Artificial intelligence is entering its next phase, shifting from automating manual tasks to augmenting creativity and strategic decision-making for brands from across industries, including restaurants.
Eight in 10 restaurant executives surveyed by Deloitte in June 2025 say their investments in AI technologies will increase in the next fiscal year. The expected benefits? Enhanced customer experience, smoother restaurant operations, more impactful loyalty programs and enhanced digital marketing. Restaurants are already seeing results in use cases such as customer experience and inventory management.
At the same time, more non-retail brands, such as restaurants, have begun investing significant advertising dollars in retail media, which AI stands to make even more potent. U.S. commerce media ad spending is projected to hit $118.4 billion by 2029, growing at a 15.3% compound annual growth rate.
“AI has massive untapped potential in retail media networks, especially for platforms where commerce, ads and fulfillment intersect,” said Vassili Samolis, head of product for ads at DoorDash. “AI isn’t just a tool for optimization. It’s a lever for personalization, automation and imagination in retail media. There’s significant room to move beyond static banners and SKU bids toward intelligent commerce ecosystems powered by real-time, predictive and generative AI.”
The winners in this new era will be the restaurant brands that embed AI early into both front-of-house and back-end decisions to power stronger marketing and customer experience across retail media networks and other emerging digital spaces.
Four converging forces make it the right time to invest in AI
A few headwinds and tailwinds are making AI imperative for restaurant merchants.
First and most obviously, consumer expectations are shifting. Shoppers want personalized recommendations, making the right time, right place, right message a must for marketers to master. Particularly for restaurant merchants, consumers seek faster, smoother ordering across channels and recommendations based on past behavior. With its predictive and automation capabilities, AI enables merchants to meet those expectations without adding headcount.
Second, thanks in large part to the above, marketing has become too complex to manage manually. In-house marketing teams now have dozens of touchpoints to address, from email and social media to ads and in-app promos. Marketers face constant pressure to personalize messaging and creative across these channels, but struggle with limited staff, time and expertise to optimize campaigns in this way. “AI helps level the playing field, whether it’s optimizing creative and creating fresh marketing content or hypertargeting the right consumer with the right message,” said Ashwin Pradhan, senior manager of ads product marketing at DoorDash.
Third, restaurant operators are increasingly seeking a one-stop technology shop, with integrated systems that meet a variety of needs for their business. A recap of the National Restaurant Association Show in May 2025 shared that operators have tech fatigue from the last few years and don’t want to have to cobble together multiple platforms. AI can help serve as the necessary connection point, especially now that it is actually being applied to real restaurant use cases with success, and not just being used as a buzzword.
Finally, merchants who adopt early gain a competitive advantage. “By learning how AI technology works, they can test use cases and even influence how these tools evolve,” Pradhan said. “For instance, they can start collecting their own performance data, which improves AI-driven targeting.”
“AI has massive untapped potential in retail media networks, especially for platforms where commerce, ads and fulfillment intersect.” - Vassili Samolis, head of product for ads at DoorDash
Emerging AI opportunities for restaurants
Deloitte’s research shows that while restaurant operators have invested in use cases with potential for high ROI where proven AI technologies exist, they are also testing emerging applications. Enhanced digital marketing is a Top 5 benefit among 26% of survey respondents.
As the technology continues to evolve, there are four main use cases that merchants should monitor and trial when possible.
Personalized recommendations at scale: AI helps remove the manual effort from delivering highly personalized experiences. It can do this by analyzing customer data, like past orders and transaction frequency, to recommend menu items customized to individual tastes. For example, if a guest frequently orders a collection of apps versus an entree, a restaurant could suggest an appetizer special or a new app. In contrast, a customer who regularly spends a significant amount on every order might receive a more exclusive offer.
Menu design and optimization: AI can analyze top-selling menu items by region or time of day, conversion rates on specific dishes and the impact of basket size from combo items or upsells. The technology can then recommend removing underperforming items, renaming dishes to enhance their appeal and automatically generating combos to boost margins.
AI-generated marketing content: Merchants can now use AI tools to write subject lines, email copy and SMS promos, match tone to customer segment (e.g., casual versus premium) and generate product descriptions for new menu items. These capabilities massively save time for lean teams while boosting customer engagement.
Dynamic pricing and time-based offers: Instead of one-size-fits-all coupons, AI helps tailor incentives that drive incremental orders. For instance, AI can dynamically generate and target offers based on time of day or day of week, order history, frequency and average spend and cuisine preferences. Some brands are experimenting with “happy hour” pricing during off-peak windows, and auto-adjusting prices for low-stock or high-waste items. These AI tools are still emerging, but they promise to boost profit and reduce waste.
Respondents listed customer experience, operations and loyalty programs as areas where they see AI benefiting them the most
Question: What are the top three overall benefits your organization hopes to achieve through AI efforts?
The appetite for AI in retail media
Plenty of room exists for AI to make retail media smarter, faster and more effective. Specifically for restaurants, AI stands to improve retail media networks’ ability to deliver a more personalized customer experience with smart targeting and customized creatives. And this includes smaller and medium-sized merchants as well, who often benefit from more agility to move media dollars, test creatives or run experiments. “Ultimately, retail media gives restaurants of all sizes the ability to achieve top-line growth and manage their costs and operations more efficiently,” Pradhan said.
Platforms exist today that combine the best of AI and retail media to help brands reach consumers both on and off the platform. DoorDash, for instance, is strengthening its media network through new AI-driven ad products and the acquisition of tech company Symbiosys, aiming to help brands reach consumers both on and off its platform. Here is how innovations like these can help restaurant merchants engage customers across media.
