How to Evaluate an AI Vendor Pitching Your Restaurant

You will get pitched by restaurant AI vendors whether you go looking for them or not, at trade shows, through cold emails, through a rep who knows another owner in your area. Most pitches use similar language: personalization, insights, revenue lift. Getting past the language to what's actually being sold takes a specific approach, not just good instincts in the room.

Separate the demo from the reality

A demo is built to look good. It's usually run on clean sample data, in ideal conditions, by someone who knows exactly which buttons to click. Ask instead to see it on messy, real-world conditions: a menu with inconsistent formatting, a guest asking an oddly phrased question, a busy Saturday scenario. How a product handles imperfect conditions tells you far more than how it handles a rehearsed walkthrough.

Ask about failure, not just success

• What happens when the AI can't confidently answer a guest's question
• What happens if your internet or their servers go down mid-service
• How wrong information gets corrected, and how fast
• Who's responsible if a guest gets bad allergen information, contractually and practically
• What data of yours they keep, and what happens to it if you cancel

Check the incentive structure

Look closely at how the vendor makes money. A flat fee regardless of your results gives them less reason to care whether the product actually performs for you after the sale. A pricing model with a performance component tied to your own measured results aligns their incentive with yours, they only do well if you do. Ask specifically how that performance piece is measured, and insist on a clear, specific answer rather than a general assurance.

Bring a second person to the pitch if you can

It's remarkably easy to get swept up by a confident presenter in a one-on-one pitch, especially when you're busy and want a fast decision. Bringing a manager or a trusted staff member to sit in on the conversation gives you a second set of ears, and a second person to compare notes with afterward about what actually got answered clearly and what got glossed over. It also signals to the vendor that you're taking the decision seriously enough to bring in more scrutiny, which tends to sharpen the quality of the answers you get.

Listen for how they talk about competitors

Pay attention to how a vendor responds when you mention you're also looking at someone else. A vendor confident in their own product will usually name the actual tradeoff, something like, they're better for X, we're built more for Y, plainly and without much defensiveness. A vendor who gets evasive, dismissive, or starts making vague claims about a competitor's reliability without specifics is often compensating for a weaker position than the pitch deck suggested. This is a small tell, but it's a reliable one.

Watch what happens when you push back

A useful, if slightly uncomfortable, test is to politely disagree with something mid-pitch and see how the presenter reacts. Do they engage with the specific objection, or do they pivot back to a rehearsed talking point regardless of what you actually said. Sales training can produce a lot of confident-sounding answers, but it can't fully hide whether someone is actually listening to your restaurant's specific situation or running through a script that would sound identical to any owner in the room.

The contract details that outlast the pitch

• What the actual notice period is if you want to cancel
• Whether the price can change unilaterally after you've signed
• Who owns the guest preference data your restaurant generates over time
• Whether there's a minimum commitment period, and what it actually is
• What support looks like specifically, not just an assurance that they're there if you need them

Talk to an actual customer

Every vendor has case studies on their website. Fewer will connect you directly with a current customer willing to talk candidly. Push for the second one. A five-minute call with an owner using the product day to day will tell you more than an hour with a sales team.

TasteGraph's pricing is a flat subscription plus a performance component charged only on measured incremental order value against your own restaurant's control period, and you can start building your menu for free before deciding whether it's worth paying for at all.