The Future of Food Service: 15 Years of IoT Innovation

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. those of you that are subscribers and are here every week, thank you guys so much.

For watching on video, guys probably recognize the face. Maybe you guys saw Jay ⁓ on episode, I don't know. In today's episode, we're talking about the money that you and your restaurant are burning right now without even knowing it. Today's guest told me a story about her fryer that gets turned on at 5 a.

m. and doesn't cook its first batch of fried food until 9 30. Four and a half hours of the fryer running full blast with no guests to serve and just eating up the profits that you should be making within your restaurant brand. If you're on multiple stores, here's some math that you might already know.

You've got one facilities person that covers a hundred Maybe six months ago, eight months ago, I don't even exactly know when this is coming out, but I know that that he and I have become friends and kind of continue to talk. But Jay, why don't you introduce our listeners for those that didn't get a chance to hear you the first time on the show. And then we'll dig into kind of what you guys have been up to, because I'm excited about some of the new innovations and how it's making an impact.

maybe even 150 locations. They're reactive. They're looking at tickets all day long. They're running from store to store, putting out fires.

The walk-in is too warm. The HVAC needs maintenance. The ice machine has needed to be cleaned for quite some time. The equipment is silently wasting energy, running your food costs up, your labor costs up, really just causing you tons and tons and tons of issues because unfortunately in today's day and age, Jay Fiske: Awesome, thanks Jeremy.

Yeah, and always a pleasure to talk to you and to reconnect and ⁓ looking forward to seeing you in person here ⁓ soon. yes, for those who I haven't met, I'm Jay Fisk. I'm the president of Powerhouse Dynamics. We are the makers of the Open Kitchen, Internet of Things, platform for multi-site food service operators.

We focus on the critical infrastructure, whether it's HVAC, lighting, ⁓ cooking equipment, so fryers, ⁓ Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: most of our technology in the kitchen does not have the smart components that the guest talks about today. In our conversation, we get into ⁓ a lot of the dollars are that you guys are losing as restaurant brands and why the operators ⁓ even know that they're there to go get. We walked through some stories of customers ⁓ their platform has cut energy consumption by up to 15 % and really driving ⁓ profitability measures.

Jay Fiske: beverage equipment, refrigeration, et cetera. Putting in our internet of things, in some cases that means adding sensors to a piece of equipment, like a temp sensor is a great simple example, or tapping into the digital data that already exists on a piece of equipment, like a modern rapid cook might have a lot of data on this control. Tap into that, get all that data to the cloud where our software kind of does its thing. And so we're all about, our motto is our why, why do we exist?

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Everybody in today's day and age is struggling with profitability because things continue to creep up cost wise. And so without understanding where you're burning some of those costs, you need to listen to this episode. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.

If you're new to me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer for CBS Northstar. We wrote the Northstar Pona cell solution for multi units. In today's episode, we are joined by the CEO and president of powerhouse dynamics.

Jay Fiske: We love efficiency, we despise waste, right? And so we're really trying to drive efficiency into these multi-site food service operators through automation, better insights, actionable information, all that kind of stuff. So this is what we're doing. I've been doing this now with Powerhouse Dynamics is the name of the company.

The platform's called Open Kitchen. I've been doing it for 15 years, which is crazy. It's twice as long as I've been anywhere else. And the reason it's been really, really fun, very gratifying from a personal perspective, know, was there at the very earliest days of the fourth employee.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: the company behind Open Kitchen IoT platform. Jay has been in the industry for 15 years. He was the fourth employee at Powerhouse Dynamics.

Great organization, been fun to watch. I just got back from Chicago and spent some time in their booth. He also watched the company pivot from residential to multi-site food operators until they got acquired in 2019 by Middle B. He is a returning guest.

If you missed the first conversation, Jay Fiske: kind of grew the company, got the first enterprise deals. We pivoted originally, we were in residential, then we moved to commercial and focused on multi-site food service. And then in 2019, we were acquired by Middleby. And we've continued to sort of operate as an independent autonomous entity since then, it's kind of how Middleby rolls.

And it continues to be fun. I was fortunate to be promoted from VP of Business Development to President in 2022. So it's been four years now in this new role. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: I would encourage you to go check that one out because he's got some really key things there as well as in today's episode. Again, on to the episode. Jay Fiske: We've got a wonderful company, wonderful culture, exciting technology, and the industry is really embracing it, which is also very, very gratifying. So anyway, that's a little bit about what we do and who I am.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love it. And again, every time I have guests on the show, it's amazing. It's no different than when you're out shopping for a car.

