In this episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, Matt Wampler sits down with Tim Martin, Co-Founder and Owner of BoxBox, a new Denver restaurant concept built around sharing food and connecting people. Tim isn’t just launching a brand, he’s building one of the most technologically advanced single-unit restaurants in the country. He explains how AI became his “first employee,” helping him document hundreds of hours of recipe R&D, organize his menu and brand vision, and even guide him through vibe-coding a completely custom, headless tech stack with no traditional POS. Together, Matt and Tim unpack how he mirrored kiosk orders to his team in real time, created a fully modifier-based menu architecture, built forecasting and prep systems in Google Cloud, and used AI to accelerate every part of operations without sacrificing hospitality. Tim also shares the emotional side of opening BoxBox, the cultural importance of designing a brand around shared meals, and why he believes AI creates an unprecedented competitive advantage for independent operators. This deep, inspiring conversation reveals what’s possible when a single-unit entrepreneur embraces AI as a true collaborator—and what the future of restaurant operations might look like because of it.

Episode Links

00:00 Intro
02:49 Tim Martin / BoxBox
05:01 20 Years in Restaurants & the ChatGPT Switch
06:29 The Emotional Rollercoaster of Opening
07:40 What a Headless Tech Stack Means
08:14 Modifier-Only Menu Architecture
09:38 Ordering Without a Traditional POS
11:04 Real-Time Kiosk Mirroring
12:20 Homegrown Hardware Solutions
14:06 Struggling With APIs (Until AI)
15:21 Letting AI Teach You
16:25 Building BigQuery and Dashboards
17:14 Recording All R&D for AI
18:53 Training AI on Brand and Voice
19:50 Custom Forecasting Tools
21:04 AI as a Collaborator
22:22 Onboarding AI as an Employee
24:29 Building Their Own Tech Stack
25:52 Competitive Advantage for Independents
30:01 AI Food Photography
30:24 What AI Can’t Replace
32:35 Practical Culinary Uses for AI
34:01 BoxBox Mission & Concept
35:47 Shared Meals vs. Individual Meals
39:02 Chipotle’s Shareables Enter the Chat
42:25 The Gap in 4–8 Person Meals
43:02 Has His Life Gotten Worse?
45:27 Building Boundaries as a Founder
47:09 100 Days of Iteration
49:09 Tech, Culture, and Human Connection
52:19 AI, Labor, and the Future of Work
53:20 Tim’s AI Playbook for Operators
57:05 “Threaten Your AI”
58:54 Where to Find BoxBox
59:25 Outro