In this episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, Matt Wampler sits down with David Corts, CEO of Fresh Technology, the company behind Fresh KDS. David spent 25 years in enterprise software watching digital transformations unfold across media, e-commerce, and ad tech before betting everything on the most underleveraged asset in the restaurant industry: the kitchen.

Matt and David dig into why billions of dollars have flowed into front-of-house technology while the kitchen has been running on paper tickets and gut instinct. David breaks down why average ticket time is one of the most misleading metrics in the industry, what a true system of intelligence for the kitchen actually looks like, and why the Fresh KDS composable layer gives operators the flexibility they have always wanted without the complexity that comes with it.

The conversation goes deep on the dot-com parallel playing out in AI right now, why doing AI for the sake of AI is the fastest way to build nothing, and how Fresh KDS is partnering with ClearCOGS to bring predictive analytics directly to the kitchen screen, turning a reactive operation into a proactive one.

Connect with David Corts on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidcorts