Upselling

Upselling is the gentle, well-timed suggestion: make it a combo, add garlic bread, a glass of wine with that, size up the fries. Done well it raises Average check and profit without a single new customer walking in, which is why it matters so much on a 3-5% net margin business. Done badly it feels pushy and costs you goodwill, so the skill is relevance and timing, suggesting the thing that genuinely fits the order.

This is a place AI is unusually good, because it never forgets to ask and it reads context. On digital ordering and drive-thru screens, voice AI makes roughly 4x more context-specific upsell attempts than staff, and Presto Automation reports upselling can lift drive-thru revenue by up to +6% revenue. The same logic runs on your online menu (prompting the pairing that fits the cart) and on the phone through AI answering. It works best when it is tied to Menu engineering, so the item it pushes is one of your high-margin stars. See menu optimization and AI phone answering.