Every time you drive around, you're like, ⁓ that's the exact car that I want. And so ever since you were on the last episode, I was like, I just keep getting blown away with how much more automation and how much more, I guess, data. You alluded to it nowadays, know, 15 years ago when you started, I guess I'd love for you to talk about the journey as you guys have gone. And while you're doing that, educate everybody a little bit about What is the internet of things?

because again, my guess is these ovens didn't have sensors built into them. Now they're kind of built into them. And now it's kind of this whole idea of integrating the data. But back then it might've been, put a tip sensor inside the oven that was trying to send out data.

So I'd love for you to kind of talk through the journey over the last 10 or 15 years, Jay, because I guess maybe 15 years ago, almost nothing was digitized completely. Now my guess is every new device you put in has some form of digitization. My freaking dryer lets me know when it's done in my house. And it's like, come on, man, do you, do I really need to know that the bell that's been ringing for 40 years isn't enough?

So yeah, exactly. So I'd love for you to kind of talk through the journey of kind of how much digitization, because it's everywhere and everything we do nowadays, it's all digital. And so I'd love for you to kind of share a little bit about that journey. Jay Fiske: Right.

Yeah. There's a balance in there, right? ⁓ Yeah, yeah, yeah, great question. And I have to confess, we were a little early when we started, right?

We really were. We were early. We had this vision we centered on energy and energy management, right? We'll talk about that some more today, but that's a big, continues to be a very, very ⁓ part of what we do.

And so with something like that, you can go in and ⁓ the existing thermostat with an internet connected thermostat. You can add sensors where there was no sensor before. can add an energy sensor. You can put.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: You can add an energy sensor on the breaker that's powering the rooftop units. You can put a temperature sensor in the supply duct for the air that's coming from the rooftop unit into the space and seeing, it getting cold when you have air conditioning?

Is it getting hot when you have heat? And so you can take a dumb facility, right? And instrument it and automate it through internet connected thermostats. And now you have a smart facility.

So that's kind of where we started in very beginning is there to your point, there was essentially nothing digital or very, very few things that were digital. in these operations and we can come in and make them smarter by adding sensors and adding some automation. And over the past 15 years, also your point, what we've seen is a proliferation of several things. One is the general acceptance of cloud-based software, right, ⁓ as an means of delivering enterprise capabilities.

The second is many of these larger enterprises, and we were focused primarily on the multi-site operators, 20, 50 plus locations, the thousand sites, 2000 multiple sites. Many of these organizations have invested over the past 15 years ⁓ an internet of things infrastructure, meaning they've got a dedicated, secure, hidden Wi-Fi network with good signal distribution all over the facility that they didn't have before. So was harder, there was just friction. to getting equipment connected.

There was friction to keeping it connected because they didn't have the infrastructure the way that many of them today have. And then of course, more and more equipment is smarter, right? Maybe your dryer's not the best example, because that may not be super valuable to you. But there are on the commercial cooking side, having a digital control.

Let's take a fryer, for example. You can have a sensor now that says your oil. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah.

Jay Fiske: quality is no longer acceptable. Your food product is going to taste bad. The total TPM, total polar materials, is a measure of oil quality. Once that crosses a certain threshold, it's time your fry is going to taste funky.

Replace the oil. And so you have a control of tracking that. Connect to the cloud, you can send alerts, time to filter, time to dump the oil and ⁓ fresh best. So ⁓ is happening more and more.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: And so when we apply this concept of the internet of things, which is just a fancy name that means I've got this thing, this device that has some kind of data on it, and I'm going to get it on the internet. I'm going to get that data to the cloud.

That's all it is. And so it fancy. It's not fancy. It's a very, very simple concept.

There's data on this thing. Yeah. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, it's it's back to the dryer analogy instead of the bell being a bell that went off on your dryer.

It's alerting your phone through the internet. And I'm saying it for our listeners out there that might, you know, they hear this internet of things and they're like, what is it? What is that? It's this to your point.

It's the idea that it's sending a signal that can then be interpreted and then you can act on it. So sorry, I'll let you keep going. Jay. Jay Fiske: Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, no, so it's good. So look, if you're doing laundry at home, maybe you don't need your cell phone buzzing in your pocket because you can hear the bell chime.

It's like, OK, my clothes are dry now. If you're managing 150 locations, it's really helpful that the store over in Peoria, five hour drive away, has a mechanical failure in a rooftop unit. Or, know, Des Moines, the team there keeps forgetting to filter their oil in their fryer. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: Absolutely. Jay Fiske: Now that's powerful, right? Because you've got, and a lot of our users are on the facilities teams. Their job is really, really hard.

