The Future and AI with Joe Carbonara of Zoomba Group and Dan Hartlein of Antunes: Part 1

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Hello, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the food service for thought Podcast, the podcast connecting the foodservice industry I am Justin one of your co hosts with me as always is Carrie. Very good morning. Good afternoon, wherever you are welcome back to another episode. Everything's going fantastic especially since I get one more hour of talking with you today.

That's that's like my heart swelling, swelling. Here we now use up over anytime today what better way to do it the top on another one. But carry this time we we have wonderful guests. We do have wonderful guests.

We and I'm never sure how to introduce Joe. Everybody knows Joe carbon era in the industry like no one not knows Joe and you think he'd be kind of this stocked up dude, but he's so approachable and wonderful. And he's our partner as a Zumba group, and FTS magazine at Expo and kind enough to join us again with Dan Hartline, who is the Chief Technology executive at Antoon is and I think I have him in my brain every time I learned something about ai, ai a couple of times I think I've sent you guys some links to something I won't do that anymore, because I'm trying to just like take in all this information.

But But welcome, guys, we're so pleased that you're here and continuing the conversation that we had at Expo and in 2023 in December, and our next Expo is December 5 2024. So I think we just did in fact, we just did a conversation with our team. What are people talking about? What do they want to learn about?

What should we have, as you know, who should be a speaker again for Expo? And guess what? Ai again, so just so you know. But it's hard to believe that was six months ago already.

That's hard to believe. Yeah. It's crazy. And five anyway.

Yeah, five? Yes. No, thanks. You're right.

It was early December. So So when one thing that we were chatting about recently, that I wanted to jump ahead to Justin was when we were road tripping. Last whenever we were going to the wedding and New Braunfels. And then and then from there to our Dallas company meeting, we had like a world tour.

I had to go to the ladies room. And this often I do a stop at McDonald's and you can get you know, a bottle of water and feel guilt free. Well, guess what? You couldn't go up to the counter, you had to go to a kiosk.

And so if you want to go in and you ordered a kiosk, and you're like, you know, if you wanted to order any kind of food, so you wanted a cheeseburger with no lettuce, tomato, but extra, whatever you have to add, pick, say, you know, that kind of thing, versus just going up to the counter and saying, I'd like a cheeseburger and some french fries. So we've discussed this, and some of us weren't real thrilled with that. And I know that's not really AI but I mean, I think there's a component to that and it is falls under automation.

And that to me seemed like some people might perceive that as a negative and I wonder if since we talked at EXPO some real life cases of things like this have come to light more. Well in in coming for Joe and Dan, I can second that because last week our family made the pilgrimage back from Disneyland back to Phoenix area and we started the McDonald's and did the thing on the kiosk and it felt like at some point that like when you're on the phone with customer service and you're like representative, Representative just want to talk to a live person.

That's what it felt like halfway through ordering my spicy chicken sandwich with none of this and extra that's least somebody and explained that to him. So maybe you guys could could chime in with what maybe you're perceiving or you you've noticed some of the good bad and ugly perception is of consumers as they see that in common spaces like a place like McDonald's. If you write jokes, okay, I'll jump in. We, we built we up, we have an automated drive thru system that Antinous has built, which extends Lane coverage, right.

And that drive thru system is basically people free as a drive through here, you don't have you're not talking to somebody, you're not seeing anybody. And I think it's maybe even a generational thing. But we as a food equipment manufacturer, don't go viral often. But we did on a tick tock video, millions of views that a young lady shot going through this new video and going through this new drive thru without taking a cell phone video.

And as she got to the end, her final comment was in the coolest thing was I didn't have to talk to anybody. So I mean, that struck me as, as my generation is a little odd and okay, we tried to avoid people. But so I think it's it's maybe a generational thing. And that there are those of us who value expect demand a certain level of customer service.

