In our last blog post, we shared a study that found how using more descriptive dish names on your menu can lead to more than a 25 percent uptick in sales for those items.
Even better, diners in the study judged more descriptively named menu items as tastier and a better value than those with straightforward names. For instance, diners might pass over generic “Pistachio and Lamb Sliders” but gravitate toward the more creatively named “LambRush Sliders.”
Those same diners presented with creatively named dishes also had better attitudes towards the restaurant and much higher repurchase intent.
That’s all well and good, but how do you generate creative names for your dishes?
5 generative AI tools for naming the dishes and beverages on your restaurant’s menu.
Photo by Mojahid Mottakin on Unsplash
In today’s world of artificial intelligence, there are multiple tools at your disposal to help with creative, descriptive menu item naming.
Putting 5 generative AI naming tools to the test for a dish with lamb, pistachios, and arugula
Photo by Carnivore Style on Unsplash
To test their powers, we asked multiple tools to create names for a slider dish containing lamb, pistachios, and arugula for a business that describes itself as “a vibrant celebration of sea and family with the bay out the front door, this salty tavern offers a coastal Mediterranean vibe.”
Surprisingly, many of the tools we tried did not work well because they were business name generators or were specifically for writing content. The tools we tried but found no worthwhile results to report included Copy.ai, Writesonic, Namechk, Wordoid, Naming.net, Namify, and Tasklab.
The rest of this post summarizes the results from five worthwhile tools.
1. ChatGPT
ChatGPT, the granddaddy of generative AI tools, quickly produced descriptive names for our menu item:
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- Sunset Bay Lamb Delights
- Seaside Serenity Lamb Sliders
- Pistachio Paradise Lamb Sliders
- Coastal Cravings Lamb Sliders
- Arugula Adventure Lamb Bites
For the test, we used GPT-4, which is available with a paid subscription. At $20 a month, it might be worth it for your restaurant to subscribe for a month just to play around with creative naming ideas for your menu dishes.
2. Namelix.com
Because Namelix is a business name generator, it took significantly more work to scroll through the results in hopes of a creative hit.
| Names produced by Namelix | Derivative name possibilities |
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The suggestions are presented as logos, which makes them hard to read and scan. The image that follows shows a few examples from our test.
Suggestions also seem to be based more on the restaurant’s description than the ingredients, which we input as keywords.
The tool is free, though, which is a plus.
3. Convas.io
This free product name generator appears to combine syllables from the keywords you enter to create unique names. Each generated name would work before the words “lamb sliders.”
- Pistalamb
- Lammachio
- Lascio
- Schiolo
- Slidero
The drawback to unique names like these is that diners will lack reference points. For instance, if you called your recipe Grandma’s Lamb Sliders, diners might associate the dish with home cooking, old-school cooking, and grandmotherly love and warmth.
But what does Lascio mean? How about Schioli?
For a chuckle, we asked Bing Image Creator to generate a picture of a restaurant dish named Schioli. Here’s the result:
Bing Image Creator’s rendition of the non-existent restaurant dish “Schioli”
Use the names provided by Convas with caution.
4. Jasper.ai
Besides ChatGPT, Jasper.ai is one of the most popular generative AI tools on the market. We first input both the restaurant description and the dish ingredients but found that many of the results required post-processing derivative work on our part.
The best results came from inputting ingredients only:
- Lamb Pista Sliders
- Lambastichio Sliders
- Lambs Up! Sliders
- Lamb-o-licious Sliders
- LambRageous
At $49 a month or $468 a year, Jasper.ai is one of the pricier tools on the market, especially if you’re using it just for menu dish naming purposes. Creators and marketers use the tool mostly for writing marketing content.
5. The Story Shack
This generative AI naming tool is well-hidden in the search results and allows just three free uses at a time. But inputting the ingredients returned interesting, unique results, all of which might work alongside the word “sliders.”
- Lamb Verde
- Pistachula Lamb
- Arugulamb
- Pistalamb Green
- Lambruco
According to the site, you can continue to use the tool more than three times by making a small donation.
All set with creative names for your babies?
Photo by Tae In Kim on Unsplash
Next, use our free Food and Drink AI Description Generator to quickly write A+ descriptions for your appetizers, main dishes, desserts, and beer and wine.
Have fun!