They have to control costs. They have a very direct impact on the customer experience, right? Are the facilities comfortable? Is all the equipment working?

Can I get the product I came here to get because you fixed fryer or whatever it is, the oven, so I can order what I'd like to eat. They're responsible for all that stuff. And a typical ratio is you've got one facility person covering 100, 150 locations. And so that's a really, really hard job.

And so much of their day is spent just reacting to frustrated managers that it's hot in here. My oven is down, my ice machine broke, all that stuff. And so give them some power and some visibility with intelligent software, all these things tied to the internet. The clever part now is the software like, making meaning out of all that raw data.

And how do you make that facility person's job a little bit easier? Their life a little bit less hectic, a little bit less reactive, hair on fire kinds of stuff. So that's kind of, yeah, that's the concept. so yeah, long way of answering your question of the journey.

We have seen ⁓ a proliferation of equipment, cooking equipment ⁓ and refrigeration equipment, for example, Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: more intelligence and more data combined with an investment of many of these multi-site operators ⁓ the infrastructure required to have a robust, reliable, secure system. ⁓ And you can have those insights, those automations, et cetera, that make everyone's lives a little bit easier in managing this enterprise.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah. Well, it reminds me, and I know we were talking before I hit the record button, I've got my college age kid home from school. ⁓ Just about a week before he had to drive home, he had not been maintaining his car and he takes it to the mechanic.

And I'm saying this story because he didn't realize, well, he was low on coolant. And ultimately, because he was low on coolant, it cracked his radiator and we had to replace the radiator. Expensive repair. Had he been maintaining the car?

And I'm saying this. Jay Fiske: Right. Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: as an analogy to the maintenance of the equipment, and you talk about the maintenance crews got 100 stores that they're responsible for, if I proactively go out and fix that fan, that blower on the air conditioning unit, if I proactively go out and fix these things, not only is my efficiency there, but my cost of repairing that unit should go down significantly just through routine maintenance rather than waiting till it's catastrophe and now it's emergency services and all of those kinds of things.

So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of the proactive nature of how You know, you guys are getting to a place where it's not just, Hey, we've got a hair on fire. You know, we need to go do something. It's a, do we continue to maintain these devices to ensure that they stay in optimal environments to be able to deliver on the brand promise that everybody has. Jay Fiske: Yeah, for sure.

mean, look, in the same way that you as a loving father would probably hope to not have so many teachable moments like that with your son, because that was probably an expensive teachable moment, right? We also want our customers, right, to say, like, we don't want them to experience those teachable moments to learn, right? And so instead, so here's a good example. We have a fryer that has a, it's a ventless fryer we integrate with, meaning that, you know, there's no vent above it.

But so you have to have a pretty good Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: It was not cheap. Jay Fiske: filter on it. Well, that filters is disposable.

It runs, I forget how many, like 350 hours before you've got to swap it out. So what was happening was people were buying, know, the restaurant manager would say, oh, I filter is dirty. I got to replace it. Go on Amazon, right?

Oh, that looks like the right one. Order it by jamming in there. And it was the wrong one. Right.

And it causes all kinds of problems with the unit's performance and downtime and all that stuff. Now they can no longer self rise or whatever it is. We can track the runtime of the filter. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: and then send an alert that says time to replace it. Or even better, we've actually got a trial program going right now where we just automate the order of replacement filter so you're getting the right part at the right time to the right location. And so just simple things like that, the technology can do ⁓ proactively avoid the headache of I jammed the wrong filter and now it's down, I gotta call a truck and it's gonna be, I'm gonna miss the lunchtime rush.

Yeah, right. So not only is it the cost of the reactive repair, which is expensive, you've just lost all that revenue, right? Of a pretty high margin item that you'd like to promote because ⁓ this one little simple thing that you didn't know. I mean, people have the best intentions, right?

But they don't know. These of equipment are somewhat sophisticated and you got to get the right part at the right time. So that's just one example. But yes, using the data to get out ⁓ ahead the repair so you're not having to replace a cracked radiator, right?

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: or whatever the case may be with the equipment, there's power in that. And having the software provide guidance to the very stressed out, overstretched facilities person to say, like, these ones you need to be aware of, it's not a crisis yet, right?

These ones, yeah, you need to focus on this subset of locations today because you're going to have comfort complaints. they need to get, know, if the rooftop unit is down, gonna be hot today, get there before you start losing. customer, right? Because again, there's the cost of repair.

And then if you're really negatively impacting customer experience, you're going to lose business. There are 100 % revenue implications around this data and being able to use it effectively to prevent that sort of downside scenario. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, I love that.

