That much is made clear by the investments being made in research and development in AI by specialist start-ups and hi-tech giants alike.

“Given the costs involved, there are solutions that will primarily involve the big chains,” says Samuele Fraternali, senior researcher at the eCommerce B2c Observatory at Politecnico di Milano.
The big fast-food chains have already started. Caliburger, a hamburger restaurant in Pasadena uses Flippy, a robot with a mechanical arm (connected to the cloud) that prepares, fries and of course flips the mincemeat patties and uses heat sensors to ensure they are cooked to perfection.

McDonald’s has famously invested significant financial resources in artificial intelligence to manage its menus, take orders or carry out certain tasks in the kitchen. Now, according to those in charge at the fast-food giant, as advances continue to be made in AI in the restaurants, humans will be given different tasks that machines cannot carry out.
KFC has even gone so far as to introduce a “smile-to-pay” facial recognition system at its locations, where you not only pay when you smile, but are also given suggestions based on your age, gender and mood.
IBM, meanwhile, has launched Chef Watson, an application that recommends certain food combinations by analysing the chemical composition and nutritional values of hundreds of ingredients and a database of 10,000 recipes. It can create new dishes or “improve” those already on the menu.

And Italy is not standing idly by. iPratico, a Lecco-based company that was among the first to invest in AI, has come to prominence in the last few months in particular, because of its support for the professional hospitality sector through the use of hi-tech systems.
“While it may be true that creativity is something that belongs entirely to us humans, it is equally true to say that in order to keep pace with increasingly competitive and ever-changing market demands, it is necessary to find solutions that are faster and increasingly intuitive, in catering as in retail,” says Domenico Palmisani, iPratico’s CEO. “And that’s why AI (and related technologies) are now an essential tool for providing all the information an entrepreneur needs to find the best solutions for this unique moment in economic history. With this is mind, we at iPratico decided to develop an app for deliveries, takeaways and digital menus that use a QR Code. It’s a way of supporting our foodservice clients (and others) at a delicate time like this.”
The AI sector is a fast-growing one, but it is also important for companies to learn how to use it for marketing.

“Catering concerns have always organised their operations on a department-by-department basis, with each department tasked to do certain things,” explains Gian Musolino, country manager for Italy at Selligent Marketing Cloud. “Until a few years ago, marketing was always out there on the margins, constructing huge advertising campaigns in the hope of attracting interest, but they were really just shooting in the dark. Now, AI can help marketing play a more valuable role, but only if it is able to methodically collect and organise a set of information that is of use to its consumers on a one-to-one basis, personalising the message in each individual case. To put it in a nutshell, AI brings added value, but firms working in the sector need to be good at collecting information, otherwise no systems or algorithms will be of any use.”