From left are Jack Fielder, Cydnie Perkins, Sofia De La Torre and Alex Litke. | Photo by Joe Guszkowski
The next generation of restaurateurs is not afraid of artificial intelligence. In fact, they are already using it.
But don’t let it near their food.
A group of four current or just-graduated culinary students from Northern Arizona University made their first visit to the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago on Saturday, where buzz about AI, both good and bad, was impossible to miss.
After taking in a presentation by chef Rick Bayless, the students sat down with Restaurant Business to talk about how they see AI impacting restaurants as they prepare for careers in the industry.
Several of the students currently work in restaurants, mainly smaller, independent operations in Flagstaff. These businesses aren’t really using AI in earnest yet, and in fact are a little skeptical of it.
“A lot of people have worries about, ‘Is it accurate? Is it true?’” said Jack Fielder, who wants to go into the specialty coffee business. “‘The systems we have in place have been working for a long time. So why are we looking to change it so quickly, before it’s proven?’”
Hesitance from their bosses hasn’t stopped these young chefs from using it, though.
Instead of taking inventory manually, Fielder has taken a picture of the storage area and asked AI to count supplies for him, then upload the results to an Excel spreadsheet. It made a few mistakes, he said, but it was still faster than doing it himself.
And Cydnie Perkins, a recent grad who works as a kitchen manager and is setting up a private chef business, has used ChatGPT to scale up recipes and create a cleaning plan for her kitchen, which is shared by three different restaurants.
“It saves time and gives us more time to spend doing the actual cooking and creativity stuff,” said Perkins, “the real reason we’re actually in this industry.”
The students pointed to other potentially useful jobs for AI, like creating employee schedules and analyzing granular data, such as, “How many burgers did this person sell to a table above five people in this 30-minute window?”
“That’s kind of what AI is for, is data, data, data,” said Alex Litke, who recently graduated and will be working as a chef de tournant in Idaho.
They’d even consider letting it answer the phone, a service being offered by countless vendors at the Show this year.
Sofia De La Torre, who plans to go to pastry school and open a bakery, said she’d be open to using an AI phone answering system at her business. It could help save labor costs, she said, and give customers a more consistent experience when they call.
“If [an employee] is having a terrible day, and they answer the phone, they can totally take that out, in their tone, on the customer,” she said. But she also noted that the opposite can happen: A friendly, human employee on the other line could help promote the business, “and AI could take that away from them.”
Indeed, the students acknowledged that AI’s autonomy can be a double-edged sword. Fielder, for instance, said there can be value in doing tedious tasks the old-fashioned way.
“AI kind of takes that away, of other people seeing you doing that long, arduous work [and thinking], ‘They are really putting in the work to make sure this restaurant’s effective,’” he said.
Things like scheduling can be a headache, and something that AI can manage. But sometimes it’s best handled by a human with a finger on the pulse of their staff.
“I hear all of their [conversations],” Perkins said. “I know who has a party on this night. I know who’s going out of town. I know who hates late nights and who hates early shifts. I’m with them every day. … So AI couldn’t do that part.”
And one area that all four students agreed was a no-go for AI: Recipe development.
Using it for research, or cooking tips, maybe. But start letting AI create the menu, and the industry’s ingenuity could take a hit, they said.
“If everybody’s making the same ideas with the same generators, every restaurant is gonna be the same thing,” said Litke.
These aspiring chefs wouldn’t think of serving AI slop. After all, their love of food and cooking is what got them into this business in the first place.
“That’s the fun part of the job,” De La Torre said. “Why would you give that up?”
But overall, the students said they’d like restaurants to embrace the technology a little more. It can help them save time and focus on other things that AI can’t do, like cooking, talking to customers or dreaming up their next great dish.
“AI will never be able to fully take over our industry because it can never produce true human connection,” Perkins said. “It can never produce real human creativity and authenticity.”
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