And thanks for sharing a bit about that. For those that might be skeptical about this, you're, guess, ⁓ proactive because you want that order for the filter, ⁓ giving false positives potentially on certain things. Replace the filter more often. ⁓ guess I'd love to ⁓ throw that out there to you, Jay.

I don't know if you guys get that complaint from time to time. It's like, yeah, you're telling me to replace my... Jay Fiske: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: you know, fryer oil, because you've got a connection to somebody else that you're taking a, you know, you're taking a percentage of that fryer oil. And again, I know that's not the case, but I'd love for you for those skeptics out there that are like, yeah, they're just telling me to go fix stuff that's really not broken, or really doesn't need the maintenance that they say, because they're taking a, they're taking a cut from facilities, they're taking a cut from the manufacturers, they're taking a cut from the distributors, whatever those things might look like.

Jay Fiske: Right, yeah. Yeah, no, fair question. like, I mean, that's a pretty easy question to answer because we're just like data cuts through the confusion, data cuts through the emotion, data cuts through the noise and say, look, this is just data. Here's what the system is saying.

And by the way, we're not Friar experts, we're not Oven experts, we're not Ice Machine experts. We have partners who are, right? And their experts say, when you see this type of data, when you see this particular, the system's got these, all these embedded sensors all over the place, We know that when this thing fails, the following, gonna take the system offline. ⁓ I'd rather, again, like your son, I'd rather show you through the data that you can see clearly from the equipment versus having to say, okay, if you don't believe it, just let it fail.

I don't want to teach you that way, right? And so think we are, ⁓ the only that Powerhouse is in is in, we are a software as a service business, right? And so ⁓ our job to, empower our customers with data and with automation let them make better decisions. And of course, some of the automation is just going to drive savings ⁓ having to lift a finger.

And then there's a lot of other information you can use again to make better decisions, to act more proactively. And again, we despise waste, get rid of waste. We love efficiency, drive efficiency into the platform. ⁓ think ⁓ having a life so often, in fact, in cases, if there's skepticism, but they're kind of intrigued, let's do a proof of value, right?

And let's put our platform into five, 10, 20 locations to show it to you, right? And let's pick, what is the area of pain that we're trying to address? Is it managing rapid cook ovens? Is it tracking refrigeration temperature?

Is it driving down energy costs, energy consumption through ⁓ energy management? let's pick one and focus on that. And then we'll just use data and we'll engage with you and your team to show you that value over three months or whatever, however long ⁓ duration is. And by the end, the customer will understand how does the system work?

How do we take this new tool and fold it into our operations to drive more effectiveness? And what are the results that we're measuring in terms of the success criteria? And so it's a pretty effective tool to kind of address the skeptics and understand. And we're basically proving out the value proposition and being, we're about transparency.

So if we're measuring energy reduction, we're gonna show you the before and after utility bills. We're gonna show you the math that we use to calculate that reduction. And that's it. Again, there's nothing, there's no, Right.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Yeah, then you can make a choice. You can either choose to subscribe or choose to keep doing it the way you've been doing it or go find somebody else.

Right. Jay Fiske: I'm pointing to this big pile of cash that's sitting on the floor. Would you like to pick it up or not? mean, again, it's a business tool, right?

And they have to make decisions like, do you invest in this tool? Do we invest in something else? Right? So we can just show them the value.

We address the pain points and kind of, I'll say, prove, that's it's called the proof of value, proof of value. And then there's a business decision that the end customer has to make. But yeah, to kind of cut through that skepticism, it's just like data and transparency for us has been. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: ⁓ huh. Jay Fiske: the way we solve that. There's always trust too. We have a very open and collaborative culture.

And so there's the technology and seeing the data and all that stuff, but then there's interacting with the people. Are they responding? ⁓ they giving me answers that I understand? Are giving me answers that have credibility?

So all that is also built up because at the end, like many industries, food service ⁓ is a lot relationships. And so you've got to... work to earn the business to show that you are a trustworthy and good and collaborative partner. Because that's how we enter into this.

This is not a transactional sale for us. When we sell to an enterprise, we're getting married. It's a long relationship. And I'm very proud of the fact that requires a lot of work.

Just like a strong marriage requires a lot of work. It's no different. It's just business. But you've got to prove.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: ⁓ your credibility, you've got to prove you are a trustworthy organization. I think rolling up the sleeves and working on a ⁓ project together initially is a great way to start.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Love that you guys do that and I'm going to steal the proof of value because you hear proof of concept all the time. I love the proof of value idea is just, hey, we're going to prove the value to you and then you can decide for yourself. We happen to be recording this early May.

