Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit
How and why restaurant leaders are serving up AI in operations
AI is fast becoming ubiquitous in the restaurant environment, helping to streamline tasks, train employees and deliver a more rewarding customer experience.
March 31, 2025 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
Artificial intelligence technology is fast becoming ubiquitous in the restaurant environment, whether it's a fast-casual hot spot, a quick-service restaurant or the pizzeria in the neighborhood.
But making AI work well takes work and strategy but the reward can be huge. It has the potential power to boost efficiency and revenue positively impact the frontline cashier to the kitchen to the management office.
It can streamline operations, enhance customer experiences and improve the restaurant employee experience as well.
Expert panel session
Where to implement AI is the first and foremost decision for a brand and the topic of a panel talk at the recent Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit, held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The summit, run by Networld Media Group, draws executives from leading brands to share successful ways to build and manage restaurants. Networld Media Group is the parent company of Fastcasual, Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb. Its next in-person foodservice event is the Fast Casual Executive Summit being held October 13-15 in Denver, Colorado.
The panelists participating in the session, "Bringing Your AI-Game to the Table," included Ahnaf Ali, SVP and CIO at Church's Texas Chicken; Pedro "Pete" Mora, founder of Fajita Pete's and Peter Riggs, president and CEO of Pita Pit.
The talk was moderated by Steven King, CEO of Blue Sky Robotics. King is the Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Emerging Technologies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Blue Sky Robotics leverages computer vision and robotics to solve difficult problems in the supply chain, manufacturing and hospitality industries.
AI in the restaurant
In introducing the topic King noted AI is a big topic given so much has changed in just two years.
"Every company is an AI company," he said, and "right now this is the worst AI will ever be as it's going to get better and better as it learns over time."
Church's Texas Chicken is clearly an AI company. The brand AI is capturing sentiment — providing valuable information about the customer standing in front of the menu board. But that's not its only AI application. "Our AI focus is the digital menu, the upsell to drive sales. AI computing vision is grabbing insight on demographics and [customer] facial expression," Ali said, adding the brand is testing AI in its drive-through environment.
"Early on there was some frustrations from customers as there is still a lot of learning," he said but AI is providing the opportunity for customer upselling and an opportunity for greater efficiency. "AI will save time and AI in supply chain and balancing inventory is a big actor as well."
AI can impact everything
At Fajita Pete's, Mora envisions big things with AI technology and the opportunity to see big improvements.
"Our first guest is the employee so AI takes menial tasks off the employee's to do list so they can focus on customers," he said, adding AI tech is cutting ordering time down.
"We're reducing the number of clicks, making it simple and faster, three minutes now for a $80 order," Mora said.
The brand is saving time on management tasks, inventory and optimizing whatever it can optimize.
"I'm a dreamer. One day grilling will be standardized [via robotics and AI]. The impact of that on the kitchen will be big," he said.
The technology can also help with employee retention, he added , as it can provide better training experiences.
Human touch remains vital
Riggs described AI as a tool, like a microphone or a hammer, that requires human guidance to achieve positive results.
His brand is using AI to improve how it presents products, create digital art for marketing and reducing time on labor intensive projects.
"We use it all over the place. It's like what we did with PCs 20 years ago. Now we use PCs for everything. It's ubiquitous," he said, noting that AI is multi purposeful tool and not a silver bullet.
"We're rebuilding and regrowing and we need to stabilize so we're using tech and AI to be efficient — to do less with more and get more time on customer experience and tech for the customers."
The brand is testing kiosks at its corporate store and AI is being used on the back end. "We still need the human touch but robotics and organizational things will meet in the middle. AI gives us better information faster and it will solve big pain point.," said Riggs.
One of those is serving as a delivery method for training on systems.
"AI can drive better training so employees can learn better and faster," said Riggs, adding that "makes for happier bosses and workers."
As King noted during the panel talk AI is all about doing something easier and automating simple tasks.
"AI in the flow of operations should be serving as a referee in the game of operations and not noticed," he said.
About Judy Mottl
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