EO Test Kitchen
Works in Progress
I believe that AI can be hugely impactful to independent restaurant operations. For the benefits of AI to flow to the operators and workforce, we have to learn how to use these tools ourselves rather than being entirely at the mercy of service providers. This is an effort to learn and share around that. Everything here is a prototype to show what’s possible. As we learn and tools improve, so will these. Two things to note:
1. No one involved in creating this site or the content on it has ANY coding, engineering or technical ability at all.
2. The tools used to build these things are the worst they will ever be, right now. Scary but true.
Restaurant AI Event:
We co-hosted a AI & Restaurant event with Agent.ai. More to come but the next couple items here came from there.
Toast Sous Chef (AI by Toast)
This is a request only tool from Toast right now but its 100% worth getting out in front of and learning how to use.
If you get a 'you don't have permission' message you have to go to your permission setting and check the one for Toast Shop Purchases- should be 8.5.
Toast Sales Analysis
This video is an example of using Anthropic Claude to analyze standard Toast reports. This is analyzing week-over-week sales data from 2024 and 2023. I do this weekly now, ask follow-up questions and share the insights with our management teams. It takes a couple hours of work down to a couple minutes. IMPORTANT: You have to spot check it's work as it will sometimes get things wrong. I recommend randomly checking 5 or so numbers directly against the Toast reports to confirm accuracy.
huh? It's like a personalized chatgpt thats trained on all the work from Elided Opinions and FTOB podcast. It's also always learning from the books, articles, podcasts, etc. that inspire us.
Like any AI, this can get stuff wrong so make sure you double check it's work before doing anything too serious with it.
Meet Rotisserie.ai
Rotisserie.ai is a recipe assistant to help you think about how to use leftover rotisserie chicken. It was built in conjunction with a Buy One, Get One offer of Shy Bird's rotisserie chicken that we partnered with Ubereats for. Watch the video below and then you can try it yourself.
RestaurantOpenerGPT
This was prototyped to assist entrepreneurs and restaurateurs in navigating the complex process of opening a new restaurant. From licensing and permits to menu planning and staff hiring, this AI-powered tool provides valuable insights and answers to your questions. It draws heavily from the work of Graffito SP and their Small Biz Toolkit.
Wine Training Demo
We uploaded a simple screenshot of our winelist to NotebookLM and it did a C/C+ level job of understanding it. Hands down the most impressive and uncanny outcome was the "podcast" of sorts presented here. Some pronunciation issues and pretty bland but if I heard it on it's own I'd just think it wasn't good, not that it was completely computer generated. It's also really important to understand this is the WORST that any of the tools will ever be.
Listen to the AI generated 'podcast' on our winelist. It's mediocre and bland for sure but still...
Price & Service Calculator
This was done in an effort to push back against a ballot measure in Massachusetts that would have been very bad for restaurants and their employees, guests, and communities. It is based on a research paper from Northeastern & University of Toronto. I shows the impact of 1% increases in price and 1% decreases in service quality on demand.