⁓ alluded to it. We'll see each other in Chicago and I'm I'll see a lot of our listeners out there. But I just got back from the restaurant leadership conference in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. And on they were talking a lot about margin and controlling margins and the costs have continued to increase.

⁓ Jay Fiske: Yeah. Yeah. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: food cost increase, there's cost of energy has increased, happened to be recording this early May, like I said, ⁓ we that our energy costs have been hard to ⁓ manage, not from the supplier side, but also within the four walls of the restaurant.

Jay, I'd love for you to kind of dig in a little bit deeper on how you guys help with some of that energy management from refrigeration, which is a huge cost to HVAC. And really, how are you guys not just helping maintain the devices to make sure that they're operating efficiently, but what does the net result on your spend and on energy management? You know, we were just joking about, you know, stepping over a pile of cash to say, no, I don't want that. I'd love for you to kind of talk through some of the biggest areas specifically around energy management and the cost of maintaining the four walls of your restaurant and how and why you guys can really drive some of those costs that you may not even know that you're overspending on.

once you guys start looking at the data. Jay Fiske: Mm-hmm Yeah, great question and I'll just since you mentioned Cost and savings I do want to I do want to bring up one point which can sometimes and I love my finance and accounting friends out there, right? But we have it was there's a great example. We have a customer We were just wrapping up a proof of value.

It went really well. We saved them We measured 15 % energy consumption reduction and the accountant said well my spend year over year one up you guys aren't saving many money like Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Hey. Jay Fiske: your utility costs went up by 20 % and it was hotter this year, right?

So part of our challenge is, you know, just showing the reduction in energy consumption. I can't control, unfortunately, how much you pay per kilowatt hour for electricity, how much you're paying for, for therm, for gas. And that's tends to be going up and to the right, right? Unfortunately.

literally this customer had a 20 % increase year over year in utilities, which is, so when the, ⁓ Accountants are looking at the dollars, right? We have to kind of walk them back to say, look, this is about physics and the building envelope. You've got to look at kilowatt hour consumption before and after the energy efficiency measure was installed, in this case, energy management, right? And you have to normalize for the effects of weather because the hotter it is outside, the more energy going to be consuming through ⁓ air right?

So there's a whole methodology to ⁓ sort work through how you measure the savings. It's not accounting, it's physics. And so there is a bit of a process there in walking folks through the methodology who haven't been through it before. Because if you're produce, that's straightforward to measure, assuming the same quality before, same quality after, you're looking at the dollars.

Energy is different, because costs are going up, and it's very much impacted by So that being said, to your question, in terms of driving savings, there's a number of different avenues ⁓ that take. One is just there's the overall kilowatt hour consumption. How much energy total did you consume during a utility billing cycle? And when we deploy our solution, automation ⁓ is the of the game.

We're putting in internet connected thermostats that are going to ensure When your facility is occupied, you're at a very comfortable temperature for your staff, for your guests, et cetera. But when you're unoccupied, the system steps back and lets the HVAC units coast. Because a lot of times what happens in the absence of that control and connectivity from the cloud that's enforcing the schedules, someone will just type 70 degrees on the thermostat and hit hold. And it's like that all summer.

So at 3 AM, it's blasting the air conditioning when no one's there. And so that's where a lot of the waste comes. by having that now internet connected thing, that thermostat, where the software is saying, no, in the off hours, you need to let the building coast back to 78 or 80 degrees. Then in the morning, we'll bring it back down again.

that's going to drive a lot of savings. Another of the savings, this gets a little bit wonky now, the utility bill has typically two components to it. There's total energy consumption, that's kilowatt hours. And then they have something called a peak demand chart.

Meaning, if you picture a scenario where your prep chef shows up at 5 a.m. and turns everything on all at once, there's this massive spike in energy demand from the facility to the grid. And so the grid operator says, well, okay, because there are these periods of time where you've got 3X the normal average energy consumption, I need a bigger transformer to your facility, need fatter copper wire.

I got to support that, so I'm going to charge you. for the infrastructure that I've got to build to support these peak demands that your facility is requiring of me, the utility. so with AI layered into our software, we can have a ⁓ better ⁓ coordinated run schedule. if you've got three rooftop units in one space, the AI will say, okay, now this one runs, now one runs, now this one runs.

And so you're still providing the same amount of cooling to the facility, but you're doing it smarter. So you're preventing them from running simultaneously. And if you prevent them from running simultaneously, you're going to bring that peak demand down. And so there's dollars associated with that as well.

