Ask an AI assistant where to eat tonight in Utrecht and three to five names come back, usually with a line about why. You do not get ten results and there is no second page to scroll on to. If your venue is missing from that answer, that guest did not see that you exist.

That works differently from the search results you are used to, and it gives a different answer for every location. What comes back in your city is something you only know once you ask it yourself.

Try it yourself: two questions, two minutes

Open ChatGPT and ask the question the way a guest would ask it, without your own business name in it, because with your name in there you are asking something else:

1. “Where can you eat good [your cuisine] in [your city]?”

2. “Which [your type of venue] in [your city] delivers or does takeaway?”

Then check whether your venue appears in the answer and whether anything in it is wrong, such as old opening hours or a dish you no longer make. Note down which venues do appear that you would name as your competition.

If you have several locations, do it per city. Every location has its own listings, its own reviews and its own neighbours, so it also gets its own answer. One venue can come out well while the other two go unmentioned.

Put the answer in a document with the date next to it, per location. That costs you five minutes once and it is the only way to see a month from now whether anything has changed, because an AI answer does not save itself and two people asking the same question do not always get the same thing to read.

There is no second page

With a search, the guest picks from a list. When the guest asks an AI assistant, that choice has already been made before the guest sees anything, and the venues that are missing from the answer never come into view.

In a list of search results a guest can still run into you further down. With three to five names there is no further down.

The second question makes the list shorter still. A guest who types “which of those three delivers right now?” or “which one does takeaway?” sees names drop away with every narrowing. For a venue with takeaway or delivery revenue that is the more important of the two questions, because that is where a recommendation turns into an order.

45% asked an AI tool for a local recommendation last year, against 6% the year before

BrightLocal measures this every year. In the latest edition, 45% of the consumers surveyed say they asked an AI tool for a recommendation for a local business in the past year, against 6% a year earlier. Among 30 to 44-year-olds that figure is 64%.

Local Falcon analysed 189,905 search results and found that 83% of restaurants cannot be found in ChatGPT, against 14% in the regular Google result.

Two months later Uberall landed on exactly the same percentage in a study of multi-location chains: 83% of those locations never turn up in an AI answer, while 86% do appear somewhere on Google (Uberall, GEO Playbook for Multi-Location QSRs, May 2026). The two measurements look at a different set of venues and at a different question, and they come out at the same point: being on Google and appearing in an AI answer are two separate things.

What comes out of an answer like that in your city is something you can check for yourself tonight.

But my guests are not on ChatGPT

Maybe not. Your guest does not have to open that app to see an AI answer, though, because those answers now sit above the regular Google search results in Dutch as well. It is mainly about the guest you do not know yet, the one looking for somewhere to eat in your city tonight.

If your venue sits twenty metres off the main street, that short list weighs heavier for you than for the place on the corner of the square, which also has the people walking past. The same goes for your takeaway and your delivery: nobody walks past those by accident.

What does SOUS Spotlight do for your online visibility?

SOUS Spotlight sends your venue details out to 45-plus platforms and search engines, per location, and keeps them consistent there: name, address, opening hours, menu, photos. Google, Maps, ChatGPT and Claude are among them. There is also an AI dashboard and management portal in it, with the comparison against venues in your neighbourhood, 20 content suggestions a week and a report every two weeks. Reviews are answered automatically in your own tone, and you set per star rating what goes out automatically and what you want to handle yourself.

The price is EUR 90 per month per location on annual billing, or EUR 129 per month on monthly billing.

How often your venue appears on the map and how often someone opens your menu or asks for directions from there is something you will be able to count. Which guest ended up at a table through an AI answer cannot be traced, because that guest does not come in through a SOUS portal.

What changed at four hospitality businesses

These are the figures SOUS publishes per venue.

Two questions tonight, per location

Ask those two questions yourself tonight, for every location separately. If you would rather not do it by hand, there is the free AI scan at ai.poweredbysous.com. It asks for the name of your venue and your average spend per guest, and nothing else.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see for myself whether my restaurant appears in ChatGPT?

Yes. Ask the question the way a guest asks it, without your business name in it, and see whether you come up in the answer. Do it per location, because the answer differs from city to city.

Is this the same as coming up high in the search results?

No. In search results the guest picks from a list, and in an AI answer there are three to five names where the choice has already been made. You can come up in the one and be absent from the other.

What does SOUS Spotlight cost?

EUR 90 per month per location on annual billing, or EUR 129 per month on monthly billing. The package applies per location, so with three venues you take three packages.

Does it work with several locations too?

Yes, per location. Every location has its own listings, its own reviews and its own competitors nearby, and therefore its own starting point.

Do I have to put time into this myself?

A little. The 20 content suggestions a week and the report every two weeks are there to be acted on, and whoever leaves them sitting gets less out of it than whoever works through them.

What if my details are wrong somewhere?

Then that is the first thing you fix. SOUS Spotlight sends your name, address, opening hours, menu and photos out to 45-plus platforms and search engines and keeps them consistent there, per location.