AI for Pubs: What Is New, What Works and Where to Start

This guide is for every licensee, whether you have never opened ChatGPT or already use it every week. It starts with a conversation you can have today, moves through the jobs worth handing over and the settings that keep you safe, and ends with what it looks like when a pub goes all in: its information joined up, and AI helping to run and grow the business.

Along the way it covers what has changed for pubs, twelve prompts you can copy, what the slash, at and hash signs really do, and the house rules that keep hospitality human. It does not recommend paid software, quote prices or forecast what AI will do next.

Start with a job, not a tool. Have a conversation, solve one small problem, make the fix repeatable, then join up the information across the business so you can make better decisions. Take each step when the last one is working.

AI works best as a well-managed business partner. The vision, the standards and the decisions stay yours. AI brings a fresh perspective, helps develop an idea once you have set the direction, and does a great deal of the work. The last sections show how we use it at The Anchor, our own venue, and what going all in looks like.

The details about each tool in this guide were checked on 14 October 2026. AI products change often, so a menu or a setting may have moved by the time you read this.

What has changed

Guests now use AI to choose where to go. 19% of British consumers already use AI tools, such as ChatGPT or search engine summaries, to plan a visit to a pub, bar or restaurant, and half are considering it. The figure comes from the GO Technology report by Zonal and NIQ, published in October 2026, a survey of more than 5,000 British consumers. Of those who do, 45% use it to look for reviews and ratings, 43% to check typical prices, 38% to view menus and 35% to look up opening times.

Search now links straight to a booking. Since April 2026, Google's AI Mode in the UK has helped people find somewhere to eat and linked them straight to booking partners, including TheFork, SevenRooms, ResDiary, Mozrest, Foodhub, Dojo, DesignMyNight and OpenTable.

Businesses are catching up. Three in ten UK businesses (30%) reported using at least one AI technology in September 2026, up from 9% in September 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics. In accommodation and food services the figure was about one in five in June 2026, and the Office for National Statistics found that businesses in accommodation and food services most commonly use free AI software.

Not every guest likes it. In August 2026 the BBC reported a backlash against AI-made posters and menus in bars and restaurants in Northern Ireland: one Belfast bar declared itself an AI-free zone, and a restaurant owner found "Say no to AI" stickers on his flyers. The house rules below cover what that means for your own pictures.

The tools can now take a longer job. The paid versions of the main assistants can now be given a job with several steps and left to work through it. OpenAI calls its version ChatGPT Work and launched it for paid plans in July 2026, according to its release notes. That is the maker's description, not a test of ours.

Features come and go. OpenAI has announced that custom GPTs will be retired on 11 December 2026. Build your habits around the basics, which last, rather than around the newest button.

What guests read about you matters more than which tool you pick, so that is where to begin.

Start with a conversation

You do not need to learn prompts to begin. Open the ChatGPT app, tap the Voice icon and talk to it about your pub as you would to someone you trust: a quiet Tuesday, a dish that will not sell, a function room that sits empty too often. The Voice icon starts a spoken conversation, so it talks back. The microphone icon only dictates what you say as text. Both are on all plans, with limits on free accounts.

Ask questions, push back on its answers and ask it for options you had not thought of. Leave out names and personal details (the house rules below explain why). When something useful comes out of the conversation, that is your first job to hand over.

See your pub the way AI does

The quickest useful thing you can do with AI is ask it about yourself. Open the assistant you already use, make sure it can search the web (in ChatGPT, type / and choose Search), and ask the questions a guest would ask. Replace the words in capitals with your own.

Where would you recommend for Sunday lunch near [TOWN]? Give me three places and say why.

What are the opening hours and food service times at [PUB NAME] in [TOWN]? Tell me where you found them.

I am booking a birthday meal for twelve near [TOWN]. Which pubs take group bookings?

Read the answers as a guest would. Are you in them? Are the hours right? Does it know that you serve food on a Sunday, take group bookings or have a function room? Write down anything that is wrong or missing.

