A National Restaurant Association survey finds most operators cautious about AI, with complexity and cost topping their worries even as nearly four in 10 use some AI tool.
Drive-thru voice AI gets the headlines. The typical restaurant operator is still deciding whether to try anything at all.
Just 3.2% of operators are implementing AI projects companywide, and 20% are running small-scale pilots, according to a National Restaurant Association report released Nov. 5. Asked about their attitude, 42.4% said they are cautious and 26.2% said they are excited. Nation's Restaurant News added that 18% called themselves skeptical and 31% have no AI plans yet.
The objections are practical. Complexity led the list at 46.1%, followed by cost at 43.5% and customer acceptance at 41.9%. About 35% flagged data security and privacy.
Use is broader than commitment. Some 38.6% of operators use AI tools in some form. Among them, the most common job is personalized marketing and outreach (58%), followed by analyzing customer feedback (48%), recruiting, scheduling and labor management (37%) and demand forecasting (34%). Two in 10 use AI to take orders and process payments.
Read the numbers with care. The association surveyed 212 operators between June 18 and July 18, and MarketScale noted that a sample that size makes the figures a directional benchmark, not precise market sizing. The report was sponsored by DoorDash and PayPal.
The gap with the biggest systems is wide. Taco Bell now runs voice AI in more than 900 drive-thrus on software Yum built itself. As we noted when Wingstop built its own AI, most franchise systems do not have that kind of engineering budget, and most independent operators have even less.
Complexity is the barrier Revscale, which publishes Revscale Media, is built around. Its AI agents are configured in plain language rather than code, so an operator can describe a workflow and have an agent run it. For a restaurant, that could be an off-the-shelf Inbound Agent that answers catering inquiries within minutes at any hour, or a Re-engage Agent that emails past leads who went quiet and stops as soon as one replies. Each interaction is logged in Revscale CRM and can flow into the systems a restaurant already uses.
The association's own conclusion is that the next gains come from connecting the tools restaurants already own. "AI only raises the importance of that readiness, because it can only be as good as the information behind it," said Chad Moutray, its chief economist. The 20% running pilots will decide whether next year's 3% moves.
Revscale Media is published by Revscale.
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