Join us on today's Restaurant Tech Trends, where Pepper Lunch Restaurants' Troy Hooper sits down with our co-founder Justin Foster to discuss how technology enables guests, franchisees, and franchisors to create a winning formula for success. 📺Watch and Learn📺:👉 How technology is helping guests enjoy Japanese-style hospitality in North America while helping franchisees streamline operations👉 Which tech is leading to $5 increases in average check😮👉 The three W's restaurant leaders need to track to ensure tech launches work👉 Which technologies Troy sees as the most transformational in the industry over the next 3-5 years. Hint: 🤖 🤖🤖 is on the list!

Another great interview with a senior tech leader in the restaurant space... today, Incept AI co-founder Justin Foster sits down with Krish Gopalakrishnan, fractional CTO and former SVP Digital Technology & Data at CAVA. Prior to that, Krish was also part of the core team working on the Panera Bread 2.0 transformation. He's been around the block and lays down his thoughts here. 📺Watch and learn📺:👉 Which digital technologies helped Panera reach 40% of total sales through digital channels👉 How loyalty tech helped drive a 36% increase in digital sales at CAV👉 Which digital technologies Krish sees as the most impactful over the next five years

On today's Restaurant Tech Trends, we sit down with ConnectedFresh Co-Founder and CEO Jake Simon to talk about all things connected sensors. Temperature, fill, leaks, cool down logs... we've got you covered. Jake covers:👉 How sensors extend far beyond temperature to help operators solve their most pressing problems👉 Why a connected sensor ecosystem dramatically improves logging, helping catch problems earlier while aiding in compliance (15% to 98% improvement!)👉 Notification best practices: why summarization and aggregation helps operators fight noise fatigue👉 PLUS, Jake shares some entrepreneurial lessons learned along the way as ConnectedFresh moved from the garage into early scaling mode.

PART 2 OF 2: Although we are in the restaurant #voiceai space ourselves, we believe in rising tides; that's why Incept AI's co-founder Justin Foster sat down with The Wendy's Company's Michael Chorey to talk about the success Wendy's is having with its #FreshAI rollout in partnership with Google. Without a doubt, Wendy's is a huge champion of voice AI. More importantly, this is a brand that champions authentic, meaningful, on-brand guest experiences. This wide-ranging interview is presented in two parts. This is Part 2.📺Watch and learn📺:👉 The hidden secret that voice AI can bring to any QSR brand that has the potential to revolutionize the way business in the drive-thru is done

👉 How Mike tackles the thorny question of voice AI's impact on labor - you'll get a heartwarming story and a new perspective on this topic.

👉 Mike's approach to bringing franchisees along on the voice AI journey👉 Why Mike sees success evolving beyond traditional metrics - and what he thinks the winning brands of the future will focus on instead

PART 1: Although we are in the restaurant #voiceAI space ourselves, we believe in rising tides; that's why Incept AI's co-founder Justin Foster sat down with The Wendy's Company's Michael Chorey to talk about the success Wendy's is having with its #FreshAI rollout in partnership with Google. Without a doubt, Wendy's is a huge champion of voice AI technology. More importantly, this is a brand that champions authentic, meaningful, on-brand guest experiences. This wide-ranging interview is presented in two parts.

📺Watch and learn📺:

👉 How FreshAI grew from its humble beginnings in Mike's garage into a program scheduled to launch in 500-600 Wendy's restaurants by the end of 2025

👉 What Mike thinks has propelled FreshAI to success. [Hint: if you think it's technology, you'd be wrong].

👉 How Wendy's and Google split the load of running FreshAI

👉 The approach Wendy's took when involving humans in processing AI orders [and we agree it's the only correct way to tackle this problem, btw]

👉 Mike's hot take on the accuracy of the Wendy's FreshAI agent

🥂Congrats🥂 to the team at ClearCOGS for their seed raise announced today! Incept AI co-founder Justin Foster sat down and talked with ClearCOGS' co-founder & CEO Matt Wampler about the raise and some of the latest trends in restaurant tech on this latest episode of Restaurant Tech Trends. 📺Watch and learn📺:👉 How a restaurant operator conceived AI-driven forecasting👉 How tariffs could impact restaurants of all stripes👉 The 3 "R's" of restaurant tech go-to-market success👉 Matt's prediction for which technology will be the most impactful over the next 12-24 months, and why you may not even know it's there#restauranttech #restauranttechnology #voiceai #AIforecasting

What does it take to make restaurant tech initiatives succeed? Wayne Davis shares his thoughts with Incept AI co-founder Justin Foster based on his time at Restaurant Brands International and Inspire, where he helped lead tech initiatives for both the Popeyes and Buffalo Wild Wings Brands. 📺Watch and learn📺:👉 How Wayne helped create two big tech wins at these iconic brands👉 The three-step process that anchors successful tech rollouts👉 Why AI remains a double-edged sword in the QSR space

On today's Restaurant Tech Trends, Justin Foster connects with Ronald Dorsten, former Chief Operations Transformation Officer at 🥩Steak n Shake🍦and former Director of Worldwide Innovation at 🍔McDonald's!🍔 📺 Watch and Learn📺to discover:👉 How McDonald's leveraged investments in frontier technology to create lasting value for the chain👉 Why Ron thinks the industry should take a simpler approach to robotics in the back-of-house👉 Why you need to think from an operator's perspective first and foremost when launching tech

Phil Crawford is undeniably one of the 📈most influential figures📈 in restaurant & hospitality tech. 🍔 🤖 He is currently the Global F&B + Hospitality Head of Unified Commerce at Adyen, and previously was the CTO at CKE Restaurants, Inc. and CTO/CIO at Godiva Chocolatier, Shake Shack, and Yard House Restaurants. Lucky us: he joined Incept AI co-founder Justin Foster to share his thoughts on the technology and business strategies needed to win in this fast-changing industry.

📺Watch and Learn📺:👉 Phil's hot take on Wonder's $600M raise and the DoorDash acquisitions of Deliveroo ($3.9B) and SevenRooms ($1.2B)👉 What Phil sees as the single greatest technology challenge facing restaurants today👉 Which technology Phil sees as an overrated short-term play, but may pan out in the long run (hint: it's not 🤖AI🤖)👉 Phil's take on how CTOs should balance accepting the stability of legacy infrastructure while leaving room to innovate👉 What prompted Phil to *make the leap* from the technology C-suite to running an entire business unit on the 🟢 green side 🟢 (💵💵💵)

We could not be more 🙏thankful🙏 to be receiving advice from such a world-class CIO. In this interview, Donagh sits down with Incept AI co-founder Justin Foster to talk about the keys to driving digital transformation, de-risking technology rollouts, and the importance of focusing on frontline workers whenever tech is involved. In PART ONE of this two-part interview, 📺Watch and Learn:📺👉 The 3 constituencies that need value from an innovation in order for it to succeed (hint:👩‍🍳👩‍🍳👩‍🍳)👉 The golden rule Donagh uses to prevent tech from overwhelming a brand's ability to absorb change👉 How Donagh's teams built cutting-edge infrastructure without ditching legacy systems