Then fix the source, not the answer. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI answers, and no special technical work. Its own checklist includes having important content available as text and keeping Business Profile information up to date. For a pub, that means:

• your menu, opening hours and food service times written as text on your own website, not only in a photograph or a PDF (does your pub need a website?);
• your Google Business Profile checked against your real hours and up to date;
• the same details wherever else you are listed, so nothing contradicts them.

Ask the same three questions again a month later and see what has changed.

Set it up once

Use the assistant you already have. If the team already uses ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude, set that one up properly rather than adding another. The steps below are for ChatGPT; the house rules section gives the matching privacy switch for the others.

First, switch off training. In ChatGPT, go to Settings, then Data controls, then switch off "Improve the model for everyone". That stops your chats being used to train the model. Do it before you type anything about the business.

Then tell it who you are, once. ChatGPT keeps standing instructions, called custom instructions, that apply to every chat. On the web they are under Settings, then Personalization. On a phone they are under Settings, then Customize ChatGPT. Free accounts get 1,500 characters, which is plenty. Copy this, replace the words in capitals and cut anything that does not apply:

I run [PUB NAME], a [village local / town-centre pub / food-led pub] in [TOWN]. We serve [FOOD STYLE] and open [DAYS AND HOURS]. Our regulars are [WHO THEY ARE]. This year we want more [MIDWEEK DINERS / PRIVATE HIRE / SUNDAY BOOKINGS].

Write in British English, in a warm, plain voice, the way a good landlord talks. Short sentences. No hashtags unless I ask for them.

Never invent prices, dates, opening times, awards or allergen information. If you need one, ask me.

If I type /short, answer in three sentences or fewer.

The last line is how you make a shortcut word of your own: the assistant knows nothing about /short until your instructions tell it what the word means.

Keep each job in one place. "New project" in the sidebar keeps the chats, files and instructions for one job together. Free accounts can add five files to a project. One project for events, with your events list in it, means you never paste the same details twice. A second project for supplier paperwork keeps those chats out of the way.

Use a temporary chat for anything you would rather not keep. Selecting Temporary when you start a new chat keeps that conversation out of your history, and it is not used for training.

Twelve jobs worth handing over

Each prompt below is ready to copy. Replace the words in square brackets, and take out names and contact details before you paste anything in. For the jobs that start with a photograph, tap the + icon and choose "Add photos & files"; free accounts are limited to three file uploads a day. You can also tap the microphone icon to dictate instead of typing, or the Voice icon to talk it through. Both are on all plans, with limits on free accounts.

The last of the twelve is a scheduled task. ChatGPT can run a task on a schedule, managed under "Scheduled" in the sidebar. Free accounts can have three active tasks, each running at most once a day.

Every prompt ends with a check, because these tools can state wrong things as fact. For more on posts, see the social media guide.

One event, three posts

Here are the details of an event at my pub, between the ### marks. Write three versions: a Facebook post of under 80 words, an Instagram caption of under 50 words, and a two-line update for my Google Business Profile. Use only the facts I have given.

### [EVENT, DATE, TIME, PRICE, HOW TO BOOK] ###

Check before you use it: the date, the time and the price.

A reply to a review

Between the triple quotation marks is a review a customer left for my pub. Draft a reply of under 90 words. Thank them, answer the point they raised, and do not offer anything I have not mentioned.

""" [PASTE THE REVIEW, WITHOUT THE REVIEWER'S NAME] """

Check before you use it: that every fact in the reply is true. Send it as yourself.

A reply to a party enquiry

Draft a reply to an enquiry about hiring our function room. What they asked is between the ### marks. Ask for the date, the numbers, the timings and the budget if any are missing. Ask whether anyone in the party has a food allergy, intolerance or coeliac disease. Do not quote a price.

### [WHAT THEY ASKED, WITHOUT THEIR NAME OR CONTACT DETAILS] ###

Check before you use it: that it promises nothing you cannot deliver.

The specials board, typed up

This is a photograph of today's specials board. Type it up as a list, then write a post of under 60 words about the two dishes you would lead with. Do not describe any dish as free from an allergen.

