🔒AI technology presents opportunities, and legal pitfalls, for restaurant industry

Nearly every industry is exploring how artificial intelligence can help streamline, improve or expand operations.

Even when it comes to restaurants and hospitality — an industry reliant on the human touch and face-to-face interaction — this emerging technology promises to aid employers in a number of crucial ways.

Because staffing is so essential to the success of hospitality businesses, they are particularly well-suited to use AI for hiring, though this is not without risk.

And while some restaurants integrate AI into their guest experience, others use tools to make the back of the house more efficient.

Using AI to hire requires oversight

The hospitality sector has a turnover rate that roughly doubles many other U.S. industries. Even restaurants with exceptional retention tend to do a lot of hiring, and the prospect of AI streamlining the process is enticing.

HR departments across many industries are using AI to identify qualified applicants and, in some cases, predict future job performance. AI can also help monitor and ensure businesses remain aware of, and compliant with, labor and employment laws.

Employers engaging with these tools must bear in mind that employment laws — including Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Age Discrimination in Employment Act, etc. — continue to apply. The use of AI is not a viable excuse for any violations.

For example, if AI analyzes a company’s current data and finds that employees under 40 tend to be the most productive, it could favor hiring younger applicants. If an older applicant or employee can prove they were passed over for a job or promotion on this basis, they could file a discrimination claim.

While many hiring tools on the market have safeguards to protect against this type of bias, employers and hiring managers need to maintain oversight on the findings and recommendations of AI tools.

AI can be a key ingredient

Restaurant consumers are most likely to encounter AI at drive-thrus — whether they recognize it or not, because these systems work quite well. But even fast-casual and more upscale restaurants can make AI part of their guest experience.

Virtual menus where guests scan a QR code or order from their phone became somewhat commonplace during the pandemic and have remained in use at some restaurants.

Unlike a static, printed menu, AI tools can change the order of the menu, or make recommendations based on previous orders, time of day or other factors such as weather.

Even restaurants that want to keep the fully traditional feel of their dining room can leverage AI in the kitchen and office. By training an AI tool on past data, it can help predict the timing and quantities needed for ingredients, for example, when a seasonal menu changes over.

There are also AI tools that guide kitchen staff in the most efficient way to prepare a high volume of orders simultaneously.

While experienced chefs may be able to do these calculations intuitively, line cooks and more junior kitchen staff may welcome the guidance as a restaurant scales and adds new locations.

To maintain a healthy workplace culture, it’s important that the staff feels these tools are a help, not an imposition.

True hospitality has a human touch

AI is also uniquely positioned to transform labor relations.

For instance, using AI to analyze large chunks of industry-specific wage and benefit information could help parties create more data-based collective bargaining language.

This could present an advantage, especially if the negotiations go to arbitration.

But while employers will have a great deal more data, and run more in-depth analysis of that data, it still won’t give them a deeper or more nuanced understanding of the individuals involved in labor negotiations, or that comprise their staff.

The same human interaction that is crucial to maintaining a loyal customer base should be applied to dealing with employees as well.

True hospitality can’t be found in an algorithm.

Russell F. Anderson and Ryan A. O’Donnell are partners at Connecticut law firm Pullman & Comley.