5 tech trends transforming restaurants in 2025 | HoReCa

Five restaurant tech trends in 2025 are changing how restaurants operate. This piece covers AI, retail sales, delivery platforms, data for promotions and staff schedules, and kitchen automation.

AI: recommendations, forecasts, and chatbots

Artificial intelligence uses customer behavior and food preferences to suggest menu items and tailor loyalty offers. That kind of targeting used to require a dedicated marketing team.

Restaurants also use AI to forecast sales trends, predict inventory needs, and plan staffing based on historical data. Picture a manager who never sleeps and remembers every Thursday lunch rush for the past three years. AI-powered chatbots take orders and answer questions, cutting wait times in online interactions.

Restaurants are becoming retailers

Branded hot sauce, frozen meal kits, and house-made pasta are appearing on restaurant shelves. In 2025, restaurants are also opening online stores for merchandise, take-home meal kits, and pantry staples, combining dining service with retail sales.

Retail software helps track both fresh ingredients and shelf-stable products. A hypothetical steakhouse needs different systems to track the ribeyes for tonight and the bottles of steak rub sold online.

Delivery apps became retail platforms

DoorDash and Uber started delivering burgers; now they also fulfill orders from convenience stores, pharmacies, and other retailers. Restaurants partner with these platforms to sell products through retail channels and use their delivery networks for both retail goods and prepared meals.

Another option is to commission a service company to build a restaurant’s own app. Through these platforms or its own app, a restaurant can sell house-made hot sauce to people who have never set foot in the dining room.

Data for promotions and staff schedules

Every customer interaction generates data, which restaurants use to personalize promotions. Order histories help them account for customers’ habits: for example, if a customer orders vegetarian food every Tuesday, the system sends plant-based specials on Monday afternoon. These offers target repeat orders and a higher average order value.

Restaurants use demand data to schedule staff with the aim of reducing labor costs and covering peak periods: avoiding too many servers on a Monday and too few staff on a Saturday night.

Automation in the kitchen

Automation extends beyond self-service kiosks. Robotic kitchens use automated cooking stations to prepare complex dishes, control cooking temperatures for eggs, and dispense consistent portions of sauce.

Inventory systems automatically monitor stock levels and expiration dates. Those records help restaurants plan supplies and reduce food waste. For example, tracking stock can flag dwindling burger buns before the restaurant discovers it has run out on Sunday morning.

Connecting forecasts, inventory, and staff schedules

Using AI forecasts for planning requires systems to exchange data: forecasts can feed into inventory management, which connects to a retail platform; the platform can then send data back to staffing algorithms.