So that's really on the HVAC and the energy management side. there's things you can do to automate lighting on-off schedules and signage on-off schedules that can also be automated through internet connected controller. Increasingly, as getting more and more equipment into our ecosystem, You can look at something like a fryer. Come back to the fryer.

It's an easy example. You have an electrically heated fryer. Those use a lot of juice. And you can see the prep chef turned on the fryer at 5 a.

m. But when was the first batch cooked? 930. Right, so it just ran for three and a half hours, you know, full blast without cooking.

It only needs 15 minutes to heat up. You can see that in the data. Hey, it only takes 15 minutes for the oil to get the proper temperature. We're capturing that data.

can see it. Change your SOP. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.

Jay Fiske: to say, hey, turn your fire on at 9 AM, not 5 AM. So there's a lot of opportunities for additional savings of fairly energy-intensive equipment because of the visibility the internet of things can provide to improve how these facilities are operating, updating your SOPs and providing those teachable moments to your staff in terms of how and when they're operating equipment to be efficient and still get the job done. So those are some of the examples. Again, so overall energy consumption, reduce through automation and tying the thermostats to the cloud, to reduce those peak demand charges, and then more information and insights about when equipment is powered up and when it's actually starting to be ⁓ to produce food in this case.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love those examples. Real quick, just before I move on from this topic, and pretty amazing that we made it 24 minutes through a 2026 podcast without referencing AI. I'm glad we got to it eventually.

I knew it was coming. I was going to ask the question if you didn't and kind of how AI is playing into it. Jay Fiske: I said it. Yeah, yeah.

⁓ Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: But I know that one of the other energy costs that's pretty high is refrigeration. And I know from working in restaurants, a lot of times they'll leave the walk-in open. while they're doing stuff.

And I know that that's a huge, you know, a huge red flag that you should be alerting. They'll leave the back door open oftentimes. And there's a lot of little things that you can do again, teasing about the fact that I live with three teenagers and the back door is always open in the middle of the summertime. It's like, it's 900 degrees outside, you know, I feel like an old man.

Hey, shut the door. I'm not air conditioning the outside. I tease, but I'd love for you to talk a little bit about just kind of refrigeration and kind of some of these other ways that you can alert some. Jay Fiske: Mm-hmm.

Yeah, close the door. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: poor behaviors within the store that you know are costing you money, not to be jerky about it, but to your point on the fire, that extra three hours a day, not only is hurting, you know, kind of the world at large, but it's also hurting your your bottom line profits because you're heating up oil for three hours that doesn't really need to be heated. And so I'd love for you to talk just a little bit about refrigeration and how you guys can even alert on some of those kinds of things because it is an additional cost that you have to you have to have.

Jay Fiske: Mm-hmm. It is, especially for things like the walk-ins. Those are some big old compressors. They use a lot of juice as well, know, multiple kilowatts of power consumption.

So a walk-in is a perfect example. In this example you cited, ⁓ very common. Someone's stocking the shelves inside your walk-in freezer. They don't want to have to keep opening.

I know it's a pain, but what you can see, so I can add again to a previously sort of dumb walk-in, I can put a door sensor on the door. I can put an energy sensor on the circuit that's powering the compressor, and then I can put a temperature sensor inside the box. have three data points now. Suddenly that is a smart walk-in freezer.

So if I'm seeing the temperature, if the software is seeing the temperature creep up and up and up and up, it also sees that the door is open, ⁓ might prompt alert to say, close the door. ⁓ if the temperature is still elevated and now the door is closed, Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: and you can see the temperature going down, the software may hold off on sending you an alert because it's recovering, right?

So let's only send you an alert when the unit truly is not performing ⁓ ⁓ it's not being adversely affected by human behavior. So that door sensor is really important to be able to understand what's actually going on with the unit. Someone got a prop to open because they're stocking shelves or doing whatever. So that's one area of waste that can be corrected.

So the behavior side of things is really, put the strip curtain in, close the door. I know it's a little bit more work, but it really does have a meaningful impact on energy consumption, especially for things like walk-ins, walk-in coolers, walk-in freezers. But more common is just under maintenance of the asset. And you can see it.

What happens is they're low on refrigerant or the coils are dirty. It is remarkable how much harder ⁓ ⁓ Refrigeration compressor has to work if the coils are dirty dirty that dirt on the coins of the coils How it how it sort of gets rid of the heat, right? And so it's a very efficient way to getting rid of heat if they've got if they're caked in dirt and dust and gunk That's basically insulation, right? That's preventing the heat from coming out of the unit So the compressor has to work harder and harder and harder to shed the heat and keep the the the environment Safe for food whether it's know, zero Fahrenheit in the freezer or below 40 ⁓ Fahrenheit for walking cooler.

