The numbers behind AI in restaurants.

The U.S. restaurant and foodservice industry is projected to reach $1.5 trillion in sales in 2025.

Total U.S. restaurant and foodservice employment is expected to reach 15.9 million people in 2025, adding more than 200,000 net new jobs.

The U.S. has more than 1 million restaurant and foodservice outlets.

Including multiplier effects, the restaurant and foodservice industry contributes $3.5 trillion in output to the U.S. economy, roughly 15.6% of real GDP.

Nine in ten restaurants have fewer than 50 employees and seven in ten are single-unit operations, making the industry overwhelmingly small-business.

Full-service restaurants typically operate on net profit margins of just 3-5%, with fast-casual and quick-service around 6-9%.

U.S. food-away-from-home (restaurant) prices rose 4.1% in 2025, outpacing food-at-home inflation of 2.4%.

The first-year restaurant failure rate was just 4.7% in 2024, debunking the widely cited myth that 90% of restaurants fail in year one.

The global foodservice market was valued at about $4.34 trillion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $7.61 trillion by 2030.

Operators ranked inflation (20%), marketing (16%), and sourcing/hiring (16%) as their top three business pain points in Toast's 2025 survey of 712 decision-makers.

40% of restaurant operators cited improving profitability as their top goal for the coming year, and 48% plan to raise menu prices if inflation persists.

42% of operators reported their restaurant was not profitable, and more than 9 in 10 cite food, labor, insurance, energy, and swipe fees as significant challenges.

60% of operators reported softer customer traffic heading into 2026, underscoring the demand pressure behind tech-buying decisions.

82% of restaurant-finance respondents expect improved or stable industry growth in 2026, indicating a cautiously optimistic buyer climate.

Full-service restaurants spent a median of 36.5% of sales on salaries and wages (including benefits) in 2024, up from roughly 33% historically.

The quits rate in accommodation and food services remains around 4% (4.1% in June 2026), among the highest of any U.S. sector.

About 26% of restaurant operators say they are already using AI-related tools, most commonly for marketing.

82% of restaurant executives plan to increase their AI investment in the coming fiscal year (73% somewhat, 9% significantly).

85% of restaurant operators feel positive or extremely positive about AI, with reported AI adoption reaching 87% in 2025.

Twenty-six percent of restaurant operators say they are using artificial-intelligence-related tools at their restaurants, per the National Restaurant Association's 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry report.

Where operators use AI it skews to low-risk tasks: 19% of full-service and 15% of limited-service operators use it for marketing, 10% for administrative tasks, and only 6% for customer orders.

83% of operators say technology provides a competitive advantage, but only 28% say technology investments have improved their restaurant's profitability, quantifying the buyer's belief-versus-ROI gap.

In Toast's 2025 Voice of the Restaurant Industry survey, 86% of operators said they feel comfortable using AI and 81% plan to use it more in the future.

85% of restaurant leaders plan to invest in technology such as new AI and automation tools, and 78% are more optimistic about their business than a year ago (Square Future of Commerce 2025).

Two-thirds of restaurant leaders believe AI or automation will improve their business across each surveyed operational area, per Square's 2025 report.

Operators named labor efficiency, training and scheduling (40%) as the top area where AI can deliver improvement, against a backdrop where 54% call a shrinking labor pool the industry's biggest challenge (TD Bank, Dec 2025).

Independent operator Cali BBQ used Toast's AI to analyze historical sales and stay closed until 11:00 AM, saving $4,000 in unnecessary labor costs, a decision the AI produced in under a minute.

Wendy's Fresh AI drive-thru voice ordering has been deployed to over 160 restaurants with plans to reach 500-plus by year-end, a marquee example of guest-facing AI scaling.

Dairy Queen rolled out Presto voice AI across restaurants in more than 25 states and provinces, reporting improved order accuracy while freeing employees to help customers.

McDonald's ended its drive-thru voice AI test with IBM after two and a half years, a signal of the tech-fatigue and trust caution running through the operator buyer base.