And there are others, perhaps in the drawing some age differences here, maybe it's not just age, but some distinction here where perhaps a younger generation, who's grown up with these things, is now basically saying, hey, if I can do it on the phone, or if I can do it on a kiosk, if I I'll do it, I would prefer that. So So I think it's a personal thing. And I think there'll be some customers that are potentially disenfranchised with that lack of human contact, it's also perhaps a brand thing, some brands make the human contact Chick fil A very, very critical part of their delivery process.

And others, you know, not so much so. So I think it depends. It's, it's like anything changes change, and it depends on Joe, do you want to tip anything in there? Yeah, I think you bring up a lot of great points.

So Dan, one thing that came across my desk recently is the fact that yum brands reported its first quarter sales for this year. And in reporting their first quarter sales. They said 55% of the sales came from digital channels. So that's kiosks.

That's app. That's right, those are change. That's changing, right. And they also said in some of the stuff I was reading, they have probably another 40 ai related initiatives in progress right now.

And they're said to be developing their own super AI app, or an AI powered super app that'll go across. So I think whether it's kiosk or its app ordering, I think this is going to become more and more. And I think Dan's point about how it depends, I think, really is I think you really hit the nail on the head. For a lot of people, when you're talking about that transactional thing, that morning cup of coffee, for example, on your way to the office, or after having dropped the kids off at school or something like that.

You may not want human contact at that point. So the app ordering is great. But there are certain times when you might be going in there going into a quick service or limited service restaurant, you may want to linger a little bit more. And then you may want I think, a little bit more of that experience, if you will.

So I think the answer really is it depends. I think for brands to get back to the crux of the hospitality issue this year, for the brands that are doing it, you know, they have to using this technology is allowing them to process more orders quickly in most cases, which is a good thing for the brand. But they can't lose sight of the hospitality when they present you with your food or when you walk in to grab it or pull up at the drive thru or however this works. They need to figure out a way to be hospitable and make sure that you feel as a customer, I think a little bit seen, if they go to straight up transactional like that, then it's going to become like going to the bank with the ATM and like you used to have a relationship with your bank or very few people do with their personal banker anymore.

So I think you have to figure out other ways to have those touch points. And then hospitality when you're when when people are in, in the restaurant. Yeah, I would add a thought as well. I know that when McDonald's did the investments in their kiosk technology that they did.

They allowed people 1000 ways potentially to navigate to the same end. So if your end goal was a hamburger with a pickle and that was it. You could start in a lot Different ways to build that sandwich, you could order a cheeseburger without the cheese, the ketchup, the mustard, etc. To get to your hamburger with a pickle, you could do many, many, many different approaches.

And I thought that was actually when when you see that, that's pretty smart. Because they're not the machine isn't forcing the human to interact with them on their terms, they're actually trying to build the machine to interact with the human on that individual's terms. And the more the smarter this equipment gets, and the more sophisticated it gets, the more of that kind of experience of flexibility you can have. And we've all been on the phone trying to get to, to deal with an issue with our bank, or our insurance company, or whoever.

And I think that's an example of the opposite of where I have to push key three to get to the next level. But key three isn't really quite what I'm wanting, but it's, but you know, Number three's better than, you know, one through nine, right? The rest of it. So I start there, and that doesn't get me where I'm going.

And, and it just leads to frustration. And pretty soon I think as you said, Justin, we're we're saying, you know, agent, agent, or 0000. But But if that is that technology gets faster and better. And we're using language processing to to understand what the request is.

And we're handling accents and all those kinds of things. Now, it's actually potentially better than the person on the phone who misunderstood you, right. And so, we're not there yet, but we will be right. That's where we're heading.

Well, and the other thing I think it does is that if they're using it correctly, the way it remembers what you like, and starts making suggestions of what you may like, you know, my my youngest daughter plays softball, and I'm the one who drives her everywhere. And she loves to go to Chick fil A at the end of the night, you know, for something to eat when we skipped dinner, which is most nights. And now I'm the Chick fil A app on my phone for order is saved in, you know, it's spicy chicken sandwich, no pickles, waffle fries, and a sprite.

