut to execution, not a strategy on its own
That’s the single biggest theme across all 32 conversations, including leaders from Wiener Schnitzel, Houston’s Hot Chicken, Dog Haus, Savory, and Salad House. AI isn’t the plan, it’s what helps you carry out the plan faster.
Clean data comes before AI, not after
AI is only as useful as what you feed it. The leaders seeing real results aren’t the ones with the flashiest tools, they’re the ones who got their feedback and operations data in order first, then let AI tell them what to do with it. That’s the idea behind Ovation’s sentiment analysis, too — sorting every piece of feedback into what’s actually going right or wrong, down to specifics like speed of service or order accuracy, instead of leaving it as one big pile of comments to sort through by hand.
Speed matters… but so does sounding like your brand
The best operators are using AI to respond faster, not to sound more automated. A quick, canned-feeling reply can do as much damage as a slow one — which is why tools like Ovation’s suggested responses are built to match your brand voice, not replace it, so every guest still hears from you, just faster.
The leaders getting the most out of AI are focused on the guest, not just the back office
It’s easy to get excited about AI that saves your team time internally. The operators seeing the biggest impact are asking a different question first: does this actually make the guest experience better — not just reported on, but actually fixed, with the team’s attention pointed at the right priority.
Where Ovation fits in
That’s the whole premise behind Ovation, too. We built an AI-first guest experience platform on the same idea, AI should work in service of the guest, not just internal efficiency. From frictionless feedback surveys to real-time guest recovery to reputation management that doesn’t require logging into a dozen platforms, every piece is built to turn what guests are already telling you into action.
We couldn’t fit all 32 answers into one blog post. Every leader brought something different to the table, and honestly, some of the best moments are better watched than summarized. Watch the video and check out the playbook to get started.
