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Industries · Restaurants

How restaurants get found and understood by AI

When diners ask ChatGPT or Gemini about your restaurant, its ability to answer and recommend you depends on how much it knows about your business.

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9:41
We're planning a birthday dinner at Marlow Café for 8 this Friday. Gluten-free options, a private area, and parking?

Here's what I found for Marlow Café in Inglewood: ai.marlowcafe.com

  • 🥗Gluten-free: a dedicated GF menu with a separate fryer, safe for celiac guests.
  • 🎉Private dining: a back room seats up to 12, with no room fee for parties of 8+.
  • 🅿️Parking: a free lot behind the building plus street parking on 9th Ave SE.
  • 🕙This Friday: open until 11 PM and the kitchen closes at 10, so a table of 8 is no problem.

Want their full gluten-free menu or this week's hours?

Sources
Ask anything

Supporting every major AI assistant

ChatGPT
Claude
Gemini
Perplexity
Copilot
Grok
The gap

AI can only recommend what it understands

Before a diner books, they ask AI a dozen specific questions about your restaurant. When the answers are locked away or out of date, AI can't help them choose you. It recommends whoever it does understand. See how AI decides which businesses to recommend.

Offerings AI can't access

Your menus, catering, private dining, and events often live in images, PDFs, on your desktop, or third-party tools which AI can't easily access.
Dinner & drinks menuPDF
Catering packagesImage
Private diningWeb form
Event rentalsOn your desktop

Availability AI can't reach

Your real-time availability sits inside booking widgets or third-party tools that AI can't open. So it can't tell a potential customer whether you can seat them.
OpenTableOpenTableAvailability hidden
ResyResyAvailability hidden
ToastToastAvailability hidden
Your AI knowledge baseOpenTable AI ready

The long tail of questions customers ask

Potential customers ask AI far more than "are you open." Every question is a chance to be chosen, or skipped. You need to answer as much as you can.
gluten-free mains?private room for 20?is there parking?kids menu?open the holiday Monday?corkage fee?wheelchair accessible?do you cater?vegan options?walk-ins tonight?patio heaters?private events?happy hour times?+ hundreds more
Keep AI current

Keeping AI up to date takes minutes

Wherever the answers live, Courtyard makes it simple to add and update knowledge, so AI always has what it needs to answer.

price-list-2026.pdf
412 KB
Added

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Drop in PDFs, price lists, or docs and we'll extract the knowledge for you.

@ Popular questions
We'll pull from public sources, you review first.

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Courtyard runs deep research across the web to draft knowledge for your review.

M
Fall hours update
team@marlow.co
forward to marlow@inbox.getcourtyard.ai

Email forwarding

Forward or CC your knowledge inbox, then approve and refine right from your email.

Analytics

See what AI understands about your restaurant

Courtyard tracks every AI assistant reading your knowledge base, the questions they're answering, and where the gaps are, so you know it understands your business accurately.

AI TrafficLast 7 days
Total AI visits
652 ↑ 124
vs. previous 7 days
Categories reached
7 / 9
Knowledge categories AI has read
AI assistant visits over time
Jun 2224262829
ChatGPT 268 Claude 156 Gemini 132 Perplexity 96
1 in 2
consumers now ask AI for local business recommendations, and they choose the business AI understands best.
AI Visibility Index

See what AI actually says, market by market

Every week we put 24 real customer questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode (288 answers per market) and publish which local businesses each assistant names, and how accurately it describes them, across 50 US and Canadian markets, including restaurants in 10 metros.

Explore the AI Visibility Index
4assistants, measured weekly
50US & Canadian markets
20,000+businesses evaluated
FAQ

Questions restaurants ask

How does AI decide which restaurant to recommend?
It recommends the ones it understands. When an assistant can accurately answer a diner's questions about your menu, dietary options, hours, availability, and policies, it recommends you with confidence. When it can't, it moves on to a restaurant it understands better.
What do customers actually ask AI about a restaurant?
Far more than you'd expect: dietary options, private dining, parking, corkage, holiday hours, whether you cater, if you take walk-ins, and hundreds of variations. Each unanswered question is a booking that quietly goes somewhere else.
Why does AI get details about my restaurant wrong?
Because the real answers are scattered across image menus, PDFs, and booking tools it can't read, or they're simply out of date. AI fills the gaps with guesses, or leaves you out entirely.
Do I need a new website for this?
No. Courtyard builds a live AI knowledge base for your existing restaurant so assistants understand it accurately and stay current. No new website or developer required.

Become the restaurant AI understands best

Set up your live AI knowledge base in minutes. No new website. Starting at $20/month.

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Courtyard
Be the small business AI understands the best.

Courtyard · AI Visibility Index

How well does AI understand restaurants?

We measured ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode across the questions customers ask. AI has the surface, but on price it scores just 0.06 out of 1.

Read the Restaurants edition