Restaurant AI

About Restaurant AI

Restaurant AI with Matt Wampler is your weekly deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on the restaurant and hospitality industry. Hosted by tech entrepreneur and industry insider Matt Wampler, this podcast explores how AI is reshaping everything from kitchen operations and customer service to marketing, labor management, and the guest experience. Whether you’re a restaurant operator, tech innovator, or hospitality enthusiast, each episode delivers insights, expert interviews, and real-world use cases that help you stay ahead in a competitive and tech-driven landscape.

Publisher

Matt Wampler

Category

arts · business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Jun 2025

Latest episode

27 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

44 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Oct 2026

   Your AI Thinks You’re a Farmer: Patrick Bobrukiewicz on Teaching AI to Speak Restaurant

   How many franchise groups have a VP of AI? Patrick Bobrukiewicz might be one of one. Patrick is VP of AI Strategy and Innovation at Thrive Restaurant Group, the Wichita based operator behind 200 plus restaurants across 18 states, including one of the largest Applebee's franchise groups in the country. He started as a line cook, spent two decades in restaurant tech, and now builds the data brain that turns POS, P&L, and labor data into decisions operators actually use. Matt and Patrick get into why restaurants spent 30 years handing control of their data to vendors and how Thrive is taking it back, pulling 60 disparate systems into one place. Patrick explains the document called Growing Cilantro that has nothing to do with farming, why AI fails on your language before it ever fails on your data, and the P&L fix that cost about five dollars in code and bought back ten hours every period. They also cover the Applebee's CEO speech about a cash register that reframed restaurant IT forever, why great tools should fit operators like a fighter jet fits a pilot, what a 24 year old proved by building his own ticketing system, and the snowstorm call that shows where all of this is heading. Show notes and timestamps: clearcogs.com/podcast

2. 

   29 Sept 2026

   NCR Voyix President on Rebuilding the World's Biggest POS from Scratch

   The company that started with the cash register in 1884 just rebuilt its flagship restaurant POS from the ground up. Benny Tadele, EVP and President of Restaurants at NCR Voyix, joins Matt Wampler to explain why, and to make a case most operators will not expect from the man running the most deployed POS in the industry: stop making POS decisions. The terminal went from the center of the restaurant to one channel among many, and the decision that actually matters is the platform underneath it. Benny came up through the payments world and joined NCR Voyix after the 2023 split that turned an eight billion dollar conglomerate into a focused restaurant and retail company. He led the Aloha Next rebuild: microservices, cloud to edge, offline first, and a UI that brands can design themselves. In this episode, we get into: The three things to evaluate before committing to any restaurant technology foundation Why one sellout currently means three manual updates, and what connected systems change Open vs closed ecosystems, and why the answer differs for SMBs and enterprise brands AI for admin, humans for hospitality, and why the best restaurant AI is invisible to the guest The four stages of restaurant AI: record, understand, recommend, execute The weekend Benny spent trying to get an AI agent to order food, and what it revealed about agentic commerce Whether you're an operator staring down a POS contract, a multi-unit brand planning a tech stack for the next decade, or a builder trying to understand where restaurant technology is actually heading, this conversation reframes the biggest purchasing decision in the industry. Full show notes and every episode: https://www.clearcogs.com/podcast

3. 

   4 Sept 2026

   R.AI Podcast Special | Fresh KDS x Groucho's: Building the Restaurant Operating System

   In this special episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, host Matt Wampler, Co-Founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, sits down with Deric Rosenbaum, President and CTO of Groucho's Deli, and David Corts, CEO of Fresh Technology, for the show's first three-way roundtable. Groucho's Deli has been making sandwiches since 1941, before the interstate system existed. Deric spent 26 years building its franchise infrastructure, its distribution company, and now its technology platform, turning an 85 year old brand with more than 30 locations across three states into one of the most AI-forward operations in the industry. David spent 30 years in enterprise software before betting on the kitchen, and his Fresh KDS now sits at the center of it. Together with ClearCOGS, they are building a connected back of house operating system, and this is the unfiltered version of how it actually works. Matt, Deric, and David get into why the tech stack is dead and the operating system model is replacing it, the four layers every brand has to get right before AI stops hallucinating, how Groucho's built Frank, an AI agent franchisees can query on demand, why forecasting is just algorithms and math, which SaaS tools survive the coming consolidation, and the question that opened the show: is AI making us smarter or dumber? Whether you're an operator drowning in disconnected tools, a franchise leader dragging a legacy brand into the AI era, or a technology founder deciding whether to play nice with other vendors, this one shows you what the future of the back of house looks like from the people building it. Connect with Deric Rosenbaum on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deric-rosenbaum-grouchos/ Learn more about Groucho's Deli: https://www.grouchos.com Connect with David Corts on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcorts/ Learn more about Fresh KDS: https://www.freshkds.com Connect with Matt Wampler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjwampler Learn more about ClearCOGS: https://www.clearcogs.com

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

21 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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