And off we go. And they she just hits that and then we pull up. By the end of the night after we've been doing our thing for a while and I'm just kind of tired and just kind of want to get home. I'm the one it's nice to not have to interact with people.

But Chick fil A is also known for its hospitality. So it's a really it's just her thing. That's a perfect example. And you know, we mentioned earlier, the the idea that young was up on their digital sales.

Well, the one I saw two which jumped out at me because we're here to talk about AI, Amazon sales are record high on their implementation of higher order artificial intelligence, when it comes to things like repeat ordering, remembering the things that Joe just said, if you have an Alexa in your room, it'll say, hey, you've got this on your shopping list. And by the way, it's on sale. Would you like me to order it? Just say yes.

Right. And so so those technologies have really driven business at Amazon. Do they drive business in our industry as well, potentially? Well, you said something, Dan, both both your Tibbett.

Before earlier a few minutes ago, Daniel, you're saying something about having the the technology interact with us on our terms? And I think that's that's a huge thing of when it gets there in all spaces, because some some it does exactly like you said, we my wife and I ordered target groceries a couple times a week or once a week or twice a week. And they have the here's your previous order. And did you want to order this again.

And that's great. And it's convenient. Like you said, Joe, you can just hit the button. And you don't have to go through every single thing.

But where I think the challenge is, is I get frustrated when I'm out as a consumer, when it's not the technology isn't interacting with me the way that I should. And I'm impatient with it. Because I know that that level of sophistication of technology exists in other areas, right? It's in my pocket, or home and it's on the TV.

So it's like why can't I just put this chicken sandwich kind of thing is easy, is easy as I wanted to but well, you know, let's use that as Panera. You know, they have kiosks and they're driving a lot of order through a lot of orders through kiosks as well as their app. But they also have and they were trying to get away from anybody ordering at the counter. But they realized that they have a large chunk of their demographic walk into a Panera at any time of day.

There's a large chunk of that of retirees that are sitting in there who may not want to live a kiosk life. So they're a little bit more comfortable. And going up to the front counter say hi Carrie, how are you today? Yes, I'd like my blueberry muffin and coffee again, you know, in that sort of thing.

So they they've kind of created a hybrid either or most of the younger people just observing the one by our office recently are going to the kiosks are going in with their app, but then the older folks who are lingering there for a longer time if they're going to the register so I think hybrid depends on a lot of people depend on demographic but I think hybrid be a big part of it. All right, great. Yeah, yeah, I was just going to add to the business advantage. As of the target ordering system that you mentioned, or the Chick fil A, the ability to forecast a previously difficult to forecast business, the more of their activity which is in that digital arena that has that kind of reordering potential that has your behaviors, your habits, starts to drive, that inventory management piece as well.

And the benefits to especially with spoilage, herbal product, like you know, food, it has a shelf life, there's a huge advantage to getting that right. And you know, Kroger was very early in doing that with some test stores where they were literally cutting meat, according to who was walking in the door. So this was at their test store in in Kentucky, they would literally track who was walking in what their buying habits were adjusted on Tuesday, you bought four really nice T bone steaks, often enough that they would cut those steaks as you arrived.

And not a second before because now if you happen to change your habit didn't buy it, they still had four steaks and inventory that they had three, four days to sell. But if they had to cut those three or four days ago, not waiting for you to come in. In they do that across 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people now suddenly, you've got something that saves them tremendous amount. It's also a sustainable game, right?

Because we're putting food to use as opposed to throwing it away because it timed out. So there's sustainability in this to carry that is awesome. Right. Go ahead, Dan.

You know, yeah, I do. I like the idea of hybrid and anything, because I like choices. And I do you know, Chick fil A has that mobile ordering and the Chick fil A by my house has one, one lane for mobile only. And then one lane for drive thru.

So the drive thru people are waiting and waiting and waiting, and you know how long those lines get. And I still refuse to get the mobile app? Because I'm like, No, I'm not doing it. They should have forced me to wait.