And so you can actually see in the run charts the drop in power consumption as soon as someone cleans that heat exchanger. I mean, I've seen them drop like 20 % of power consumption because now that heat exchanger can its job. so you can see when a is overworking and getting dirty. running more than 80 % of the time, right?

That's also, know, compressor for a walk-in or any refrigeration should work 80 % or less of the time. It should have at least 20 % downtime where it's not running, right? Sometimes you just see them, just running constantly. Okay, right?

That's a lot of money, especially for a walk-in freezer. So again, the data there supports the case for, you're spending, you're spending extra thousand dollars a year on energy for this walk-in freezer, costs you 300 bucks to clean it. That's a pretty good ROI, right? If it's operating properly, you're gonna see that excess energy consumption go away.

But you gotta maintain it, a little bit of data. Because if you're inside and it feels cold enough and it's cold enough in the temperature, it's fine. May not be fine, right? A little bit of elbow grease will go a long way to allowing that unit to operate as specified and much more efficiently, saving those.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. love it. Before we give our listeners kind of a clue as to what things look like, where are things going in your world, Do see a world where every single thing is connected?

Again, ⁓ we've Restaurant Technologies incorporated on the show a couple of times. They do oil management. ⁓ We've had people that are doing computer vision cameras to see what's going on within the four walls and, and track human behavior. Like it feels like this digital world is only continuing to increase.

guess I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of the vision for powerhouse and where are you guys going and where do you really see this at to a place where, you know, I guess we're at utopia where you guys really are solving a lot of these problems for people. Jay Fiske: Yeah, and first of all, shout out to our friends at Restaurant Technologies. We integrate with their system, right? So we can pull data from their oil tanks into the Open Kitchen platform.

They're terrific partner. Yeah, I love those guys. Super good culture too. A really terrific company to work with.

So where is it going? We've just, ⁓ so say more formalized what we call the Open Kitchen Innovation Program, where we have essentially engineering services where we approach Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: They've been a great partner on the show. They're fun.

Jay Fiske: any OEM to provide engineering services to integrate their equipment into the open kitchen ecosystem. we ⁓ are, the name open kitchen, we are OEM agnostic, because no one buys everything from one supplier. They don't. They've got half a dozen different equipment suppliers or more, but they do want that single pane of glass.

So that's a big part of our strategy. And so we're accelerating ⁓ the brands of equipment manufacturers that we're pulling into our platform through this innovation program. you'll see what we all show you ⁓ I see you in a few weeks in Chicago. We'll talk a little bit more, show you what more about the program.

But it's really exciting. And we're seeing success there with certainly within Middleby, our parent company, but also outside of Middleby. We've got multiple brands integrating their equipment ⁓ into our ecosystem because it just makes things a little bit easier for them. So we're going to see more and more of that.

And I'll just also share the way we're achieving this is by not requiring those brands to be locked into our software, right? It seems counterintuitive, but if we make our platform open and flexible, but we share sort of our technology stack and you can point the data from your piece of equipment to Open Kitchen, or you can point to any other piece of software. The switching cost, it goes from locked in proprietary to zero, right? So I want Open Kitchen to be like Apple.

Google I don't want to be like Blackberry or Nokia, right? You know, it was the last time you bought a Nokia phone They had a closed proprietary system same thing with Blackberry and the market responded. We don't like that We want open system. So so, you ask the question where are we going?

We're seeing an acceleration of more and more equipment in the food service entity digitize and connect we're seeing a more a greater willingness to Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Jay Fiske: be part of the open kitchen ecosystem and to adopt tools that give them the flexibility of choice. At the end of the day, if we don't have the best software for doing the kinds of things that we need to do, then shame on us, right?

customer should be able to pivot and point ⁓ another software that they like better. So got to stay humble keep working hard to get there. But yeah, ⁓ is the acceptance this of things idea, especially by the multi-site. operators is accelerating.

And then on the equipment side as well, we're seeing an acceleration of interest there because someone may have developed their own proprietary IoT platform. It's a fine place to start. But we have this theory of two, right? Once an enterprise has two pieces of equipment they want to get on, they're not going to tolerate Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: Mm-hmm. You need to aggregate it and make it easier for them to operate. Jay Fiske: Correct, right? becomes this single pane of glass becomes very, very attractive.

When they've got one, sure, any old thing will work. When you've got two, now you really need to start thinking about how do you have a system that is open and allows for that single pane of glass? anyway, yeah, so more digitization, an increasing amount of sophistication, especially around the enterprise operators. Oftentimes they have their own internal tools.

