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It’s 12:21, and the lunch rush is in full swing. The line curves around the room. Mobile orders are stacking up. Two voids just came in, and there’s a new comp from a catering mix-up. Oh, and the chicken salad just ran out. Usually, it’d take a trip to the back office to 86 the dish. The voids might not get caught until close or until the monthly P&L.
With AI, some operators keep up with the room and update their menu right from the floor. And they don’t just ask questions. They ask it to make changes.
In the 2026 Restaurant AI Report, Toast analyzed aggregated, anonymized Q2 2026 usage data from Toast IQ, the AI assistant integrated into the Toast platform. ¹ The data shows how restaurants use AI, what they ask, and what they change. The time of day shapes the story.
More than half (53%) of all prompts happen during the lunch and dinner rushes. Operators reach for help when things are busiest. Not just when there’s time to plan.
Turning AI insights into action
Sometimes the answer leads straight to a request for a change. According to the data, roughly 12% of menu and inventory queries ended in a request for a change to the restaurant. In fact, menu work accounted for 72% of all action requests on the platform. Updating item stock, which covers marking items in or out of stock, led the way at 31% of all action requests. Catch a sold-out item at the first order and you can 86 it before the next ten tickets hit. That keeps the menu accurate while the rush is still going.
Operators also ask AI to add new menu items, the fourth most common action request at 7%. Some use it to pressure-test a new item before it launches. Romain Bernus co-owns Le Petit Four Bakery, based in Wellesley, MA. The bakery opened in 2025, and the team wanted a menu that would turn a profit. Bernus turned to AI. “When we tested a seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte, I was able to plug in the costs and daily volume, and Toast IQ showed us the margins,” Bernus said.*
The payoff goes beyond the moment. 86’ing an item right when it runs out avoids a stack of voids at close. And checking margins before a launch gives operators confidence in new items. “Toast IQ makes it easy to gauge profitability ahead of time, which gives me confidence when launching something new,” Bernus said.
Keeping a pulse on the floor
Most questions aren’t about the menu. Sales and revenue prompts accounted for 30% of all user-initiated threads on Toast IQ, while menu management made up 8%. This suggests that operators want clear answers about how they’re performing. Say that mobile orders run higher on Wednesdays than Saturdays. That tells you how to prep your staff and the kitchen.
Fast casual operators led on payment questions, directing 10% of their sales threads to payment and tender breakdowns, more than twice the fine dining rate.
Jose Mata, who manages operations at Fiesta Time Amigos Louisville, Kentucky, says sales queries come in handy during eventful weekends. “We use Toast IQ across all four locations. Our general managers use it most often for forecasting,” he said. “For example, they might ask it to predict what our sales will be on a weekend when there is an event going on in the city. From that, we can see whether we need more staff or to order more food."**
AI answers the question, lets operators ask for the fix, and gets them ready for the next peak.
The takeaway for operators
While prompts cluster in the rush, there’s still room to capitalize on morning prep and nightly closeouts. Try a nightly close-out routine with three to five targeted prompts to set up the morning. Ask for a prep list built on sales data from the previous four weeks. Look at what got 86’d today and what got tossed, then adjust tomorrow’s par levels to meet demand.
Close strong, and set up tomorrow's rush tonight.
*Results self-reported by customer. Individual results will vary.
***Results self-reported by customer. Individual results will vary. AI can make mistakes and is subject to the Toast AI Terms.
Methodology:
¹ This report draws on aggregated, anonymized Toast IQ prompt data from April 1 through June 30, 2026 (Q2 2026), covering U.S. restaurant locations only. Retail locations are excluded. The period includes all days of the week and all hours of the day. Figures are rounded to whole percentages, so they may not sum to exactly 100.
Prompts, queries, questions, and searches all refer to interactions a restaurant worker started, whether by typing a question or tapping a pre-set prompt on screen. This applies to every usage figure in the report, including the device split.
This report is an analysis of prompts: the questions and requests restaurant workers entered into Toast IQ. It does not measure whether any resulting actions were completed. Where the report describes actions, such as updating item stock, it refers to changes requested through chat, which are not confirmed as saved in the product.
Topic categories, sub-topics, and the loss prevention and menu groupings were assigned by keyword and phrase matching against prompt text, not by a built-in product taxonomy. Categories are therefore approximate, and a prompt touching more than one subject may be counted under a single category.