Check before you use it: dish names and prices against the board.

Order against delivery

These two photographs are my order and the delivery note. List anything that is missing, short or substituted.

Check before you use it: the list against the goods in front of you, and any substitution against your allergen chart.

Two price lists, one table

These are price lists from two suppliers. Build a table of the items that appear on both, with each price and the difference. List separately anything you could not match.

Check before you use it: pack sizes and units, then the arithmetic.

Menu descriptions

Rewrite these dish descriptions so that each is under 20 words and says what the guest will taste. Keep every ingredient I have listed and add none. Do not mention allergens or make any dietary claim.

### [DISH NAMES AND INGREDIENTS] ###

Check before you use it: that each description matches the dish you serve.

A run sheet for an event

Write a run sheet for a [QUIZ NIGHT / LIVE MUSIC NIGHT / PRIVATE PARTY] at my pub, from two hours before doors to close. Give each step a time, the job to do and the role responsible. Use roles, not names.

Check before you use it: timings, and your licence conditions.

Tonight's briefing

Turn these notes into a team briefing of under 120 words that I can read out before service. Use roles, not names.

### [NUMBER OF BOOKINGS AND TIMES, SPECIALS, WHAT IS OFF, WHAT TO RECOMMEND] ###

Check before you use it: that nothing in it names a guest.

A letter in plain English

Explain this letter in plain English. List what it asks me to do and by when, and the questions I should put to my accountant, my solicitor or my business development manager. Do not advise me on what to do.

Check before you use it: cover names and account numbers before you photograph it. It explains, it does not advise.

The week's posts, every Monday

Every Monday at 8am, using the events list in this project, draft this week's posts: one for today, one for Thursday and one for Saturday morning. Under 70 words each. Tell me which facts you were unsure of.

Check before you use it: everything. A scheduled draft is still a draft.

Thinking it through out loud

I am going to talk through a problem at my pub. Ask me one question at a time until you understand it, then give me three options and the drawback of each.

Check before you use it: the decision is yours.

The shortcuts worth knowing

Much of what is shared online about AI shortcuts is wrong. Here is what the three signs really do.

The slash. When you are signed in to ChatGPT, typing / in the message box opens a menu of tools. Choosing Search makes ChatGPT look things up on the live web. Typing /Deepresearch starts a longer piece of research with sources.

The at sign. In Gemini, typing @ and choosing an app, such as Google Calendar, tells it which of your connected apps to use. In ChatGPT, @ picks an app or plugin you have added.

The hash. The # sign is not a command in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or Claude. It marks a heading, and OpenAI's guidance says headings help mark the separate sections of a long request.

Where three hash signs earn their place is in fencing off text. OpenAI's own guidance is to put the instruction first and to separate it from pasted text with ### or with triple quotation marks. That way the assistant cannot mistake your notes for your instructions:

Rewrite the notes between the ### marks as a Facebook post of under 80 words. Keep every fact and add none.

### [PASTE YOUR NOTES HERE] ###

Everything worth knowing, in one table:

The "secret codes". The slash "codes" passed around online, such as /ELI5 or /TLDR, are not features of any assistant. They work only as ordinary words the assistant reads, so results vary. If you want a shortcut word of your own, define it in your custom instructions, as the /short line in the set-up section does.

House rules: what never goes into AI

Agree these before anyone uses AI for the pub. Each one comes with its reason.

