The Digital Restaurant

Send us a textAre delivery marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats about to be disrupted by ChatGPT?Carl welcomes Atul Sood, former McDonald’s and Kitchen United executive, to explore how AI and automation are reshaping the food world — from ChatGPT’s new app integrations to robotic hospital kitchens.Together they cover:DoorDash’s new Dot delivery robot and smart scale (2m 15)https://foodondemand.com/10012025/doordash-ceo-tony-xu-unveils-delivery-robot-and-smartscale/How ChatGPT’s App SDK could eliminate the need for delivery apps altogether (6m 35)https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/openai-launches-apps-inside-of-chatgpt/Aramark’s robotic kitchen for hospital meals (14m 15)https://chainstoreage.com/aramark-invests-food-service-robot-health-care-facilitiesInsights from Toast’s 2025 restaurant report (16m 55)https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/data/2025-voice-of-restaurant-industry-surveyHow bot armies may have fueled Cracker Barrel’s viral logo controversy (22m 45)https://www.nrn.com/casual-dining/cracker-barrel-s-logo-controversy-was-driven-by-bots-what-operators-should-learn-from-thisIt’s a packed episode on the intersection of AI, automation, and restaurant innovation — and what it all means for operators, brands, and consumers.Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textThis week on The Digital Restaurant, Carl is joined by Jeremy Julian, host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast and CRO of CBS NorthStar, for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of restaurant technology.We dive into highlights from FSTEC, explore new benchmarks from InTouch Insight’s QSR report on voice AI & kiosks, and tackle the perennial build vs buy question that every brand faces. We also look at ChowBus’ surprising pivot from delivery platform to full-stack tech provider and dig into the often-overlooked value of digital menu boards.From hospitality’s enduring role to the realities of ROI, this episode is packed with insights operators and tech providers alike won’t want to miss.Timestamps01:00 – Insights from FSTEC – tech must enhance guest & staff experience05:00 – Voice AI in QSRs – findings from InTouch Insight’s report15:50 – Build vs Buy – hidden costs and ROI realities20:50 – ChowBus pivots from delivery to full-stack tech platform24:50 – The untapped potential of digital menu boardsSupport the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textThis week, Carl welcomes special guest host Markus Pineyro of Oomi  Kitchen to dive into five major stories shaping restaurants and technology.Is first-party delivery really the answer? We explore the economics, customer experience, and hidden costs behind running your own fleet.Burger King’s security scare: An ethical hacker exposes vulnerabilities at RBI. What lessons should operators learn about digital risk and communication?DoorDash’s commerce platform expansion: Why their SaaS-like approach could reshape how independents think about tech stacks.FSTEC’s Tech Guide: Fresh survey data reveals gaps in loyalty, reviews, and back-of-house investment. Surprising stats operators need to see.Starbucks’ AI inventory control: From clipboards to cameras, we break down how imagery-based systems could transform accuracy and cash control.Plus, Markus shares the Oomi journey and what it means to be a digitally native restaurant.00:00 – Welcome & guest intro (Markus, Oomi Digital Kitchen) 01:00 – Q1: Is first-party delivery really the way to go? 06:00 – Q2: Burger King security flaw – lessons for operators 12:00 – Q3: DoorDash expands with new commerce platform 16:00 – Q4: FSTEC Tech Guide – surprising operator survey data 22:00 – Q5: Starbucks tests AI inventory control 26:00 – Markus on Oomi’s model & digital-native kitchens 28:30 – Wrap-up & how to connect with MarkusSupport the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textThis week on The Digital Restaurant, Carl is joined by Jennifer Kern, CMO of Qu, for a fast-moving conversation about the headlines shaping restaurants, technology, and consumer behavior.We kick off with a surprising stat: half of adults are ordering kids meals. (01:00) What does this say about QSR value wars, portion sizes, and how brands like CAVA and Starbucks are reframing value through experience, not just price?Next, we examine Chipotle’s partnership with Zipline (05:00), which involves testing drone delivery in Dallas. Is this more than PR? Carl breaks down the operational hurdles, costs, and what it means for scale.From there, we dive into talent and tech shifts: Duolingo’s social media star Zaria Parvez joins DoorDash (10:00), bringing 16M followers’ worth of creativity, and voice AI startups raise fresh funding (14:00)— even as Taco Bell and McDonald’s wrestle with reliability.Finally, we conclude with culture and agility: how restaurants capitalized on Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s engagement (21:00) to deliver playful, real-time marketing moments.Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textIn this episode of The Digital Restaurant, Carl is joined by Emmy Award–winning storyteller Mike Duffy of Yum Crunch. Together they break down five timely stories shaping restaurants and tech:McDonald’s bets on web ordering through DoorDash—does convenience outweigh control?Yum Brands’ Byte platform fuels $9B in digital sales and rewrites the restaurant tech stack.Social listening lessons: Cracker Barrel’s backlash vs. KFC’s potato wedge comeback.Drone delivery’s tipping point—new FAA rules, Texas rollouts, pizza robots in LA, and the Ghost Kitchen 3.0 vision.The power and peril of influencers—when viral moments can make or break restaurants.Tune in for insights on how digital disruption, AI, and influence are shaping the future of food.00:50 – Big Macs without an app? McDonald’s and DoorDash team up on a web-based ordering channel. Does this remove friction or hand too much control to a third party?06:20 – How Byte is fueling Yum’s digital revolution Yum Brands surpasses $9B in digital sales with its in-house AI platform Byte, reshaping marketing, operations, and delivery.14:35 – Social listening: when to hear and when to act KFC wins big with a potato wedge comeback while Cracker Barrel faces backlash over redesigns. Lessons in consumer engagement.22:55 – Drone delivery is set to take off Regulations shift, GoTo Foods tests drones in Texas, Serve robots deliver pizzas in LA, and Ghost Kitchens 3.0 may be on the horizon.32:00 – Should operators be influencers? The risks and rewards of social media influence: a San Francisco chef’s career collapses after a viral TikTok, while CPK and Pinky Cole show how to turn moments into opportunities.Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textCarl returns from a July break with Bernadette Heier of Food on Demand to unpack five stories that signal where restaurant tech is heading next.01:00 – Olo acquired by Thoma Bravo • $2B all-cash deal • A chance to reset outside the public markets • Could this unlock faster innovation?04:30 – OpenTable’s AI Concierge • Built with OpenAI and Perplexity • Answers 80% of diner questions • Visibility now depends on how up-to-date your listing is09:00 – Golden Corral’s Flybuy-powered pickup • Off-premises rebrand: Golden Corral Favorites • Flybuy tracks customer approach to time food perfectly • Reflects the rise of drive-thru-style formats from legacy brands12:05 – AEO: Answer Engine Optimization • 70% of Google searches now end with no click • Video builds audience—but not search visibility • Q&A-style web content is the key to getting found by AI18:20 – VenHub at LAX • Automated grab-and-go using robotic arms • $250K startup cost, $300M in preorders • A new frontier in frictionless convenienceSupport the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textThis week on The Digital Restaurant, I’m joined by a new co-host — Alex, an AI avatar — as we break down five headlines showing how delivery, automation, and AI are shaping the next wave of restaurant operations:01:10 – Olive Garden’s off-premise engine is hummingUber Direct integration, buy-one-take-one offers, and nearly 7% same-store sales growth from delivery alone05:25 – Yum China rolls out Q Smartt A voice-activated wearable assistant for managers, designed to surface operational insights in real time11:05 – GPT failed at report building QSR’s Mary Pillow Thompson spent a weekend trying to automate daily ops. The issue wasn’t the model—it was the lack of orchestration13:30 – DoorDash acquires Symbiosis for $175M A strategic bet on local commerce advertising, with closed-loop attribution from ad to order17:45 – Coco raises $80M to scale delivery bots Semi-autonomous, human-guided, and aiming for 10,000 units deployed by 2026Quote of the week: “Coco isn’t replacing humans — they’re redeploying them smarter.”Full episode: https://thedigitalrestaurant.buzzsprout.com#restauranttech #AI #offpremise #DoorDash #OliveGarden #CocoRobotics #YumChina #InvisibleTechnologiesShoutouts: Zach Rash, Joey Simons, Sam Altman, Ryan Graves, Mary Pillow Thompson, Alex (AI co-host)Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textWhat’s Inside This Episode?00:00 – Live from the National Restaurant Show Carl visits Chicago and joins Rich Faltot at Point B’s new Restaurant Technology Innovation Center.