AI for small and medium business
Published Sept. 21, 2025
Average disclaimer, this is not legal advice. Responsibility lies solely with operators to comply with best practices etc etc.Take responsibility for your actions including uses of AI and its consequences if you screw it up.
Bubble or not AI is here to stay. Big restaurant is busy applying it in all sorts of places it doesn’t belong or have utility. It’s not just them misreading the room, most businesses are misapplying the technology and not looking for wins in the right places. You don’t have to believe me, but even MIT. [1, 2]
While the other guys are busy cleaning up after AI drive through orders and dropping the programs [3,4], we have to take a good look at the MIT report; it implies that vital to the utility of AI, but admittedly outside the original scope of the study is personal use of commercial LLM. This coincidentally overlaps with SMB restaurant use cases for real life, not grand promises and miracle cures.
Wh-uut is it good for?
It can enhance traditional research, manipulate spreadsheets, make templates, content schedules and do complicated math. It can do things with sanitized data you might normally need a programming language like Python for, and all in plain English. [1]
Restaurant managers and owners have a difficult gig. You need to understand (even vaguely) employment law, permit forms, cooler repairs & troubleshooting, technical writing, Excel, marketing jargon & strategies, business and economics, ad nauseam.
YouTube tutorials have satisfied many of these needs, but in an ever complicating world we need tools that are capable of producing instead of just educating. It’s tough to self educate or even take MBA classes, or digest Sommelier materials during a 70+ hour work week. Hours of YouTube videos and experts don’t write marketing emails or make content. It is entirely a “pre-productivity” exercise. AI is such a game changer because when used properly it can produce things in minutes that may take you hours of research and even more to execute.
It will never replace your F&B Manager, CFO or even Marketing specialist. The available tools and models are great band aids for SMB to patch the expertise gap and stop the bleeding of things they don’t have the time to do or learn. The right applications will have you deploying improved strategies and finishing routine tasks faster.
AI Wins for SMB
Synthesizing trusted sources into usable training for live challenges
Competitive analysis
Social media content calendars & basic strategies
Sanitized data analysis and modeling
Templates, formatting and back office work
Enhanced personal education
Competitive analysis is the most underutilized tool in the SMB playbook that yields the biggest results. Further when small organizations implement it, it’s often ham-fisted and poorly executed. AI speeds up data collection and when used critically can expand your examination other organizations, making it feasible for small orgs to adjust their position and strategy to the competitive landscape. [1]
Social media in this day and age is almost a requirement. It no longer just advertises but incentives for retention & interaction. Most businesses are grappling with producing consistent content much less developing strategies for content vaults and getting jump starts on holiday campaigns and specials. Get some help with AI to quickly generate a content calendar and outline real deadlines for you or your team. This includes photo & video shoots, campaign concept & launch deadlines, maybe even some help with SEO and keywords on individual platforms.
Education, training and templates all go hand in hand. Do you need to liquidate your wine cellar? Are you looking to expand your cocktail program with mezcal? Need to translate industry babble into actionable sales techniques for your floor staff? Enhance your learning and format training modules or product outlines in the time it takes you to write the prompt.
Data analysis was the buzzword before AI, and ironically is highly related. The hard fact of the matter is that data science for restaurants has a lot of hurdles that I won’t bore you with. The most important is that modeling complex behavior from customers usually takes a lot of data. That means a lot of stores with a lot of customers to gain useful insight.
Big data isn’t your gold mine as an SMB, nor do you have the tools to do it. What you can do is learn how to apply AI to examine sanitized data like sales mixes, or line items on checks to find out what customers are ordering, effective menu pairings, and trends that would otherwise be lost on line graphs in your POS read outs. You can monitor weekly/monthly/quarterly sales mixes in minutes for fluctuations of your most important menu items. [1]
The 7 Deadly AI Sins for SMB (a handy guide)
Place no answer nor data above error checking, critical thinking or expertise of thine-self or peers
Thou shalt not expose data of yourself, customers or the business to AI services
Thou shalt not replace employees with AI
Thou shalt not represent menu items or make ads with AI alone
Thou shalt not Schedule with AI
Thou shalt not “Build my own XYZ software”
Thou shalt not get whole recipes from AI
These should be pretty self explanatory. AI is a tool, not a miracle panacea for businesses. Never make the mistake of thinking it knows the truth. Verify everything. Be skeptical and critical with its output and sources to avoid falling into the “Yes Man” trap. Do not let it delude you. There are already real life cases of people acting irrationally and criminally when AI reinforces their ego, insecurities or underlying mental issues. [5]
You need to understand that just like every service you use, you and your data are at risk. Read this again. If you are not moderating your exposure it is inevitable that you will harm yourself, customers or employees.
Human cost should always be your first concern. Customers and team members face the consequences of false AI advertising. Cold and un-contextualized budget decisions made and trusted by AI directly impact the well being of your staff. Do not try to “auto pilot” your role as an owner or manager, you will go out of business.
Sources and further reading