Carl Orsbourn, co-author of “Digital Restaurant” and VP at Invisible, reveals why most restaurant AI initiatives crash and burn in this candid conversation about the future of foodservice technology. From his pre-pandemic research documenting the industry’s digital transformation to his current work training large language models for enterprises, Orsbourn shares insider insights on what separates successful AI implementations from expensive failures.
Key Topics Covered:
- Restaurant Digital Transformation: How COVID-19 accelerated the shift from retail-focused to e-commerce-first restaurant operations
- AI Implementation Strategy: Why starting with business outcomes beats feature-driven technology adoption
- Data Quality Crisis: How bad data kills even the best AI models and what restaurants must fix first
- Tech Stack Fragmentation: The “ugly Lego building” problem plaguing restaurant technology infrastructure
- Labor Optimization: Using AI to keep general managers out of back offices and focused on guest experience
- Customer Experience Evolution: How AI agents will personalize dining recommendations better than Amazon’s homepage
- Chatbot Reality Check: Why enterprise chatbots perform worse than ChatGPT and how to benchmark AI performance
- Future Restaurant Operations: Vision for holistic AI systems that automatically adjust staffing, pricing, and capacity during operational challenges
Orsbourn also discusses the shift from productivity-focused AI (“do more with less”) to growth-focused applications (“what if you had 100 more team members”), the emergence of AI agents as customer representatives, and why restaurants need platform thinking instead of point solutions.
Whether you’re a restaurant executive, technology vendor, or industry observer, this conversation provides actionable insights for navigating the AI revolution in foodservice while avoiding the pitfalls that doom most digital transformation projects.
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