“We're stood in a room with 70 screens — and not one is for show.”01:00 – Why restaurant tech stacks are broken Legacy systems, data silos, fragmented integrations, and the cost of doing nothing.POS replacements are “open heart surgery” for restaurantsTransformation takes 18–36 months on averageSuccess requires aligned leadership and future-facing thinking“The best stack isn’t best-in-class. It’s best for you.”06:00 – Customer obsession: the north star for tech decisions Rich outlines how leading brands maintain focus—on the guest experience, not shiny tools.The best operators spend time in-store, watching, listening, learningEvery tool must make things easier for the team and better for the customer“If the tech’s not helping your guest, it’s not helping your business.”13:00 – Point B’s ‘Digital Safari’ and art-of-the-possible workshopsReal-world immersion through drive-thru, kiosk, and delivery UX testingCross-industry inspiration (NASCAR, Disney) drives better solutions“We get rid of mental boundaries so they can dream—just scary enough.”20:00 – Inside the tech center Carl takes a walking tour of the new Tech Center, featuring:Multiple full-stack POS environments: Toast, PAR, Qu, Aloha and moreIntegrated back-of-house systems: Restaurant365, SynergySuite, Decision LogicTraining and deployment environments built for test, learn, and change management“We're not here to sell tech. We're here to help restaurants get it right.”Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textThis week on The Digital Restaurant, Carl is joined by restaurant real estate expert and 10Rep founder Kyle Inserra. Together they explore the rise of kitchen automation, curbside robotics, and why DoorDash is pausing its Voice AI. Packed with insights from the National Restaurant Show, this episode covers the latest in tech, data, and operations shaping the restaurant world.Timestamps:00:00:40 – AI Dominates the National Restaurant ShowAI matures beyond hype as operators start real implementationBack-of-house robotics everywhere—from fryers to vid machinesTariff uncertainty stalls investment for some tech vendors 🗨️ “I saw so much automation for the back of house—everyone was there this year.” — Carl00:05:10 – AutoLane Launches Curbside OS for Autonomous PickupThink of it as air traffic control for self-driving food pickupsTesting in SF and Austin ahead of Tesla robo-taxi launchesCuts pickup time from 2 minutes to 1 — massive implications 🗨️ “It’s choreography for self-driving cars—and it's coming fast.” — Carl00:09:40 – Wingstop Goes All-In on Smart KitchensProprietary AI forecasts demand and halves cook timesRollout success across franchise system — rare in the spaceShows power of in-house tech stacks over integrations 🗨️ “Wingstop isn’t trying to beat the competition—they’re trying to beat themselves.” — Kyle00:12:10 – DoorDash Trend Report: Robots, TikTok & Global PalatesMen more likely to trust AI-cooked meals; Gen Z shops by photoGarlic naan, pad thai, miso soup among top 10 DoorDash ordersHalf of users take 5–10 minutes deciding what to eat 🗨️ “If you aren’t in the carousel, you’re not in the consideration set.” — Carl00:20:00 – DoorDash Pauses Voice AI, Names Preferred Tech PartnersVoice AI project shelved—for now—due to underperformanceIntegration partners now include Toast, Square, Otter, CheckmateMore scrutiny coming for tech vendors to meet Doordash standards 🗨️ “Most GenAI projects fail because they’re poorly tested—DoorDash just pressed pause.” — CarlSupport the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.

Send us a textIn this week’s episode of The Digital Restaurant, Carl is joined by Alayna Sullivan, Senior Director of Corporate Comms at Olo, fresh from Food on Demand. Together, they cover five big stories shaping the restaurant and off-premise landscape, including DoorDash’s mega acquisitions, Chipotle's new catering pilot with Olo, and the rising footprint of Wonder.Timestamps:00:01:30 – Chipotle x Olo Catering PartnershipChipotle pilots Olo’s Catering Plus with promising early featuresAverage catering check size = $350+ 🗨️ “We are going to see more and more improvements when it comes to the digital interface for catering.” — Carl00:05:00 – DoorDash Acquires Deliveroo & SevenRooms$5B+ in acquisitions as DoorDash shifts toward platform dominanceSevenRooms' CRM tools broaden DoorDash’s value prop 🗨️ “DoorDash is betting the next wave of restaurant tech is about owning the guest journey.” — Carl00:10:20 – Huddle House’s Off-Premise RebootThree new footprints designed for off-premise and drive-thruEven breakfast gets a modern makeover 🗨️ “This is a blueprint for aging brands to boost frequency and convenience.” — Alayna00:13:20 – Black Box Data: Industry OutlookTraffic down, oversaturation looming, value now a critical consumer trigger 🗨️ “When joy is greater than fear, economic growth begins.” — Lisa Miller (via Carl)00:21:35 – Wonder Raises $600M, Hits $7B ValuationRapid expansion plans, full-stack food experience, and smart acquisitions 🗨️ “Wonder is playing in spaces like ghost kitchens that haven’t worked for others—yet investors are all in.” — Alayna👉 Follow, rate & review wherever you listen, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube!Support the show🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!📖 Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.