Like Carrie is going to prove a point to Chick fil A, that I liked their damn salad. So what are you gonna do, I gotta go, I gotta go through the drive thru line, you're gonna win because eventually everybody else will have the app and you'll be the only one. And I just don't want to wait that long. It's a way that that is a great point, honestly, because that is something I think as consumers, we become less patient with the process and less patient.

And there's also more people and everything. But when we were just in Disneyland on the way to the park, you walk by a Starbucks, and you know, the lines just wrapped around the building. And it's like, okay, by the time I get done and get up to the front, it's it's no longer gonna be morning time for me or my coffee. But being able to order it on the app, preorder it and you literally walk in, grab it and walk out.

And that to me is like that's a game changer that gives you back, I mean, upwards, sometimes a 30 minutes of your day. And we also experienced that in the parks with the the app at Disneyland, where you can pre book your next position in line at the next ride. And instead of waiting an hour and a half for each ride, you're waiting 10 minutes, you walk to the ride, you get in the fast lane and wait 10 minutes, get on and while you're in line for the next ride, then you book the next one.

Right keep doing that process. And it's maximizes your time, and nobody's losing anything. We're just no more efficient, you know, and I've heard the conversations around traffic management and cities doing this and things and it's pretty compelling that we will probably be that that point some day, where all of that is the flow of traffic and things are managed, you know, with similar similar algorithms in order to keep things just make them more efficient. And on the right hand side of the road is going to be carried with her crank car starting say I'm not there you go.

Well, I remember my when I flew down to the expo actually. I flew through Houston, and there's a Starbucks in the Houston airport that is Apple only. And you literally walk up and now they they were helping with people with the transition. So they had two or three people.

Instead of running cash registers. They had two or three people out front. If somebody needed to download the app, if they needed to show how to set up their account. They were there to help so they had these, these bridges if you will, to their vision of the future.

I really liked it. I already have that Starbucks app, so I walked up and got my cup of coffee was really Nice, but it was interesting to see that because he said, you know, no more cash registers. And we're going to do this all on the app. And the ultimate win for them is massive if that if that works and is adopted across the population, where else to move customers to your app and an airport, and we're better to do it right, it's a great place to do it.

Well, clearly, from a logistics perspective, from looking at from the operator side, right? Think about it. Now you can go into smaller footprints, you can go into places that you know, because you don't have to dedicate space to POS, you don't have to dedicate space for circulate, you know, your the way you approach circulation through the space is very, very different than Starbucks put an app to go only app order only location on the north side of Chicago, it's right across street from Wrigley Field, they had a bigger common nicer space where people could go and linger and they were doing more of the pour over coffees and trying to make it more that third space that they talk about so much.

And then they decided to get out of that one straight up to app only. It's on the way to the train, you know, the subway, that people take downtown Chicago to go to work. It's worked out, you know, from what I gather, it's worked out pretty pretty well for them. So and it opens up just new opportunities for you, I think, well, that's interesting.

That's a there's a dynamic there of the local area, right the the market that they're serving with that particular restaurant, is not a sit down doddle. Take your time enjoy your you know, the the the Italian neighborhood of Chicago or with that lifestyle, but but what's happening there is everybody's in a hurry, they're trying to catch the train, they're trying to get to the office because they caught the wrong train there, everybody's in a hurry there and that that dynamic in that scenario means that maybe some of this will be easier and quicker to reach adoption in certain environments and dynamics like that, and the local microcosm if you will, than it is in others, right?

So it depends on the market. If there's a there's a literally a local dynamic in that what and just a second ago, you were talking about point of sale and how that can change at places footprint I noticed that about a month ago at an Apple store I went to an Apple store here in the area and their their POS is their phone in their hand. So if you have if you purchase something physical from the store or even just a software, it's right there and for the Android users POS is point of sale on that piece of for Apple so with that I wanted to ask either and both of you you know we've talked big names right Apple Disney Starbucks Chick fil A McDonald's Kroger, how can Bob's diner down the road or a little local coffee shop or something like that?

