Picture this: It’s a Friday night and you want some pizza. So you pick up your phone and open up… ChatGPT?
That’s what Little Caesars is hoping. The pizza chain last week launched an app within ChatGPT that allows customers to start an order by chatting with the AI bot. Once they’re ready, customers will be sent to Little Caesars’ mobile app or website to complete the order.
A couple of days earlier, Starbucks said it was testing a similar tool that can help customers choose a drink based on their mood or the weather before checking out on the Starbucks app or website. (“Over the past year, one thing has become clear,” the chain said. “Customers aren’t always starting with a menu. They’re starting with a feeling.”)
It comes as more consumers are apparently using ChatGPT to search for and plan their meals. Restaurants naturally want to be there to help—to “meet them where they are,” as the saying goes. And it gives them another potential source of sales.
“It's not just about technology for technology's sake,” said Little Caesars CMO Greg Hamilton in a statement. “It's about making life a little easier for people who love great pizza.”
But is ChatGPT really going to be a viable method for restaurant ordering? Or, in this case, helping people decide what to order?
It’s true that a lot of people use ChatGPT. Parent company OpenAI said in February that it had 900 million weekly active users. To put that into perspective, that’s about the same number of people who use Snapchat in a month, while Facebook has reported more than 2 billion active users per day.
It’s not clear how many of those 900 million people are talking to ChatGPT about restaurants. But it seems likely that the number is growing.
An in-depth study by OpenAI, published in September, found that about 24% of ChatGPT conversations have to do with “seeking information,” much like a Google search. This would presumably include information about restaurants. Just over 2% of those searches have to do with purchasable products and about 1% pertain to cooking and recipes.
What’s notable is that the number of ChatGPT conversations related to seeking information increased significantly between July 2024 to July 2025—from 14% to 24%, per the OpenAI study. Odds are that means more people are chatting about restaurants with ChatGPT.
It’s becoming a bigger source of web traffic for some restaurants too. Sterling Douglass, CEO of restaurant tech company Chowly, said the share of his clients’ website visits referred by chatbots rose to 2.5% in 2025, up from 0.3% the year before. He expects that number to jump to 10% this year.
“I believe that by the end of this year, AI will be the second most common referral for restaurant sites, only behind Google,” he said.
Still, using ChatGPT to search for “best pizza in Toledo, Ohio” or “dog-friendly restaurants near me” is a lot different than firing it up to put together a Little Caesars order. The first instance is for people who don’t know what they want, a scenario where ChatGPT can actually be quite useful. The second is for people who know they want to order from a specific brand, but don’t know exactly what, so they ask ChatGPT.
This issue is not uncommon. Little Caesars says people might want to use this tool when they’re planning a party and don’t know how much food to order. Starbucks has a big, complicated menu. But it seems that only the heaviest of ChatGPT and Little Caesars/Starbucks users are likely to take the step of downloading the brand’s app within ChatGPT and using them to generate an order. That can’t be a very large overlap.
Maybe these brands just want to get ahead of the curve. Or maybe these apps are the first iteration of a more complete ordering experience. As Starbucks said, “this is only the beginning.”
At the same time, wouldn’t it make more sense to just build these AI features into the brands’ existing apps? Shipley Do-Nuts has done this with its website: There’s a chat bar on the page where customers can ask for help determining how many donuts, kolaches and coffees to order for their group, and it goes directly into their cart. I can’t speak to how useful it is, but at least the customer’s intent and the technology seem to be more aligned.
As of now, outsourcing this step to ChatGPT feels like a half-measure, with shades of the great metaverse land rush of 2021-22. Remember when Wendy's, Chipotle and other brands opened digital outposts in the 3-D virtual realm where consumers would supposedly soon be flocking? I do, but barely.
Now, actually being able to place a restaurant order without leaving ChatGPT might be a different story. But consumers are apparently not really using ChatGPT as a shopping app today. Last month, it was reported that OpenAI is moving away from enabling in-app purchases in favor of connecting to retailers’ existing apps, like it has done with Little Caesars and Starbucks.
But some feel it’s only a matter of time before ChatGPT becomes a legitimate ordering channel. Bala Subramaniam is the founder of Bites, an app that is designed to allow for one-click checkout from restaurants within ChatGPT. He believes that there’s no question that AI chatbots will eventually become a part of people’s daily lives.
“The question is, how much commerce is going to happen? And I think it's just a question of time,” he said. “Once you grab the attention of people, then I think attention converts to intent, intent converts to commerce, and that's where usually business models get revolutionized.”
If anything, this debate underscores just how easy it already is to order from restaurants. Most large brands have their own mobile apps and online ordering systems. If you’re not sure what you’re in the mood for, there’s DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub or good old Google.
Could ChatGPT and similar apps make the process even easier? Quite possibly. But right now, I’m reminded of that famous (and probably apocryphal) Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
These early attempts from restaurant brands feel a bit like faster horses that no one asked for.
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