Restaurant Tech Trends

The dirtiest corner of any restaurant tells you everything about how it's run, and Kimmie Dunlay has built a career on the infrastructure nobody sees to keep 'em clean. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with the Senior Director of Food Service Strategy and Growth at Kept Companies, the nationwide self-performing facility partner keeping restaurant and grocery brands clean, s...

Eric Knott spent a decade as COO of PDQ scaling 40+ stores from Tampa to New York, and he'll be the first to tell you he learned as much from what went wrong as what went right. Now CEO of Kansas City's Tiki Taco, he joined me on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends to talk about the growth discipline he earned the hard way, the founder partnership that keeps him honest, and where AI actually pays...

On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends we go inside the wild world of virtual brands with Adam Robin, Chief Operating Officer at Virtual Dining Concepts: the company behind some of the most talked-about names out there, from MrBeast Burger to Man vs. Fries. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 What it actually takes to build a virtual brand that breaks through the noise, and why so many of them flame out f...

Own the guest relationship or get rented out to the highest bidder. That's part of what we dive into on today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends. On this episode I sit down with Zach Goldstein, Founder & CEO of Thanx. Zach has helped restaurants turn first party data into lifetime value since 2011. Watch for a masterclass in loyalty, data, and how AI agents are transforming the guest reten...

Brilliant biscuits + the boring work that builds a brand? Yes, please. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I'm talking with Amanda Kahalehoe, COO of Vicious Biscuit, the Southern comfort breakfast and brunch concept scaling fast across the Southeast on the strength of over-the-top biscuit builds and a hospitality-first culture. Amanda came in from outside the industry and just helped open re...

On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sat down with Atul Sood, Fractional Chief Business Officer at Curry Up Now. Atul co-founded Kitchen United as its first employee, raised over $100M, struck the Kroger deal that put ghost kitchens inside grocery stores, and launched McDonald's global delivery partnerships before that. Now he's helping the pioneer of Indian fast casual gear up fo...

This might be the coolest concept I've ever had on the show. On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Adrian Deasy , Founder & CEO of Octane Coffee , the world's first fully automated, employee-free drive-thru coffee concept. A mechanical engineer by training, Adrian looked at a line wrapped around a coffee kiosk back in 2018 and asked the question nobody else was as...

🥣 FROM WALL STREET TO HEALTHY BOWLS 📈🥭 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Andrew Pudalov , Founder & CEO of Rush Bowls . After 15 years trading derivatives at firms like Morgan Stanley, Andrew walked away from finance, bet on himself, and opened a tiny 400-square-foot bowl shop near CU Boulder in 2004. Twenty-two years later that store is still kicking and Rush Bowls has...

🍩 DONUT WASTE: $3M PROBLEM, MEET YOUR MATCH 🍩 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I'm joined by Margo Hughes, Executive Director of Business Services at Bluemont Group, a Dunkin' franchisee with ~100 locations across seven states. Margo's become one of the most visible voices in restaurant AI thanks to Do'Cast: the donut forecasting system Bluemont co-developed with PreciTaste...

🏢 FROM THE FLOOR TO THE BACK OFFICE 🏢 On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with David Cantu , CEO of Craftable and former co-founder of HotSchedules . David started on the floor at Outback Steakhouse and PF Chang's, then turned that operator DNA into a 20+ year run building tech that powers hospitality. Watch this for an insider's look into how David and the Craftable t...

🚀🍪🌙 WARM COOKIES AT 2AM?! 🚀🍪🌙 On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Rachard Dennis , SVP of Operations at Insomnia Cookies , the late-night delivery-first brand delivering warm cookies to your door when most restaurants are long closed. With stops at Target, Subway, Wingstop, Taco Bell, and Smalls Sliders along the way, Ra'Chard is a proven operator who knows execut...

🍽️ 40 years in restaurants. 14 on the ops floor before crossing over to tech. Today's guest has seen it all... and she's got the receipts. 🧾 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Kathy Alcaras, a multi-unit restaurant technology leader with stops at Polly's Pies, Grill Concepts, Eureka Restaurant Group, Jollibee Foods North America, and Pressed Juicery - plus she's...

🍟 THE GOLDEN ARCHES PULLED UP TO THE PODCAST 🍟 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Zachary Richard , Senior Director of Data Science at McDonald's . If you've ever wondered what it looks like when the world's most recognized restaurant brand puts serious firepower behind data and AI... this is the episode for you. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How Zach helped build McDonal...

Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Amber Trendell, Senior Director of Strategy for Restaurants at Oracle — someone who lives at the intersection of restaurant operations and enterprise technology every single day. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 Why kiosks and self-service are seeing triple-digit transaction growth between 2024-2026, and why the smarter upsell story (not just convenience...

🍳 AI IN THE KITCHEN — FOR REAL THIS TIME 🤖 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Kenneth Hallwachs, Head of Customer at PreciTaste — one of the most exciting back-of-house AI companies in the game right now. Kenneth grew up in restaurants (his dad still owns them in Germany!), went deep on ops at brands ranging from large corporations to 60-unit chains, then took a leap of faith...

🍕☁️ FROM DUMB TERMINALS TO CLOUD-NATIVE AI 🤖 Most restaurant tech leaders talk about digital transformation. Very few have actually lived every era of it. On today’s 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends, I sat down with Amar Narain, CIO & VP Information Technology at Pizza Pizza Limited . He's spent 20 years inside the same brand modernizing it step by step. We’re talking: • Unix + dumb terminal...

🧠 RESTAURANT OPS KNOWLEDGE BOMB 💣 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends, I sit down with Jim Taylor , Founder & CEO of Benchmark Sixty Restaurant Services and author of Bold Operations: Building The Foundation Of Strategic Excellence In Restaurants. Jim has spent 20+ years helping restaurant operators cut through noise, rethink labor, and build calmer, more profitable shifts using people-fir...

🚨NEW RESTAURANT TECH TRENDS EPISODE DROP 🚨 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends, I sat down with Anthony Presley , CTO at CBS NorthStar and Co-Founder of TimeForge Labor . Anthony has been building restaurant tech for decades and it shows. This conversation cuts straight through the noise on POS, kitchen AI, labor, and why “all-in-one” isn’t always the answer. 📺 WATCH AND LEARN 📺 👉 What Kitc...

🥷 RESTAURANT KIOSK NINJA ALERT🚨 On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends, I sat down with Brandon Barton , CEO of Bite . Brandon's bar-none one of the most experienced voices in restaurant kiosks and in-store digital ordering. He's been in restaurant tech for 20+ years and has had a front-row seat as kiosks shifted from "nice to have" to mission-critical infrastructure acros...

🚨 RESTAURANT INDUSTRY HEAVYWEIGHT ALERT 🚨 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends, I sat down with Danny Klein , VP of Editorial at QSR & FSR Magazine and producer of the QSR Evolution Conference - among his many pursuits. If you pay attention to where this industry is headed, Danny is clearly at the tip of the spear of the conversation. Don't miss this one. 📺 WATCH AND LEARN 📺 👉 Why Da...

🧠 FRANCHISE DATA ≠ FRANCHISE INTELLIGENCE 🚨 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sat down with Gary Liskovich , Founder & CEO of Harmonyze , a company tackling one of the messiest and most under-discussed problems in franchising: turning fragmented franchisee data into actual, real-world performance improvement through better coaching. 📺 WATCH AND LEARN 📺 👉 Why franchise business consu...

Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends we sit down with Eric Caron, Senior Director of Digital Products at Caribou Coffee, a brand with 800+ locations, a fast-growing drive-thru footprint, and a LOT happening in digital. 📺 WATCH AND LEARN 📺 👉 How Caribou rebuilt its tech foundation - from reproducible data and controlled testing to a unified Flutter app and lightning-fast Stripe checkout 👉 Why...

On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends: Brendon Gilbert, VP Technology at Vibe Restaurants! Vibe is a multi-brand franchise group behind 70+ Little Caesars, nearly 90 Wingstops, and a growing number of Whataburgers. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 Why Brendon was hired as Vibe’s first tech leader and how early wins came from blocking and tackling rather than shiny tools 👉 How Vibe balances franchisor...

Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends we sit down with one of the sharpest minds in restaurant analytics: Michael Lukianoff , Founder and CEO of SignalFlare.ai . If you care about pricing, menu architecture, or the future of decision intelligence in restaurants, this episode is a must-watch. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 Why the “last mile” of analytics has always been the industry’s Achilles’ heel and h...

🚨FIRST-EVER OPERATOR EPISODE ALERT🚨 Today’s 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends marks a big milestone. Every week we talk with founders, CEOs, and tech execs shaping the future of the industry. This time, we’re going straight to the front lines. For the first time ever, we’re joined by a franchisee/operator - someone actually running restaurants day in and day out - and there's no one better to kic...