What AI actually does for a venue right now
An agency worth talking to will use AI for the parts of the job where speed helps and the stakes are low: a first pass at layout options, several ways of arranging a menu before anyone commits to print, a quick visual of what a brand mark might look like across a sign, a menu and a website header. None of that is new in kind. It is the same exploratory sketching a designer has always done, done faster, so you see more directions before you pick one.
The more useful development for a venue is an AI concierge, a tool trained on your own menu, opening hours and policies that can answer a guest's question directly. Built properly, it draws only from what you actually serve and what you actually charge, and it says so when it does not know. Ask any candidate whether the concierge they are proposing is trained on your content or on a generic hospitality dataset, because those are two different products.
What still needs a person
Anything an AI tool drafts for allergens has to be checked by someone before it reaches a guest. The Food Information Regulations 2014, enforced by local authority environmental health, require you to be able to state which of the fourteen listed allergens are in every dish you serve, and a generated first draft is a starting point, not a record you can stand behind untested. Verify the current requirements with your local authority or the Food Standards Agency before anything goes on a menu.
Photography is the other place where the shortcut shows. A generated image can suggest a mood, but it cannot show a guest your actual dining room, your actual staff, or the dish your kitchen actually plates, and a guest who books from a picture of a room that does not exist will notice on arrival. Judgement on which direction genuinely fits your venue is still a person's job, and so is the final proofing of anything that carries your name.
Questions to ask any candidate
- Who owns the website and the source files once the job is finished, and can I have them in a form I could hand to someone else?
- Can I edit my own menu and opening hours without calling you every time something changes?
- Where in your process does a person check what a tool has generated, and who is that person?
- Can I see a site or menu you have built that is live now?
- Will my menu be a page guests can read on a phone and search, with the allergen information on it?
- What does the job include, and is anything charged once it is finished?
A candidate who answers these is telling you something useful about how they work before you have signed anything.
What a useful answer covers
The most useful answers are specific. A menu set up as a page on your website can be searched, reads well on a phone held at arm's length and can carry the allergen information your guests need; Menus That Sell and Menus That Comply sets out what a menu page should do. Being able to change an opening hour or a dish name yourself matters most over time, so ask to see the editing screen before you sign. And a price that sets out what the job includes, and anything charged once it is finished, lets you plan for the months after launch as well as the launch itself.
Comparing candidates on the same terms
Scoring five agencies against a fixed set of criteria makes the differences visible. The criteria worth scoring are the ones above: file and content ownership, who checks AI output and how, a live example you can look at unprompted, what is charged once the job is finished, and whether allergen and compliance content is handled by a named process and who does it. A live site you can look at tells you more than any description of one.