1. Guests' details, staff records and allergy information stay out of free and personal AI accounts. Data protection law applies in full to AI tools: the Information Commissioner's Office says there is no AI exemption. A guest's allergy is information about their health, which data protection law protects more strictly. If you want help with a reply, take the name and details out first. The guide to food allergies and data protection covers the rest.
2. Control the facts at source, and check what matters. The National Cyber Security Centre warns that these tools can get things wrong and present incorrect statements as facts. So a named person owns every date, price, opening time and claim, and the simplest way to make that work is one approved source. At The Anchor each event starts with a brief that we write and approve, and the posts, emails, event page and booking details all come from it. When something changes, we change the brief. Routine messages built from an approved brief can then go out with suitable checks, while anything sensitive goes to a person. Allergen and safety information is always checked by a person.
3. AI never decides what is in a dish. The food business is legally responsible for the accuracy of its allergen information, however that information is produced (Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Article 8). AI can lay out a table you have already checked, and nothing more.
4. AI never writes a review, but it can help you reply to one. Since 6 April 2025 it has been unlawful to write, or to commission, a fake review: one that claims to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience. The law says writing includes "creating by any means", so a review produced by AI is covered, as the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance sets out. Replying to a genuine review is a different thing, and there is a natural progression. Start by having AI draft your reply, then check it and send it as yourself. Once you trust the drafts, thanking guests for straightforward five-star reviews can follow a process you have approved; check the review platform's own rules before you automate anything. Complaints, criticism and any review where someone may feel hurt or unheard go to a person, because that is where hospitality matters most. See how to respond to bad reviews.
5. Pictures show what a guest will actually get. The advertising regulator says there is no general legal requirement in the UK to say that an advert used AI, and that its existing rules apply however an advert was made. A picture of food or of your pub must not mislead. Given the backlash the BBC reported, photographs of your own food and your own rooms avoid the question altogether.
6. People decide about people. Do not use an AI tool to choose who to hire, discipline or dismiss. For a question about a member of the team, BII members have an HR and Employment Law helpline; the number is on the BII's helplines page.
7. AI is a business partner, well managed. Let it bring an outside view, challenge your assumptions, analyse your figures and do substantial work. You set the direction, the standards and who decides what. It never acts alone on allergens, personal data, employment or a sensitive conversation with a guest.

Switch off training on whichever assistant you use:

Claude also has incognito chats, on every plan, which are not kept in your history.

Write your rules on one page and go through them with the team. Here is a starting point to copy and adapt:

How we use AI at [PUB NAME]

1. We use [NAME OF ASSISTANT] on the pub's account, not on personal accounts.
2. Nothing about a guest or a member of the team goes into it: no names, contact details, booking records, payroll or health information.
3. It never decides what is in a dish. Allergen information comes from the allergen chart and nowhere else.
4. It never writes a review, and nobody asks a friend or a member of the team to post one.
5. [NAMED PERSON] checks every date, price, opening time and claim before anything it wrote is used.
6. Pictures show what a guest will actually get: our food, our rooms, our people.
7. People decide about people. It is not used to choose who we hire, discipline or dismiss.
8. If something it produced goes wrong, tell [NAMED PERSON] the same day.

Ask your suppliers what is already included

The test for any tool, new or old, is not only whether it gives you hours back. Ask whether it helps you serve guests better, create revenue, make sounder decisions or move faster. If it does more than it costs, it is worth paying for.

Before you pay for a new AI tool, talk to the suppliers you already pay: your till, your booking system, your rota app and your accounts package. Ask each of them three questions:

1. What AI features are included in what I already pay?
2. Is my data, or my guests' data, used to train your models?
3. Can I switch a feature off?

Ask for the answers in writing, and keep them with the contract. A feature you already pay for, switched on with care and covered by your house rules, may be all you need. If a supplier cannot say whether your guests' data trains its models, keep that data away from the feature until they can. The guide to choosing a pub EPOS system covers what else to ask about a till.

A first month

Four weeks, one step at a time:

1. Week one: a conversation, then settings and house rules. Talk to it about your pub using the Voice icon, then switch off training, write your custom instructions and agree the one-page policy with the team.
2. Week two: one job from the twelve. Pick the one that takes most of your time now, use it every day, and check every answer before it goes anywhere.
3. Week three: a weekly scheduled task. Set up the Monday posts as a scheduled task, and edit what it drafts before anything is posted.
4. Week four: see your pub the way AI does. Ask the three questions from earlier in this guide, then fix what they throw up on your website and your Business Profile. Ask them again a month later and note what has changed.

Keep the weeks in that order. The settings and the rules come first because every step after them puts the pub's information into the assistant. When a prompt works, keep it in the project, so the whole team uses the same one rather than each person writing their own.