Toast served approximately 156,000 restaurant locations with about $2.0 billion in annualized recurring revenue as of Q3 2025.

Toast processed $51.5 billion in gross payment volume in the third quarter of 2025, up 24% year over year.

AI-native restaurant platform Owner.com raised $240 million in 2025, reaching a $2.3 billion valuation on roughly $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

Owner.com positions itself as an autonomous AI operator where an owner can request a promotion and an AI agent builds and runs the campaign end to end.

One-third (34%) of restaurant operators had already adopted AI technology and 48% planned to in 2025, per a Popmenu survey of U.S. operators.

26% of restaurant operators say they use AI-related tools, with marketing the top use and only 6% using AI for customer orders, per the NRA's 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry.

AI use in restaurants is concentrated in marketing, cited by 19% of full-service and 15% of limited-service operators.

Full-service restaurant labor (salaries, wages, and benefits) reached a median 36.5% of sales in 2024, above the historical ~33% norm.

7shifts is used by over 55,000 restaurants and 1.5 million workers, with AI-assisted forecasting the company markets as 95% accurate when integrated with the POS.

DoorDash agreed in 2025 to acquire restaurant CRM and reservations platform SevenRooms for $1.2 billion.

More than 40,000 restaurants run on Restaurant365, whose R365 AI engine is trained on the restaurant's full P&L.

Voice-AI phone platform Slang.ai publishes per-location pricing starting at $399 (Core) and $599 (Premium) per location.

Voice-AI ordering vendor ConverseNow deployed across all 60 Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza locations, illustrating chain-wide voice automation adoption.

Roughly 40% of restaurant phone calls go unanswered, costing the U.S. restaurant industry an estimated $20 billion in lost revenue each year.

About 30% of Americans admit they failed to show up for a restaurant reservation they made in the past year.

In Toast's platform data for Q3 2025, only about 2% of booked reservations resulted in a no-show, showing how automated confirmations suppress the individual-level flake rate.

Reservations for a single diner spiked 22% in Q3 2025 versus Q3 2024, while overall seated reservations rose 8% year over year.

OpenTable began adding a 2% service charge on transactions through its site, and some restaurants now require a credit card with a $15-per-person no-show fee.

OpenTable operates with more than 60,000 restaurant partners and seats more than 1 billion guests per year, making it the largest reservation network.

AI phone-answering vendor Slang AI reports restaurants drive up to 50% more phone covers at 96%+ guest satisfaction using its voice agent.

Only 16 percent of restaurant operators planned to invest in AI integration, including voice recognition, in 2024, signaling an early-adopter market.

81% of consumers say they have signed up to receive text messages from a business, showing broad opt-in for SMS guest communication.

42% of consumers expect a business to respond to their text within 15 minutes and 66% within one hour, a response bar AI messaging can meet automatically.

Nearly half of Americans prefer receiving text messages from restaurants, especially for time-sensitive updates like table-ready alerts.

74% of consumers say they plan to or have already returned to a restaurant after a unique experience, and diners are 3.5x more likely to return after email marketing.

One in three diners turns to Google when searching for a restaurant, making booking and messaging surfaces part of discovery, not just operations.

Taco Bell expanded its voice AI to more than 890 U.S. restaurants across 38 states, one of the largest drive-thru voice deployments to date.

In a mystery-shopper study of 120 confirmed voice-AI drive-thru visits, employees still had to intervene in 22% of interactions, showing the technology is production-grade but supervised.

Nearly 75% of all restaurant traffic now happens off-premises (takeout, drive-thru, and delivery).

Off-premises now accounts for a larger share of sales for 58% of limited-service and 41% of full-service operators compared with 2019.

Mobile ordering is mainstream, used by 57% of adults recently, including 74% of millennials and 65% of Gen Z adults.

94% of all consumers say speed is critical to their off-premises restaurant experience.

DoorDash restaurants typically choose from Basic (15%), Plus (25%), and Premier (30%) delivery commission plans, plus a 6% commission on pickup orders.

Once marketing, refunds, and processing are included, the effective cost of a third-party delivery order ends up closer to 30% to 40% of revenue, roughly one-third of each order.

