Show Notes
PE Truth Bomb: "Saying no to fast money is pretty easy when 1941 is your benchmark." Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Deric Rosenbaum, President & CTO of Groucho's Deli, the Columbia, South Carolina neighborhood deli turning 85 this year with 32 locations across the Carolinas and Georgia. Deric came over from commercial construction in 1999, recruited by his best friend and third-generation owner Bruce Miller, and still builds tech like a building: foundation first. He also sits on Square's Food & Beverage Customer Advisory Board and Marqii's advisory board. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How a single omni-channel menu plus a brand "ontology" became the foundation Groucho's now benchmarks EVERY tool against, because no GM is logging into 14 dashboards 👉 The MCP-powered synthesis layer that lets his team chat with the restaurant, plus custom weekly franchisee reports and AI pre-inspections 👉 Why par sheets, recipes and truck orders now show up right on the KDS, and the plan to put Groucho's own AI agent on that screen too 👉 What a survey to 150,000 guests told him REALLY mattered 👉 Why you will never see a robot (or, for now, a kiosk) in a Groucho's dining room: "breaking bread is inherently human" Shout outs to Square, ClearCogs, Bikky, Fresh KDS, Marqii, and Ovation for the best-of-FIT (not best-of-breed) tech love along the way. ➕ PLUS Deric's take on the most overhyped tech in restaurants, and the FSTEC pitch he says is "a great way to get sued" ➕➕ PLUS PLUS: Rapid fire 🔥 - STP Dipper vs. Slaw Reuben, hard hat vs. apron, President hat vs. CTO hat, the best sandwich he's ever had that isn't a Groucho's, and the one word that keeps a deli going for 85 years 🥪 Huge thanks to Matt Wampler for the intro. Deric is as tech-forward as they come and still all about people.
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"Tech doesn't create a reason to visit. Its job is to remove the reasons NOT to visit." My very first guest ever is back for round two. 🔥 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Randy Barnett, former CTO at The Melting Pot, the fondue brand built around one of the most experiential nights out in casual dining. Over 9+ years Randy moved every Melting Pot, corporate and franchise, onto one POS, built the data warehouse behind it, and put a voice AI reservation agent on the phones. He has served on the Toast Customer Advisory Board and the FS Tech Advisory Board, and (full disclosure) he advises us here at Incept AI. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 What it was like being one of Toast's first enterprise accounts, and keeping the rollout alive when COVID hit with the system roughly halfway there 👉 Why franchisees sat on the selection committee from day one, right through a unanimous go/no-go vote 👉 How bringing POS, reservation, and guest data together unlocked a 360-degree view of the guest, from the loyals to the once-a-year anniversary crowd 👉 What REALLY surprised him about voice AI for reservations, and why there was "no middle ground" with guests 👉 Why cutting costs without reinvesting just makes you "efficiently smaller" Shout outs to Toast, Polly AI, Servai, and Cubbly for the tech-stack love along the way. ➕ PLUS the rapid fire round, where Randy names the most overhyped AND most underrated tech in restaurants, picks kiosk vs. human at the counter, and finishes the sentence "Five years from now, the restaurant phone is ____" (I like where his head is at 😉) ➕➕ PLUS PLUS: his favorite date night meal that isn't fondue 🧀 Randy has been in Incept's corner since before this show even existed, and I'm so grateful. Can't wait to see what he does next. Give it a watch and let me know what you think 👇
Time for another 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends! Today I sit down with Lisa Roscoe, J.D., MBA CEO of Pizza Factory Inc., Franchise Opportunities, the West Coast hometown pizza brand with ~110 restaurants in the mountain, seaside, and Main Street towns most chains skip - so local that plenty of guests don't even realize it's a chain! Lisa came up through franchise law and real estate at Tim Hortons, St. Louis Bar & Grill, and Outfront Media, but she's been working in restaurants since she was 16, from the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls to waitressing her way through law school.
The exec who took TGI Fridays from dine-in only to ordering through Alexa is now running a 90-plus-year-old ice cream brand where 20%+ of sales are digital. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Sherif Mityas, CEO of BRIX Holdings, the Dallas-based platform behind Friendly's, Clean Juice, Orange Leaf, Red Mango, and more (~250 units in all). Before BRIX, Sherif was Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays and was named one of the industry's top innovators by Nation's Restaurant News. Before that he ran Hollywood Video as CEO through the streaming disruption, and he's still applying some of the lessons learned during that stint in the restaurant world today.
Today on Restaurant Tech Trends I sit down with Kevin Nemeth, EVP and Chief Commercial Officer at Church's Texas Chicken, the San Antonio original turning 75 next year and now running more than 1,400 restaurants across 25 countries. Kevin came into the restaurant space from L'Oreal, TD Bank, and HSN, walked into Popeyes in early 2020 with a digital team of three, and left with digital at nearly 20% of sales and five million rewards members. WATCH AND LEARN Why Church's splits 50/50 first party vs third party when most of the industry sits at 90/10 The T-Mobile Tuesday blowup that still shapes how he plans every promotion five years later How Church's tested AI internally and where it's adding the most value for the brand today Where he's building instead of buying and how he sees that trend evolving over the coming years His litmus test for whether tech enables hospitality or just hands your work to the guest, and why the kiosk on the counter fails it Shout outs to Qu and Olo for the tech stack love along the way. PLUS the rapid fire round, where Kevin names the most UNDERRATED tech in restaurants and finishes with "five years from now, the drive-thru is ___" Give it a watch and let me know what you think
His uncle started as a Papa John's delivery driver, then bought a single store in East Liverpool with a pile of used equipment. That business is now 275 restaurants across 10 states and they're rapidly closing in on 500.