If you want a structured course alongside this, the BII's training pages list a free video course for members called AI For Publicans.

How we use it at The Anchor

We work with AI every day at The Anchor, our own venue. It is a business partner for us, and the ideas and the personality of the pub stay ours.

Ideas, developed further. We have run tasting nights at The Anchor for years, and the ideas are ours. AI helps us turn each one into a full plan, handle messages with suppliers, design the artwork and build an app to run the night, with guests rating each drink live on their own phones. It works the same way with food. When something catches our eye, such as black garlic, AI helps us explore how we might adapt dishes we already serve, compare what suppliers offer and choose something that still feels like The Anchor. We use it to flesh out our ideas, not to decide who we are.

A website in our own voice. We built our website with AI, setting the direction ourselves so that it still sounds and feels like The Anchor.

More widely, at The Anchor, our own venue, we use AI for research, drafting, analysis and repetitive checking. We have no AI number: its contribution has not been measured separately from the wider work.

What going all in looks like

Most pubs will not start here, and nobody needs to build a system tomorrow. But it helps to see where the road leads:

1. Have a conversation. Talk an idea or a problem through.
2. Solve one small problem. Hand over one of the twelve jobs.
3. Make it repeatable. A project, a scheduled task, an approved brief for each event.
4. Join up your information. Bookings, events, marketing and takings in one place.
5. Decide better. Use AI to analyse the joined-up picture, then act on what it shows.

At The Anchor we have reached the fifth step. With AI's help we built one back-office system that brings together table and private bookings, events, marketing emails and text messages, customer records, pre-paid parking, receipts and customer invoices, mileage, Machine Games Duty submissions, short links and performance reporting.

The value is in seeing it all together. Instead of looking at takings on their own, we look at bookings, attendance, campaign results and revenue side by side, and AI helps us review trading, private hire, events and the results of our messages as one picture. That is what lets us spot what is working and move faster.

A system like this holds guests' personal data, so it needs proper data protection controls: who can see what, a lawful basis for everything it holds, and a clear decision on how long it is kept. That is a different thing entirely from pasting a guest's details into a free or personal chatbot, which the house rules rule out.

When you want to go further

Do as much of this yourself as you can. Everything in this guide is free to use, and much of it works on a free account.

When you are ready to go further, whether that means developing an idea, moving faster or joining up your systems, and you want a partner who can help, give me a call. I would love to talk through what you want to achieve. Call me on 07990 587315 or email peter@orangejelly.co.uk.

For background reading, there is an AI readiness assessment and a page on using AI intelligently.

Sources

• Nearly a fifth of consumers use AI tools to plan a visit to a pub, bar or restaurant (NIQ, October 2026)
• Agentic restaurant bookings in AI Mode in the UK (Google, 10 April 2026)
• AI features and your website (Google Search Central)
• Business insights and impact on the UK economy, 8 October 2026 (Office for National Statistics)
• Artificial intelligence in UK businesses, 2023 to 2026 (Office for National Statistics)
• The bars and restaurants turning against AI artwork (BBC News, 24 August 2026)
• ChatGPT release notes (OpenAI)
• ChatGPT custom instructions (OpenAI)
• Data controls in ChatGPT (OpenAI)
• Best practices for prompt engineering (OpenAI)
• Searching the web with ChatGPT (OpenAI)
• Scheduled tasks in ChatGPT (OpenAI)
• Use connected apps in Gemini (Google)
• Manage your Gemini Apps activity (Google)
• Model improvement privacy settings (Anthropic)
• Copilot activity history (Microsoft)
• Tackling misconceptions about generative AI (Information Commissioner's Office)
• AI and cyber security: what you need to know (National Cyber Security Centre)
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Fake reviews guidance (Competition and Markets Authority)
• Disclosure of AI in advertising (Advertising Standards Authority and CAP, 29 May 2025)
• Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Article 8 (legislation.gov.uk)

Sources checked on 14 October 2026. AI tools change often: a menu or a setting described here may have moved since.