AI for chefs: 8 ways LLMs can make restaurant life a bit easier

Cooking is alchemy, combining two things to create something unexpected. In a way, AI is the same, with unexpected combinations creating new and exciting things. Here’s how alchemists of food and AI can work together, with our eight top tips for chefs interested in AI. 

Recipe Inspiration

Is the only food left in the house a bag of rice and a four-pack of pale ale? No problem: How about Beer-infused Chinese Style Rice for dinner? That’s courtesy of the AI recipie generator from Let’s Foodie, where you enter a list of ingredients, specify a cuisine and difficulty, and it comes up with a recipe. The site doesn’t guarantee it will turn out well, but it’s a great place to look for where to start when the pantry is getting bare. 

Table For Three On Thursday At Three? That’s Booked

Chefs want to create, not take reservations. Maitre-D AI uses AI to automate all of that nonsense, taking reservations by phone, text, or on the web. Once the system is programmed, it can also answer questions about menus, dietary restrictions, and other queries. It interfaces with the reservation system you probably already use, and is far more polite than the cleaning staff would be at answering the phone.

RoboBurger To Go

Repetitive tasks are where AI will first impact the kitchen. Things like cooking burgers, where SavorEat now offers a robot chef that can make up to 90 burgers an hour. You program the recipes, top up the supplies, and it cranks out the patties. They still need someone to put the patty on the bun and add the extras, though.

AI Can Scan IDs For Alcohol

The food giant Aramark is rolling out an interesting new concept: using AI to verify ID for alcohol sales at football games. Their WalkThruBru concept uses AI to verify a customers ID, check that the face matches, and then lets them buy booze from a chiller cabinet. That means quicker service and no more choke points for customers who want to get a brew and, well, walk through: The company claims it can be up to 10 times faster than a traditional human checkout.

The Chemistry Of Flavor

Chefs have always known that chemistry is at the heart of what they do, but the way that flavors work together isn’t well understood on a chemical level. FlavorGraph from Sony AI and Korea University looks to change that, by applying AI to map the connection and predict how certain combinations of chemicals might taste. You can download and run the model they created yourself, but this isn’t a simple thing to try: Consult your local AI expert before testing. 

Respond To Reviews With AI

Chefs have a love-hate relationship with online reviews: They are great when they praise you, and infuriating when they get things wrong. Mara Solutions applies AI to this, tracking online reviews and notifying you of new ones and drafting a response using AI. That makes you look more responsive and open to customer feedback, even if you don’t read it because you are too busy cooking. 

AI Can Help With Menus

Stellar Menus is a system that helps you manage menus by analyzing cost and ingredients, but it can also add some sparkle to your menu descriptions by using AI. This can suggest a new way to describe your dishes that could catch a customer’s eye, as well as offering translations into Spanish and French. 

Check The Recipe First

Most chefs will, by now, have heard the tale of how someone asked Google’s AI summary tool how to make cheese stick to a pizza, and was told to use Elmer’s glue. It’s nontoxic, the AI said. It is nontoxic, but it doesn’t taste good. So, chefs have to be a little cautious about using AI, and always include, well, a taste test. In the case of the glue pizza, the problem was the inability of the AI to differentiate between real and sarcastic answers. AI is like any other new kitchen tool: If you don’t take the time to learn how to use it effectively, it won’t work, or worse, will be harmful. But it can also, like an effective new kitchen gadget, save you time and money, and make you a better chef if you use it properly.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91243307/ai-for-chefs-8-ways-llms-can-make-life-a-restaurant-life-a-bit-easier?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss