Embracing AI without killing the restaurant budget

There is no buzzier buzzword than AI when it comes to restaurant technology. Every restaurant industry segment — from fast casuals to QSRs to pizzerias — is embracing artificial intelligence in some way, somewhere within the enterprise.

The big quandary each share is how to embrace without paying a high price.

At a panel talk at this year's Fast Casual Executive Summit revealed, AI is being deployed and woven into everything, from back-end operations to social media outreach, and more than a few brands are making it happen without creating a huge budget deficit.

The summit, held in Louisville, Kentucky in October, is run by Networld Media Group and draws executives from leading brands to share successful ways to build and manage restaurants. Networld Media Group is the parent company of Fastcasual, Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb. Its next event is the Self-Service Innovation Summit Dec. 4-6 in Miami, Florida.

The panel session featured Steve Lieber, VP of franchise development at BurgerFi, Ray Sears, director of local marketing for PJ Restaurants (Papa Johns), Ryan Wilkinson, VP of marketing at Primanti Bros. Restaurant and MJ Worsham, director of restaurant technology at Five Guys.

It was moderated by Ryan Gaylor, VP of restaurant vertical, at Upside, which sponsored the panel talk. Upside is a two-sided marketplace with about 50,000 merchant partners on its platform. It leverages AI to generate tailored cashback incentives to drive new and lapsed customers to its merchant partners.

In kicking off the session, "Embracing AI Without Killing Your Budget," Gaylor noted how versatile AI technology is and the many benefits — from reducing costs and errors to improving customer satisfaction and enhancing the overall customer experience — and polled the panel participants on AI strategy and focus.

"I think a lot of people — when they start thinking about AI — they think of capital-intensive investments and things that they need to do. Are they going to be able to get through it? Are they going to be able to get the ROI that they need? And it's a large project and initiative that people need to look at to overcome as just a quick announcement," Gaylor said.

The Five Guys AI strategy

Five Guys, which has 1,842 locations across 24 countries, is all about embracing AI for efficiency and enhancement. Every year every brand adds to a restaurant manager's job, noted Worsham, and that job gets more taxing.

"How can we use AI to make that easier so that they can spend more time focusing on the guest and the product and not on managing tech and reports and stuff like that?" he said, adding the brand is an early adopter of tech that enhances the guest experience as well as the employee experience.

He recalled how during the COVID-19 pandemic staffing was hard to find and retain and the brand deployed technology to handle call-in orders. The staff loves it and it's proved to have both quantitative benefits as well as qualitative rewards.

"So we're looking at tech in a number of different places, whether it be automated testing, whether it be using that automated sort of testing platform to do audits with various pain points that we could not do with a human or we could not, we could do, but wildly inefficient."

The goal with AI is pulling together all the data, asking questions and pulling answers.

"That is what I think everybody wants to get to. I think that the industry is, you know, getting there. I think we have a lot to learn from retail, as we always do. You know, what they're able to do, specifically predicting with off premise stuff like that. But at some point, you know, I think there's no harm in starting at the bottom because anything really helps," he said.

A big AI success key is getting buy-in from everyone.

"And once you have that buy-in, then really the sky's the limit on fully advancing to that, you know, top level crazy AI that we all envision."

A good kick off point, according to Wortham, is starting with the AI that is available and working with tech partners also embracing AI.

Then focus on what he called "low-hanging fruit."

"Things that enhance your existing systems," he said. "If you have to add somebody to your tech stack, find somebody so that you are future-proofed. So think about that sort of chess game. 2 or 3 moves ahead."

Primanti Bro's AI view is all about efficiency

During the panel Wilkinson tapped into ChatGPT to get the answer to the one word that describes the technology.

"What ChatGPT spit back was efficiency and that is true. I mean, that's what we're doing with it, whether it's true AI or it's some automation or machine learning or whatever, it's all about providing efficiencies to our team so that we can do our core job," he said. The brand is known for its enormous sandwich boasting French Fries and a vinegar-based coleslaw. It is a 40-unit chain based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The brand needs to compete with the 'big dogs,' but doesn't necessarily have the budget of 'big dogs.'

"So, we have two roads," he said. "We have to either think a little bit differently or we have to be smarter than they are. So, what we are focused on is [that] we are radically committed to trying to deliver a great fan experience. And so, when it comes to AI and going back to saying efficiency, right, we're using AI to help drive efficiencies with the support staff at the home office."

The brand's home office is rolling out AI to drive faster reporting and answer hard-hitting questions and gather much needed data.

The brand uses a customer satisfaction tool using AI to share insight with operators about things to do based on reviews to improve the customer experience. At one location it might be a better greeter experience, at another it's cleaner bathrooms.

"And so just kind of automating that process and using that technology helps to deliver on that commitment to a fan experience," Wilkinson said.

"Where we're able to utilize AI from the marketing side is also to be able to see things that I can't normally see. So specifically with lapsed customers and through our loyalty provider looking and trying to understand how we're able to target customers at that right moment with the right message, which is always the key to any marketing initiative."

The AI technology helps the brand take a good look at consumer behavior and marry it with the right marketing effort.

"From a marketing side, the tools that I try to stack up to get us to our year over year comp goals are going to be the things that are going to allow me to be a little bit smarter," Wilkinson said. "And oftentimes that's seeing the things that I can't see on a day to day. And we utilize the different technology partners and some amount of AI to be able to do that."

AI at BurgerFi

At BurgerFi International, which also includes the Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza brand, AI is all about productivity, according to Lieber, who happens to be a certified pizzaiolo from Italy.

"I'm using ChatGPT for content creation, for LinkedIn, advertising, for franchisee recruitment for the new, especially for the Anthony's brand, which is new to franchising. So, it's helping with making great LinkedIn ads. It teaches me what hashtags to use to get the maximum exposure. So, productivity and content creation are what I'm using AI for," he said.

He noted his favorite role at the brand is bussing tables during an opening and listening to guests talk about their first experience at a BurgerFi.

The technology is helping him handle four hours of work in less than an hour.

"You know, I did a test a few weeks ago and I redid my job title. I redid a list of daily activities. I redid seven LinkedIn posts for that day for different times of the day, checklists for people on my team of what I wanted them to be working on, and I was able to do all that in 52 minutes," he said, adding he's able to put a bunch of reports into ChatGPT and ask it for a summary.

It's also helping him make personal connections via email with restaurant managers in different countries, such as Saudi Arabia.

"And so, I wrote the ChatGPT letter, the email I asked ChatGPT to translate it into Arabic for me, and I sent both the Arabic and the English. Last week I was talking to Korea, South Korea, and I did the same thing. I just find that when you take that little extra step, that little extra effort to speak to them in their own language... it builds the relationship. And it really has been very powerful to me. And again, I'm doing all of that on a $20 ChatGPT premium program."

The key to finding benefits from AI is encouraging everyone to tinker with the technology.

"You know, I think that everybody needs to play with [AI], in your company," he said. "Encourage all your teams to do it and play with it and see what, what works for your brand. It's been extremely useful for us."

Papa Johns AI focuses on customer experience

At Papa Johns franchises the AI strategy is tightly connected to customer experience and customer satisfaction, according to Sears, a Papa Johns franchisee.

Sears has 33 years of pizza experience, 11 years as an independent pizza owner and 18 years as operating partner with Papa Johns. He grew his Papa Johns franchise from three stores to 14 in less than 10 years with annual sales of $12 million.

"We're trying to find that balance of what a customer would tolerate, particularly through something like automated ordering order taking as opposed to a call center or the person directly over the phone," he said.

The brand is experimenting with automated order taking at some stores and trying to determine the customer threshold of not liking that. It's also trying to get better when it comes to customer predictability and predictive ordering.

"We have the data; we have the history. So, we're working to make it to where it's not wasteful."

Papa John's is also tapping AI when it comes to labor forecasting and drive dispatching to gain efficiency as well as faster delivery.

"Surveys tell us after 35 to 40 minutes, quality is greatly reduced. So, we use those formulas there for our delivery purposes."

At Papa John's, like every restaurant brand, there are new customers, infrequent occasional and regular customers, heavy and super heavy customers. The brand is on a quest to use AI to determine best incentives and rewards depending on the customer segment.

"We hope to be a leader in the category, a crowded category," he said.