Artificial intelligence adoption in restaurants has faced notable setbacks, but industry experts argue the technology’s potential remains intact. Starbucks abandoned its AI inventory counting system after less than nine months in May. McDonald’s eased up on voice AI testing in 2024, though it may test similar tech under its new strategic plan. Pizza Hut’s AI order management system allegedly cost one franchisee $100 million in sales. At the National Restaurant Association show earlier this year, restaurant tech executives cautioned against expecting AI to solve too many problems. Oliver Ostertag, president of growth and AI at Par Technology, said the technology’s continued maturation and its ability to integrate a wide range of restaurant data matter more than finding individual tasks for which the tech is especially suited. “Use case is important, but it’s really a question of whether or not the technology is enterprise-grade, whether it’s proven and how deep the data is,” Ostertag said. He noted that AI tooling sitting on deep data—covering inventory, labor, and how that ties back to in-store sales and operations—is actually very performant. Technologies that are more platform-based, covering point of sale, payments, back-office functionality, labor, inventory, engagement products, loyalty products, and online ordering, can understand the full operations of a restaurant.