Revenue in the US Online Food Delivery market is projected to reach US$473.49 billion in 2026.

First-party ordering guests attach to restaurant loyalty programs at 41%, versus just 3% for guests acquired through third-party marketplaces.

A Texas A&M Human Behavior Lab study that used eye-tracking to reposition high-margin items on a restaurant menu lifted the restaurant's profit by more than 20%.

62% of restaurant digital signage screens display a digital menu board, rising to 82% in fast food and QSR, the highest adoption of any industry.

Drive-thru voice AI makes about 4x more context-specific upsell attempts than staff, and Presto reports upselling can lead to up to a 6% increase in drive-thru revenue.

Taco Bell has deployed drive-thru voice AI to over 890 domestic restaurants across 38 states.

Wendy's FreshAI drive-thru voice AI is expanding from over 160 restaurants toward more than 500 locations with digital menu boards by year-end.

76% of foodservice operators believe that using technology gives their restaurant a competitive edge.

Restaurants moving delivery to first-party ordering via Owner.com report avoided third-party fees, such as $31,000 in third-party fee savings for one operator, and one brand reaching over $7M in direct online sales.

A one-star increase in a restaurant's Yelp rating leads to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue, an effect driven by independent restaurants and not chains.

The revenue effect of Yelp ratings is concentrated entirely in independent restaurants; chain-affiliated restaurants see no ratings effect.

In 2024, 75 percent of consumers read online reviews for local businesses 'always' or 'regularly,' and only 3 percent say they never read them.

Google is the most-used website for reading online reviews, used by 81 percent of review-readers in 2024 (down from 87 percent in 2023).

88 percent of consumers would use a business that replies to all of its reviews, versus only 47 percent who would use a business that does not respond to reviews at all.

Businesses that reply to at least 25 percent of their online reviews average 35 percent more revenue than the average business.

Consumers spend up to 58 percent more at businesses that reply to their online reviews, and businesses that never reply earn 9 percent less than average.

Businesses with a 4- to 4.5-star rating earn 28 percent more in annual revenue than average, outperforming even 5-star businesses.

Businesses that did not claim their online listings averaged $72,000 less in annual revenue.

96 percent of restaurant loyalty program members say the programs are a good way to earn more bang for their buck, and 52 percent already participate.

Among consumers not currently enrolled in a loyalty program, 81 percent across all age groups say they would participate if offered one at a favorite restaurant.

60 percent of current restaurant loyalty members prefer using a smartphone app rather than carrying a physical card.

The largest cohort of marketers (35 percent) earn $10 to $36 for every $1 spent on email, and another 30 percent earn $36 to $50, per Litmus's 2025 survey.

Searches for restaurants including a 'near me' qualifier have grown 150 percent faster than the same searches without a location qualifier.

83% of restaurant locations are entirely invisible in AI-generated recommendations, according to Uberall's 2026 GEO benchmark for multi-location QSRs.

When a consumer asks ChatGPT 'where can I get a good pizza near me tonight,' only 17% of restaurants ever appear in the answer, despite 86% maintaining some presence on Google.

Informational and comparative prompts drive nearly 79% of AI-generated restaurant responses, and AI typically recommends only 3 to 5 brands per query.

AI assistants recommend restaurants by rating, with ChatGPT primarily recommending businesses averaging 4.3 stars or higher (Perplexity 4.1+, Gemini 3.9+).

20% of U.S. consumers now use AI tools like ChatGPT to research restaurants and bars, nearly on par with review sites like Yelp (24%) and social channels like TikTok and Instagram (26%), while Google Search remains the top choice at 56%.

55% of consumers trust AI-generated review summaries when choosing a restaurant, and 16% trust them more than individual reviews.

AI-powered dining discovery skews sharply young: 61% of 25-to-34-year-olds have used AI for personalized food or drink recommendations, versus just 4% of those 65 and older.

Consumer use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local business recommendations grew rapidly, rising from 6% to 45% in a single year.

