AI is everywhere in the restaurant industry conversation right now. Every brand wants to know
how to leverage it, and every vendor has a pitch for why their solution is the one that will move
the needle. But according to Jeff Wayman, Director of Enterprise Sales at Telaid, the real
story is less about chasing the newest technology and more about getting the basics right
first.
"The numbers don't lie," Wayman said. "The ability for AI to actually generate ROI of your
solution is critical." And that ROI, he argues, depends far more on foundation than on flash.
The Biggest Mistakes in Tech Stack Modernization
When restaurant brands modernize their technology, Wayman sees the same issues come up
again and again. The level of support required and the level of integration across various tech
stack components is consistently underestimated. Managing that complexity is a major hurdle
on its own.
Add new solutions into the mix without sufficient piloting or testing, and the risk compounds
quickly. "That could really cause a lot of harm," Wayman said, "lot of damage in terms of the
overall operational ecosystem within these restaurants."
Why Foundation Comes Before Innovation
If there is one theme that runs through the entire conversation, it is this: you cannot build
something sustainable on an unstable base.
"We see it time and again where it's very hard to build a building, build a house, build a
skyscraper without a solid foundation," Wayman said. Too often, restaurant organizations try
to layer new technology onto infrastructure that is already fractured, and the support behind it
is already questionable. The result, predictably, does not work very well.
When Wayman walks into a 500-location brand, two things stand out immediately. The first is
talking directly to the crew, the restaurant managers, and the franchisees. "They are your best
level of feedback, best level of input," he said, "because they live it every day in terms of
what's working and what's not working." It sounds obvious, but it is frequently overlooked. The
second is the stability of the existing framework in the restaurant itself, which Wayman calls
just as important as the feedback loop.
The Order Channel Explosion
Part of what makes the foundation so critical today is how much more complex the order
intake process has become. A decade or two ago, restaurants typically had one or two order
points. Now, crew members and managers are fielding input from online ordering, the front
counter, kiosks, and drive-through, often simultaneously. Managing all of that within a single
technology ecosystem is no small task, and it raises the stakes for getting infrastructure right.
Where Brands Get It Wrong on Support
Restaurant readiness and IT infrastructure stability are, in Wayman's view, the most
consistently underestimated factors. "If you don't have a consistent foundation, it really does
not make good business sense to layer more solutions on top of a fractured ecosystem," he
said.
Training matters just as much. A solution is only as good as its execution on the ground, and
execution depends on the crew actually understanding and using the tools they are given.
Restaurant leaders are constantly balancing financial objectives against day-to-day
operations, and that balance looks different depending on what the organization prioritizes
most: customer experience, speed and throughput, or some combination of both. Regardless
of the priority, it always comes down to a tension between operations, marketing, finance, and
IT.
The Truth About AI ROI
Wayman is direct about where AI currently stands in the restaurant industry. "Some of these
AI concepts out there today are being over-advertised and probably over-marketed in terms of
the true ROI and the payback that's currently out there," he said. For AI to deliver real value, it
needs to be integrated into the broader restaurant ecosystem and built on a stable platform,
not bolted onto a shaky one.
Beyond the technology itself, the same recurring themes apply: support infrastructure that is
often overlooked, crew training and adoption that does not get the attention it deserves, and
operational consistency and organizational alignment that become harder to maintain as a
brand scales. Growing from roughly 50 restaurants to 500 or more puts real stress on every
part of that ecosystem.
What Works at 10 Locations Fails at Scale
One of Wayman's clearest points is about the gap between small and large operations. At
around 10 restaurants, a lot of institutional knowledge lives informally within the team, and
support processes do not need to be especially scalable to function. As a brand grows, that
tribal knowledge stops being enough. Training, support infrastructure, and operational
excellence all become significantly more critical.
Maintaining that core operational excellence is what allows innovation to actually work on top
of it. "It's not easy to keep the two in balance," Wayman said, "because everyone seems to
kind of run to the shiny new object all the time." The core infrastructure is what keeps
restaurants operational and afloat. The shiny new objects add efficiency and financial
benefits, but only once the core is solid enough to support them.
Four Keys to Scaling Successfully
Wayman closed with four areas that matter most when scaling restaurant technology
nationally.
1. Support infrastructure. Not glamorous, but absolutely critical, and consistently the most
overlooked piece of the puzzle.
2. Training. The ability to train crew, management, and staff becomes more important the larger
an organization grows.
3. Integration. As the tech stack grows larger and more complex, weaving new solutions into it
is possible but rarely simple.
4. Economics. ROI, payback, and the financial reality for franchisees all have to hold up when
deploying any new technology solution at scale.
The message throughout is consistent: the brands that succeed with technology
modernization are not necessarily the ones adopting the newest tools first. They are the ones
that get the foundation right before building on top of it.
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