CSConnect Wants To Change The Way The World Dines With AI-Powered Menus

CSConnect is reimagining restaurant menus—swapping static images for 3D visualizations and immersive dining experiences.

By EatOkra

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If you’ve ever ordered a dish that sounded dreamy on paper only for it to arrive looking nothing like what you imagined, you know the frustration of buying dinner sight unseen.

For centuries, restaurants have refined recipes, elevated service, and perfected presentation. Yet the primary sales tool remains the same: a static list of words or, at best, a standard (often outdated or inaccurate) photo. CSConnect thinks it’s time for an upgrade.

The company is reimagining one of the most fundamental touch points in hospitality: the menu. CSConnect turns menus into immersive, 3D experiences, allowing diners to rotate, zoom, and explore food imagery before stepping foot into the restaurant. The promise is simple: make dining decisions honest, visual, and emotionally engaging. And for restaurant owners, the value is just as clear: watching satisfaction and sales rise.

EatOkra spoke to CSConnect's CEO, E. L. Mont, about how the company is intersecting AI and hospitality—and aiming to change how the world dines in the process.

Can you break down the problem CSConnect is trying to solve in hospitality?

E. L. Mont: Food in particular is very emotional. And up until this point, the primary way that a person has ordered is through a menu, which is basically 2,000 years old. We’re looking to bring the latest approach to things that is equivalent in every other industry and every other aspect of our lives, which is to use more of our five senses to be able to identify what it is that we’re craving at the time. This industry is the only industry that I’m aware of where we force the customer to basically buy sight unseen. We live in a day and age where that’s not necessary.

What was the light bulb moment that led to building CSConnect?

Mont: The ‘wow’ moment for CSConnect was multiple confirmation points. One was a bad dining experience—not because the restaurant set out to create one, but there was a complete disconnect between what was stated on the menu and what my expectations were. Once that happens, a restaurant basically loses me. My grandfather was a chef, and I have friends who own restaurants and work in the industry. Seeing how hard they struggle to actually get a customer to have interest in their restaurant—and then to have that experience fall short through no fault of their own—makes their life very hard from a sustainability standpoint. Operators fight to get a guest in the door. They should not lose them to miscommunication.

Digital menus with photos already exist. How is CSConnect different?

Mont: A 2D image is a reasonable solution, but in many cases, it's cost prohibitive because photography of food is hard. It could take two to three weeks to have a whole thing processed, and cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. You also then depend on the frequency with which you change your menus. Most importantly, nine out of 10 Gen Z and millennial diners would prefer interactive capabilities with their food. We all know the experience where the picture on the menu looks like one thing, but when they give me my food, it looks like something else. With our interactive capability, the person can play with the dish, move it around, look at any angle they want to. They can even see the size of the dish itself, so they get a better understanding of proportions.

Speaking of price, how affordable is this for the average operator?

Mont: For instance, for $60 a month, you would be able to use our app, take pictures, and we take care of everything from an AI standpoint. Restaurants can create their own menus, like a menu for delivery, a menu for in-dining, or for the bar. And if they prefer, we also have what you can think of as a white-glove service, where we’ll come out, take the pictures, and create everything for them.

What results have you seen so far?

Mont: We did a 90-day case study with one of our restaurants: they increased their average order value by 19.8% and the number of transactions by 3.4%. The average patron, by being able to have this kind of interactive content, ended up buying an additional taco or an additional item, which resulted in over $50,000 in incremental revenue—all from $60 a month.

Beyond customer engagement, how else is your product useful?

Mont: It can be used by the restaurant itself for training purposes. New servers can see the dish from all angles before they ever carry it out. And we make it very easy for a restaurant to not only have the capability but also to manage it—whether that’s a junior person or a social media manager.

Looking forward, how do you see AI continuing to shape hospitality, and how will CSConnect be at the forefront?

Mont: In the future, we’ll be helping restaurants onboard themselves into large language models (LLMs). Over 50% of searches now are through LLMs and not general search engines like Google. We’re helping in that regard because the way we capture and structure data will help restaurants feed their information directly into those AI-driven search tools. Adopting our menu is going to be a step to not getting left behind.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.