Restaurant Tech Trends

Justin Foster
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Technology
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On Restaurant Tech Trends, we interview movers and shakers in the restaurant industry to identify how technology is changing the way multi-unit restaurants work.

  1. 8h ago

    Ashley Helkenn, Sr. Director L&D + Ops Services @ Bonchon

    HERRRRE WE GO!! Time for the newest 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends! Today I sit down with Ashley Helkenn, Sr. Director of Learning & Development and Operations Services at Bonchon, the Korean fried chicken brand born in Busan in 2002 and now approaching 500 locations worldwide (150 in the US). Ashley started as Director of Training about four and a half years ago as the brand built the infrastructure to scale franchising. She'll tell you her heart has always been in operations, and it shows. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How Bonchon made its back-of-house training WORDLESS, so a crew member can execute the same way no matter what language they speak or whether they can read (hint: color-coded scoops are involved) 👉 Why day one is about mastering ONE step of that double-fried, hand-brushed chicken instead of learning it all soup to nuts, and how that fights turnover 👉 The QR-code-to-trained-in-15-seconds setup, and why the stores with more engagement see earlier wins in sales and service scores 👉 Why so much scheduling tech becomes "expensive shelf software," and her take that operators don't have a tech fear, they have a time problem 👉 Best-of-breed vs. all-in-one at 150 US units, and why her goal is "better bucketing" Shout outs to Opus and Tattle for the training and guest feedback love along the way. ➕ PLUS the rapid fire round, where Ashley picks a side on soy garlic vs. spicy and kiosk vs. human, names the best fried chicken that isn't Bonchon (not the answer you'd expect), and shares the one word every new crew member should hear on day one Ashley and I first met at one of our Future of Restaurant Tech dinners, and I'm so glad we finally made this one happen. Give it a watch and let me know what you think 👇

  2. 5d ago

    Deric Rosenbaum, President & CTO @ Groucho's

    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.

  3. Oct 27

    Randy Barnett, Former CTO @ The Melting Pot

    "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 👇

  4. Oct 16

    Lisa Roscoe, CEO @ Pizza Factory

    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. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 What her franchisee listening tour REALLY asked for and how it became the brand's "back to basics" push 👉 Why 80-90% of the leadership conversation is franchisee profitability, and the org change that put more boots on the ground 👉 The POS rollout: choosing a solution WITH franchisees instead of FOR them and some painful lessons along the way 👉 All-in-one vs best-of-breed from someone killing off 16 different logins 🤯 👉 Where she draws the hospitality line on AI phone ordering, kiosks, and dynamic pricing Shout outs to PAR Technology and ezCater in this interview! W00T! ➕ PLUS the rapid fire round, where Lisa reveals her go-to Pizza Factory order and delivers a SOLID verdict on the pineapple🍍on pizza🍕debate, which I personally approve of😆 Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

  5. Oct 8

    Sherif Mityas, CEO @ BRIX Holdings

    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. 📺 WATCH AND LEARN 📺 👉 "Newstalgia" - how Friendly’s added innovation and relevancy to its menu without ever touching the logo or the Hunka Chunka PB Fudge Sundae 👉 How BRIX went from three POS systems to one shared tech stack, and why that makes co-branded froyo and smoothie shops work 👉 Why he's building his own AI tools instead of buying, and why some vendors should be worried 👉 The personalized offer engine pulling 4-5x the redemption of a blanket coupon 👉 Where he lands on kiosks and dynamic pricing, and the guest trust line he won't cross for a few points of margin Shout outs to Ovation, US Foods, and Dairy Farmers of America for the partner love along the way. ➕ PLUS why frozen yogurt is suddenly exploding again, and a rapid fire round where Sherif settles SuperMelt vs Fishamajig and finishes "five years from now, the family dining booth is ___"

  6. Oct 1

    Kevin Nemeth, EVP & Chief Commercial Officer @ Church's Texas Chicken

    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

  7. Sep 3

    Eusha Bajwa, Founder/CEO @ Meal Dynamics

    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. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Eusha Bajwa, who leads technology for the Bajco Group and is Founder & CEO of Meal Dynamics. Eusha got tired of watching the back office run on spreadsheets and email, built the fix in-house, and turned it into a product he now sells to other operators. First-time founder, and his own toughest customer. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 The one sentence his uncle uses to describe how they run 275 stores. It reframes everything. 👉 Where franchisees actually have room to move on tech — and it's not where the franchisor is looking 👉 What happened when he took his "perfect" all-in-one to his own ops teams 😬 👉 His answer on whether AI is shrinking his dev team. Most people guess wrong. ➕ PLUS the rapid fire round: the garlic sauce move you'll want to steal, the most OVERRATED restaurant tech, and how he finishes "the back office should feel like ___" Give it a watch and let me know what you think 👇

  8. Aug 27

    Aaron LeClair, VP Technology @ Jeff's Bagel Run

    They built their own POS. For bagels. On purpose. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Aaron LeClair, VP of Technology at Jeff's Bagel Run, the Orlando-born chain famous for bagels baked hot ALL day long, now closing in on 40 locations (and eyeing 50 by year's end). A career technologist who came up in defense, climate tech, and supply-chain startups, Aaron traded enterprise software for fresh-baked bagels and built the brand's tech stack - POS and all - from scratch. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How "we just need one more piece of data" snowballed into building the ENTIRE stack in-house 👉 The two-layer forecasting problem that makes bagels harder to predict than pizza or donuts 👉 How they scaled the "what's hot?" moment every regular loves - without anyone yelling to the back 👉 The thing they could easily build but flat-out REFUSE to (prepare for a controversial take) 👉 Where he thinks the next phase of franchise growth is actually won - and it's not where everyone's looking ➕ PLUS the rapid fire round: Aaron's no-diplomacy bagel order, the cream cheese schmear that actually KICKS, the restaurant tech he says is most overrated, and a coffee confession he admits is "basic." Aaron's one of the rare builders who'll tell you exactly which tech to skip - and as someone whose own daughter works a bagel counter, I loved every minute of this one. Give it a watch and let me know what you think 👇

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On Restaurant Tech Trends, we interview movers and shakers in the restaurant industry to identify how technology is changing the way multi-unit restaurants work.

Information

  • Creator
    Justin Foster
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Justin Foster
  • Show Website
    Restaurant Tech Trends

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