97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, but Google's share as a review source dipped from 83% in 2025 to 71% in 2026 as AI tools rose.

Google users who encountered an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in only 8% of visits, versus 15% for those who did not see one, and clicked a link inside the summary just 1% of the time.

About six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) conducted at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated summary, showing AI answers are already mainstream in everyday search.

In a national survey of how guests discover new restaurants, word of mouth led at 38%, followed by walking or driving past a location (30%), Facebook (27%), and search engine results (16%).

62% of consumers find restaurants through Google, surpassing other platforms like Yelp or social media, making Google the primary restaurant discovery surface.

For full-service restaurants, salaries and wages including benefits ran at a median of 36.5% of sales in 2024, according to the National Restaurant Association's Restaurant Operations Data Abstract.

Profitable full-service operators held labor to a median of 34.2% of sales in 2024 while unprofitable operators let it reach 42.9%, an 8.7-point gap on the largest controllable cost.

For limited-service (quick-service) restaurants, salaries and wages including benefits ran at a median of 31.7% of sales in 2024.

Food and non-alcohol beverage costs ran at a median of 32.0% of sales for full-service and 32.4% for limited-service restaurants in 2024.

Winnow, an AI food-waste tracking system, states it cuts commercial kitchen food waste by 50% using touchless AI tracking.

Winnow reports proven food-cost savings of 2 to 8 percent, typically delivered within 12 months of adoption.

Winnow is deployed in more than 3,500 commercial kitchen sites across 94 countries, making it the most widely deployed food-waste prevention platform in hospitality.

Lineup.ai markets its AI restaurant sales forecasting as 35% more accurate than traditional forecasting methods.

An AI pastry-demand forecasting system built for Blue Bottle Coffee (100+ cafes) improved pastry ordering accuracy by 8% in the first month, reducing overstock waste and stockouts.

MarginEdge charges a flat $350 per location per month for all-inclusive automated invoice processing, real-time food-cost management, inventory, and daily P&L.

U.S. surplus (unsold or uneaten) food rebounded to 73.9 million tons in 2023, about 31% of the food supply, worth $382 billion.

U.S. consumers (a category that includes restaurant plate waste) waste close to 35 million tons of food annually, costing $261 billion or nearly $800 per person.

76% of restaurant operators say using technology gives them a competitive edge, per the National Restaurant Association's 2024 Restaurant Technology Landscape Report.

52% of restaurant operators plan to invest in inventory control and management technology, and 37% in automated labor management, recruitment and/or scheduling systems.

In RestaurantOwner.com's cost-to-open survey, the 489 independent owners who did not buy land reported a median total startup cost of $275,000, and the middle half spent between $125,000 and $550,000.

Owners who did not buy land spent a median of $3,046 per seat to open, and the middle half spent between $1,418 and $5,571 per seat (482 respondents).

Owners who did not buy land spent a median of $95 per square foot to open, and the middle half spent between $45 and $173 per square foot (488 respondents).

Restaurant owners went a median of 15% over their opening budget, a quarter of them went 45% or more over, and the average overrun was 33% (626 respondents).

Construction was the largest opening cost, a median of $140,000 (middle half: $49,500 to $350,750) and a median of 47% of the total startup cost (547 respondents).

Kitchen and bar equipment cost a median of $75,000, and the middle half of owners spent between $30,000 and $150,000 (569 respondents).

The median restaurant in the survey had 3,200 square feet and 100 seats, and used 31 square feet per seat (middle half: 26 to 39).

Owners took a median of 6 months to become profitable; a quarter got there within a month, and a quarter took 24 months or longer (440 respondents).

Independent restaurant owners surveyed by RestaurantOwner.com in 2018 reported a median startup cost of $375,000, or $113 per square foot and $3,586 per seat.

In the 2018 survey, remodeling an existing restaurant space had a median cost of $275,500, remodeling a non-restaurant space $425,500, and building from the ground up (not including real estate) $650,000.

Producer prices for the goods that go into nonresidential construction were about 42% higher in 2025 than in 2018, by the annual averages of the Bureau of Labor Statistics index.