AI: Your partner in business
By John Stanley, Sid Raisch and Dries Jansen
We were recently talking to a client about trading patterns in 2025 in the different categories. This client has a restaurant. He mentioned that he has operated it for many years as a profitable part of the whole business. He worked on the old benchmark rule where 30% of costs were allocated to labour, 30% to food costs, 30% to overheads and 10% to profit. This worked until 2025. In that year, his labour costs became 45%, and his food costs were 40%.
We stopped him there, ‘So, you are making a loss?’. His reply, ‘Yes, this year we will not charge rent to the restaurant.’ This is not the answer when, globally, wages are going up as well as the wholesale price of goods; both are out of your hands and will not come down. An alternative way of doing business is essential.
What is the new way of doing business?
People are crucial to this industry. We need to keep our best team members and develop them to maximise their effect in the business. There is no longer a place for underperforming team members. In the days ahead, artificial intelligence (AI) tools trained to replicate routines better can become your friend, and help you shine in business.
One example is stocktaking (inventory control), which is a chore. It employs at least one person counting stock and if we were honest about it, why are we wasting this labour? One of our clients uses AI. He talks into his phone and within seconds the phone tells him how much stock he has, how much he needs, when to order it again, when to promote it, what to display next to it, and what the average sale is of the items he has selected. He has more accurate control over his business and has saved at least one, if not two, team members from a mundane job to be able to serve customers. Point-of-sale (POS) systems are now integrating AI with inventory management, e.g. Square and Shopify.
In preparing this article, we asked Andy Burns, an AI retail consultant from Australia, for his recommendations on implementing AI in a garden centre. These are his ideas:
Ten AI tips for garden centres
1. The one-photo project plan
Let AI use a customer’s smartphone photo to instantly generate a complete garden design mood board and a precise shopping list for the exact amount of soil, mulch, and plants required. Check out Neighborbrite online for inspiration.
2. The ‘For you’ garden
Train an AI on loyal customer purchase histories to create a personalised ‘For you’ service, recommending plants and products with Netflix-like accuracy. Klaviyo is one platform using AI to integrate customer service and marketing.
3. The digital plant doctor
Install an AI-powered kiosk to support staff by instantly identifying pests and diseases from a customer’s photo, allowing your team to provide the perfect solution. You can find several pest and disease detection apps on Google Play.
4. Future-view your garden
Use AI-driven augmented reality to let customers use their phone to see what a tree will look like and how much space it will fill in their actual garden in 10 years’ time. Meta Glasses and Google Lens are both working on this.
5. Dynamic pricing for plant health
Implement an AI that draws from stock data, weather reports and other sources to automatically promote plants before they show signs of stress, increasing sales and preventing waste.
6. Answer real community questions
Use an AI to analyse local gardening forums to find the specific, unanswered questions your community are asking, and then create content that directly solves their problems.
7. The expert-trained chatbot
Create a 24/7 chatbot trained exclusively on your own horticulturists’ advice, ensuring customers get your expert answers, in your unique voice, even when you are closed.
8. The internal ‘Expert in Your pocket’
Build an AI knowledge base that gives junior staff instant, searchable access to your most senior horticulturists’ decades of expertise, empowering them to answer any question with confidence. This technology is already being developed by the ‘Big Box’ stores, and we need to move quickly on this if we are to continue to be seen as the knowledge experts.
9. Prove your green credentials
Use AI to calculate and display the precise ‘carbon miles’ of your locally-sourced plants versus ‘Big Box’ competitors, providing tangible proof of your sustainability.
10. Data-driven staffing
Use a predictive AI to optimise staff schedules based on weather, sales trends, and local events, ensuring essential plant care is done during the quietest times for zero customer disruption. There are many such platforms available on the internet, e.g. Integrity Staffing Solutions.
Bonus Tip: The neighbourhood ecosystem advisor
Use an AI to map your local ecosystem. By asking for a customer’s street and suburb, your AI can recommend plants that create pollinator corridors by complementing what neighbours bought and are already growing, positioning you as the strategic advisor for the entire community’s environmental health.
The message is clear. Develop AI-powered customer experiences that save your team time and enhance the customer experience. The consumer wants fast answers, seamless experiences and more value for money. Either your AI will provide a dependable ‘touch point’ or someone else will.
While AI is a powerful tool, it is not a panacea. It will not solve all challenges and may, in fact, create new ones. A study by wellbeing researcher Dr Michelle McQuaid found that workers who frequently use AI report 37 per cent lower wellbeing than those who rarely use the technology1. The solution points to a greater need for management to demonstrate compassion. AI can perform 99% of the cognitive and knowledge work currently done by people. The value jobs that will skyrocket in the future will be those involving hands-on engagement with the physical world: gardening, plumbing and physical therapy.
Remember, our big asset is that we are dealing with NATURE.
Lose that, and we lose our market.
John Stanley
Email: john@johnstanley.com.au
Editor’s note: The websites listed here are Northern Hemisphere–based and may not always reflect Australian plants, seasons or business conditions.
References
- Armstrong, P. (2026, January 14). Could using AI too often make us less civil with our colleagues? Australian HR Institute. https://www.ahri.com.au/articles/could-using-ai-make-us-less-civil-at-work