Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit
Restaurant leaders share why AI, data, emotional intelligence are keys to franchise success
When it comes to growing and sustaining a successful franchise, brands would do well to tap AI to drive expansion, leverage emotional intelligence to drive success and establish strong leadership to survive difficult times.
March 13, 2025 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
When it comes to creating, growing and sustaining a successful franchise, brands would do well to tap AI to drive expansion, leverage emotional intelligence and data to drive success and establish strong leadership to survive difficult times.
Those recommendations, from restaurant executives, were the focus of a session, "Executive Perspective: Inspiration for Today's Restaurant Leaders," at this week's Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit, held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The panel, sponsored by Birdeye, featured four thought-provoking conversations
The summit, run by Networld Media Group, draws executives from leading brands to share successful ways to build and manage franchise organizations. Networld Media Group is the parent company of Fastcasual, Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb. Its next foodservice event is the Fast Casual Executive Summit being held October 5-7 in Austin Texas.
Leveraging emotional intelligence
In the first of the panel's three talks, "Intelligent Leadership: Leveraging Emotional Intelligence, Data, and Technology to Drive Restaurant Success," Mina Haque, CEO of Tony Roma's, explained that emotional intelligence is important for brand success and must be embedded in everything within the business.
"We need to understand the customer and we need to create an experience," she said, adding the experience must include insight ton cultural sensitivities.
"Emotional intelligence also comes into play with the employee relationship," she said, providing the example of brand leadership not emailing employees in late evening hours, past the work hours.
She also stressed restaurant leaders share mistakes as "that's how we learn."
With regard to technology, franchise leaders need to understand that tools, such as AI, can make a huge difference when it comes to brand consistency. Yet AI can't understand nuances and must be trained and retrained.
"That's where the emotional intelligence then comes in. We need to know our customers and we need to interact with employees."
Recipe for feeding franchise growth
In the panel's second talk, "The Winning Recipe: AI to Feed Franchise Growth," Jim Bitticks, president and COO of Dave's Hot Chicken, and Dave Lehman, president and COO of Birdeye, discussed how a winning franchise recipe for success needs AI to drive both growth as well as the guest experience.
Technology is playing a starring role in Dave's Hot Chicken franchise growth as its helping the brand garner top performance ratings among customers. The company, which had four locations just five years ago, now operates 274 stores, five of which are co-owned and operated.
In 2020 its rating was a 3.8 in terms of performance — now it's 4.7.
"We made it the core focus — restaurant performance and we take all the feedback and use to drive improvements and deciding where we need to focus," said Bitticks.
"Diners are pickier than ever, and there's much more sharing [social media]," he said, adding consumers are increasingly relying on customer ratings, via Yelp and Google.
"People are using the rating to choose their next restaurant and they're looking brands with a 4.0 and above," said Lehman, adding that attaining a high rating is "how you grow and build scale."
The question brands must ask, said Lehman, is how they can move the 3.8 rating up to a 4.0 as it's not only important for attracting more customers but also "grabs attention when looking for investments and potential franchisees."
"It's getting more and more competitive [the industry] so you need to be able to beat everyone out. Ratings and scores are important," said Lehman.
A best practice for brands is to benchmark competitors and evaluate and assess competitors' ratings to determine where they are doing well and where they are failing and AI is key to being able to do that benchmark.
"That's the power of AI," said Bitticks, adding it provides the data and insight restaurants need to identify where they need to focus and where they need to help the franchise organization.
Leading in an uncertain environment
James O'Reilly, CEO of Ascent Hospitality, took to the stage to share insight on leadership in the third session talk, "Visionary Leadership: Leading Your Brand to Growth in an Uncertain Environment."
Ascent Hospitality is the parent company of Perkins and Huddle House brands. O'Reilly said his love for the industry is what drives him in his role and that the industry rewards innovators, mentioning Chipotle as an example.
He views the restaurant industry as a growth machine but noted there are still challenges, such as the current economic environment that has consumers being more cautious with discretionary spend, such as dining out.
When it comes to winning strategies there is a success model that always works.
"A strong brand knows itself and knows its customers. There is consistent execution from the people to the food and there is a great value," he said. "If a company is not firing on all cylinders it's failing at one of these factors."
A key strategy that aligns with the success model is one in which the brand knows its customers and builds on that relationship.
"My guarantee is that if you follow that success model your business will improve," he said.
When it comes to execution the goal must be to focus on guests, employees and franchisees without sacrificing on any of the three focal points.
Communication — with employees, franchisees and internal teams — is also critical. He recommends weekly check-ins to see how the brand is doing and for one other big reason.
"They [franchisees] need to know we care."
About Judy Mottl
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