More intelligent targeting with real-time contextual signals: Most RMNs today still rely on basic behaviors such as past purchases. AI can incorporate real-time signals like weather, time of day or location proximity and then dynamically adjust ad creative and bidding based on immediate context. For instance, AI can detect micro-moments like “late-night snack,” “rushing lunch” or “game day prep” from patterns. Imagine a consumer ordering wings sees a real-time upsell for beer from a nearby convenience store because it’s game night and raining.
Predictive path-to-purchase mapping: Many RMNs only optimize based on user signals, such as actual clicks and direct conversions from their platforms. AI, on the other hand, enables anticipatory marketing. It can analyze conversion journeys across app, web, email and ads to predict what stage the customer is in, optimize ad placements or messages to move them closer to purchase and identify drop-off points and auto-adjust bids or creatives.
Creative generation and optimization at scale: There’s room for AI to auto-generate and test thousands of ad variations, whether text, image or layout, localize creative (“$1 off Gatorade at a local convenience store on Market Street”) and personalize based on user behavior and sentiment tone. This unlocks dynamic retail media creatives without needing design bandwidth.
AI-driven merchandising and sponsored listings: AI could optimize sponsored product placements by factoring in conversion rate plus margin impact, bundling potential, such as frequently ordered together, and likelihood to drive repeat behavior. This is especially important in the grocery industry, where margin and volume must balance.
Sales forecasting and campaign pacing: Brands want predictive performance assurance—AI can deliver it. AI can enable RMNs to predict lift from a campaign before it runs, pace spend and impressions based on realtime conversion trends and alert merchants when campaigns underperform or overspend.
Closed-loop measurement and incrementality modeling: Most current RMNs only offer basic attribution—AI unlocks causal insights. There’s still room to use AI to isolate actual incremental impact versus baseline demand. AI can also help RMNs distinguish between halo effects, brand lift and product-specific lift, and feed learnings into automated campaign planning. “AI helps RMNs like DoorDash attribute orders back to various organic or ad touchpoints; measure incremental gains from each touchpoint; measure incrementality, not just clicks; and inform advertisers what’s actually driving conversion in a soft economy,” Pradhan said.
AI-powered sponsored experience design: In the future, AI could help turn retail media from targeted ads to high-intent customers into value-added shopping experiences. This could look like sponsored recipes or shopping journeys, personalized storefronts by brand, category or shopper goal and fully dynamic “promotional bundles” that adjust in real-time to stock, weather and user intent.
How restaurants use AI today
Deloitte’s research unpacks the most established, day-today restaurant use cases leveraging AI:
63% of survey respondents report using AI for customer experience, with 26% more saying they are engaged in pilots or other limited implementations. This is in part due to the ability to integrate AI into drive-through, in-app or in-kiosk platforms.
55% are using AI in inventory management, with another 25% testing out this capability. This includes forecasting and predictive analytics to both minimize waste and optimize disposal processes.
70% use AI for customer loyalty and to enhance employee experience.
Fewer than 50% of respondents use AI in food preparation and new product development daily. However, these were areas with reported high planning and development potential. Capabilities include real-time detection of food defects or contamination, as well as machine learning-enabled computer vision and flavor compound analysis.
Five practical tips for restaurant merchants
If you’re ready to explore how integrating AI into your restaurant’s marketing can help you reach consumers wherever they are, here are a few tips to get started.
Start with AI copywriting tools for ads and emails: You can use AI tools to write Instagram captions, email subject lines or SMS copy, personalize promos by time of day or customer type and test multiple headlines or offers quickly. Review past campaign results and then ask, “Write three new email subject lines to improve open rates for lunch promos.” DoorDash also provides an item description generator, which instantly creates enticing menu descriptions with one click using AI.
Use smart ad tools: DoorDash has developed “Smart Campaigns,” built to take the pressure off merchants and put the performance where it counts. “We’ve heard that testing different audiences can feel like throwing money at a wall, and it’s hard to know what’s actually driving growth,” Pradhan explained. “On top of that, insights into who to target and with what have been limited.” Smart Campaigns are designed to help automatically target the right customer at the right moment, so merchants aren’t wasting spend on people who won’t convert. It can help focus the budget on incremental orders that drive real growth, not just discounted volume. “It’s easier to set up, we help monitor performance and you get clear, simple reporting so you can verify that it’s working,” Pradhan said. “This is marketing that’s finally working for you, not the other way around.”
Use AI for menu and promo insights: Tools like Toast, Square, Clover POS or DoorDash menu performance reports can be paired with AI tools to spot the best-selling combos, predict which items to promote and recommend what to drop or rename.
Try AI photo editing for social or menus: Great for lean teams doing their own marketing, tools like Canva’s AI tools or Adobe Firefly can enhance food photos, remove clutter and generate backgrounds or promos. DoorDash’s AI-powered Camera enables restaurants to capture professional-quality food photos by optimizing lighting and backgrounds, without altering the appearance of the food itself. Its Instant Photo Approvals allow menu photos to be automatically approved with AI-driven moderation for instant upload.
Think small—automate one routine task: Brands often go wrong with AI because they try to apply it to everything. Instead, start with one repetitive thing you can automate. Is it writing weekly promos? Generating local keywords for ads? Creating Google Business post copy? “Block 30 minutes a week to experiment—you don’t need to overhaul everything at once,” Pradhan said.
Turning AI potential into real-world performance
AI is a productivity unlock for real marketers, not a threat to creativity. It doesn’t replace people—it amplifies what they already do well. The best automation supports strategy, not shortcuts. For small and mid-sized restaurants, AI enables them to punch above their weight, achieving better ROI on ads and promotions, more efficient menu and pricing strategies and deeper loyalty and retention. It’s becoming table stakes to stay competitive as platforms roll out these tools. Start light, iterate fast and let the tech do the heavy lifting.
This post was originally created as an Ad Age white paper, sponsored by DoorDash Ads.