How can they can take this conception? Or the conceptual ality of of AI and Internet of Things and all that stuff? And how can they apply that and maybe something as simple as a point of sale? Moving to that, more of a digital way of doing that or mobile way of doing that.

But how are some ways that smaller businesses, one offs maybe small multi units can can get in the game here as well, without feeling like they have to be a McDonald's in order to implement something? It's a great question, I would start by saying that know what, what's the problem you're trying to solve? You know, I wouldn't chase it just for the sake of chasing understand what your brand proposition is. And understanding how an implement an implementation of AI or any other form of technology for that can really add to that brand proposition.

You know, and you could, there's different things you were you can you can start small with for example, maybe it's going to more the handheld to toast, you know, that we're seeing in this in the, in the market right now, like a lot of the handhelds where I go, and I order the food, right, and then it goes, the order goes right to the kitchen. But you can do that with fine dining, or you can do that with casual dining, and then it really speeds up the pay. You know, and that sort of thing.

I think that's a really good one. There's a place here in my neighborhood that we went to a steak place that we went to, and we ordered everything all at once. And then what they did was he put it all in on his little, his little handheld, and then when he died, go, but we don't want it all at once. He goes, No problem, but the system will take care of it.

And they paste it out at a very nice pace. And it was tremendous. So I think know what you're trying to accomplish. And I think, you know, start small, and then look to others for some inspiration.

Dan? Yeah, I think there's a there's a discussion about how a smaller independent store approaches the challenge of technology and the opportunities for technology. So agree 100% With what Joe said is, you know, don't automate, automate, automate, solve problem, what problem you're trying to solve. And how do you make it better.

But I also believe that what we're seeing today with the cloud and cloud computing, and you know, services that are available, you know, I'll use the cash register as an example, you know, 1520 years ago, maybe a little longer. But yet NCR right national cash register a Dayton, Dayton, Ohio Company, they had the market. And they were, they were early connectivity. And you know, your investment in that cash register was one of the more significant pieces of capital in your retail business, it was huge.

Today, you know, my daughter runs a small business, on square and her, her iPhone. And so that's all cloud enabled cloud base. The other thing we're seeing is tremendous investments in service software as a service type businesses, where if you're looking for better inventory management, it's out there, if you're looking at better customer data tracking, it's out there. So you don't have to have the scale of a of a McDonald's, if you will, who would vertically integrate and go solve these problems for themselves, and hire the right partners and, and have the scale to do that.

But outside of that scale, I think the Internet and the cloud are a great equalizer. And as an equalizer, those technologies quickly become available if some creative entrepreneur goes and creates a web platform to do what, you know, these large chains are self investing in, I have to believe there's very little today that a chain can do with their own system that a small player can't buy into with a shared cloud platform. So it's, it's it's a huge equalizer, and that technology wasn't available to him 10 years ago, so well, it can I think you've had, we've talked in the past, you've kind of had some great examples, too, about how not even so much AI, but maybe some simple data analytics, you know, can really prove a difference maker for for some of these smaller, smaller businesses.

Yeah. And that's, that's a great, that's a great comment, Joe. And we have to remember that the term data analytics and AI gets interchanged and confused quite a bit. The difference is, if the data analytics is getting better without human intervention, that's machine learning.

That's AI, if the model is created by humans, and it's applied, and it works, and it's forecasting, or whatever, that's data analytics. So So you're right there there is there's a lot of that available. And if you are hosting your data on the Amazon Web Services, that you know, whether it's that or Microsoft, I forget what they call theirs. But those services have tremendous inherent data analytic capabilities, and tools around that.

So just getting your data into the cloud. And now, don't think that the entrepreneurial people who are providing the software as a service solutions aren't taking advantage of those things. So they're building you the platform to do exactly what you need to do. And, you know, if you take inventory management, restaurant forecasting, it's not that different.

Probably I wouldn't think I've never run a restaurant, but I wouldn't think it's that different across the different platforms. Guys, something I'm really curious about because we talked about what the big dogs are doing. And then even you know, as with any big decision or decision that a company is going to make what problem are you trying to solve I think is is really good.