UK pubs and restaurants are under pressure like never before, with around two shutting every day in 2025. Rising costs from National Insurance hikes, business rates and inflation, combined with ongoing labour shortages, are forcing operators to make cuts and sometimes shut their doors for good.
Behind every closure lies a familiar pattern. Staff shortages are leading to overworked teams, spiralling energy bills eroding profit, and guests noticing a dip in service quality. The hospitality industry has always been resilient, bouncing back from economic downturns and pandemics alike, but this particular storm feels different.
The challenge is systemic this time. Costs are rising faster than customer spending, and the traditional ways of managing labour, stock, and compliance simply can’t keep up.
Operators need to balance the all-important guest experience with compliance, staffing, and profitability. For years, innovation and technology in hospitality have focused on stripping away the human touch with self-service kiosks and delivery services. However, the next phase of innovation, AI, needs to be less about replacement and more about reinforcement. Hospitality businesses need to focus on helping people make smarter decisions, faster, and based on better insight.
That’s where Agentic AI comes in. Instead of replacing the people who make up the UK’s hospitality sector, it helps them. Offering a layer of support based on insights that gives operators the foresight and agility to respond to change in real time. Whether it’s predicting busy shifts, adjusting schedules based on demand, or flagging when a compliance risk is about to occur, these systems enable managers to be proactive instead of reactive.
What are AI Agents doing?
Agentic AI can look at whole business data sets and make recommendations and even take action while keeping humans in the loop. In hospitality, this means automating the back office and optimising the restaurant floor.
Agentic AI is already helping huge hospitality providers analyse sales trends, staff availability, and local events to generate an optimal rota automatically that ensures compliance with various labour laws while balancing both demand and cost efficiency. These AI agents can even flag potential issues before they happen, like missed breaks or over-scheduling, which can lead to burnout or fines.
Managers who previously had to rely on lots of fragmented data whilst balancing regulation and compliance. Instead, they can ask simple questions, in a conversation with the AI, such as “Where am I overspending on labour?” or “Which shifts are most likely to be understaffed next week?” and get actionable, insight-led responses to help their organisations on a day-to-day basis.
Over time, these systems learn. They spot patterns humans might miss like weather impacts on footfall or correlations between staffing levels and customer satisfaction. The AI can then recommend small operational changes that collectively make a big difference to the bottom line.
Keeping the Human Side of Hospitality
It is cliché, but designed effectively, technology like this brings people towards the business, rather than away. Managers can make sure that they have the right number of people helping customers and have more time themselves rather than being stuck in the office managing rotas and compliance. By easing the administrative burden, AI gives teams the freedom to do the things that make hospitality special for the customer and the employee, such as interacting with guests, training staff, and maintaining standards that set their venues apart.
A recent Harri research shows that 97% of diners would avoid a restaurant that feels fully automated. Hospitality is unique in that way because, unlike back-end automation industries, people are often the focus of what makes a business great. Guests often come for the human warmth, the conversation, and the service. And you can’t automate that.
Tech will never replace people. But AI can take on the mental load of scheduling and compliance, freeing teams to focus on what they do best: creating memorable guest experiences. A manager who isn’t buried in paperwork can actually be on the floor during peak times, supporting staff and engaging with customers. This is where the true ROI of AI comes from, not just in savings, but in better service and happier teams.
The Survival of Hospitality
It may sound extreme, but for many operators, adopting AI for efficiency is about survival. With closures continuing and costs rising, any tool that can optimise resources, prevent compliance penalties, and cut waste is now essential.
AI’s potential stretches beyond scheduling. It can support predictive ordering, energy management, and even recruitment by identifying when a location is likely to face staff turnover before it becomes a crisis. In the long term, it can help the industry shift from firefighting to futureproofing, ensuring that hospitality remains a viable and vibrant part of the UK economy.
The hospitality industry has always been about people. With the right application of AI, it can stay that way and navigate pressures on businesses, making them stronger for longer. The next generation of hospitality leaders will not just rely on experience and instinct; they’ll be supported by intelligent systems that help them make decisions every step of the way.