So we've done a lot of investments in what's called API, the application programming interface, where we can pass data from our cloud to theirs and meet them. They may not want to use a new ⁓ interface. They already have something. So fine.

So let our software kind of add value and insights, process that raw data, turning into actionable information, and send it to the system that they're using. So we're also doing a lot of investment on the API side to make it easier for these enterprises to say yes. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.

⁓ Amazing and part of why you and I resonate so well with each other. We feel the same way about the point of sale, but it's their data. They've created the data, it's theirs to exploit and we got to earn their business every single day. And so it's been kind of our philosophy for a long time that way.

Last question kind of about the product side. ⁓ going to be in Chicago in 10 days or so. ⁓ going to see a lot of robotics continuing to take over ⁓ sat with a visionary restaurant leader at RLC and they were talking about this vision where, you know, everything is digital, the order is digital, the order making is robotics. And I know it's probably a lot longer away than we think, but it also feels like, you know, this Moore's law of processors continues to go with AI, the amount of acceleration continues to grow.

guess I'd love just your opinion on that to our listeners out there. Is it something that they need to start looking into, You live in that world of IoT, internet connected things. Is it something that people need to be thinking about, even if it's just at the small level? or even at the highest level, or do you think kind of the gradual change still needs to be there?

And there's going to be some front runners that are out there that may get burned may take over the world. But ⁓ guess I'd love a little bit of opinion. You're in Boston where ⁓ Robotics is. There's a whole lot of ⁓ investment going into that stuff.

I just love your thoughts. Jay Fiske: Yeah. Do you remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, ⁓ it True Lies, where he goes to Mars, right? And they've got this taxi cab on Mars that's driven by this robot, right?

And think that people have this idea that robots ⁓ is robot driving the car or it's the robot arm that's, know, whatever, flipping burgers or what I don't mean, I'm not disparaging anyone. That's coming, but I think you need to, ⁓ think everyone sort of. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.

Jay Fiske: broaden their idea, what is automation? Automation is already here in many different classes of equipment. So for example, the super automatic espresso machines. Bean to cup, I want a cappuccino with a double shot of espresso, and I want size large.

And you hear the grinder go, know, cappuccino comes out perfectly foam, delicious, right? That right there is automation, right? You know, we have... Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: doesn't look like a robot with a hand that's grabbing a cup. And this is the part that I wanted you to talk through. This is part of why I'm excited about it because it's not somebody standing there dropping a fryer basket like it is today with a hand. It's gonna be something different and it'll continue to evolve.

So sorry to interrupt you. Jay Fiske: But it's not a robot, right? So the difference is, do you remember the... Yeah.

Right. Yeah. It yeah, it's integrated. like, you know, a Tesla, right, doesn't have a robot sitting in the seat holding the steering wheel, but it drives itself, right?

So it's the same idea, right? So it's not necessarily the the true lies, the robot on Mars driving the car, it's embedded into the equipment. So another example would be a dual sided plancha grill, right? Where, you know, it comes down and compresses the chicken and it's programmed and it comes out perfect every single time.

Perfect temperature, perfect time. You don't have to flip it, right, and time it and pay attention, it's done, right? So that's another form of automation. It's not a robot, right, arm that's doing it, but it's just, it's this clever automated grill that, you know, happens to have a lot of intelligence inside it and a lot of data that we can help with, by the way.

But that's, so that's already happening today. So you're gonna see more and more of that. You know, will we see robots running around the back of house? I know, maybe, you know, that's well, ⁓ talking Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...

: Mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe not, yeah. Jay Fiske: Tesla, right? Elon Musk has, what was their robot called he's working so hard on?

Anyway, they've got a big robot initiative. blanking on the name of it right now. But maybe that will be there at some point. But the near term stuff is it's already some types of equipment, right?

You're already seeing that automation, you know, having IoT as that digital backbone is going to be part of the infrastructure, it's going to be required for that. But yeah, it's exciting to see where it's going, right? It really is. It's cool.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah. Yeah, no, even the plancha thing was really cool. I I remember reading about Chili's, they, you know, it's kind of how they ended up executing their burgers at the level that they do is because they invested in, you know, grilled technology and, and, know, it really helped, helped, you know, I read some article, you know, maybe a year and a half ago Hey, wait, cause I've had a burger there and I'm like, ⁓ it's really good.

Like how did, how did they execute? Jay Fiske: Really good. Yeah, it's incredible. So not only, so it is, it's remarkable actually, some of the data I've seen from these things like this speed of service, substantially better product quality and yield is way better.

I mean, all of these things, it's incredible like how this just positively impacts a customer experience. So yeah, I think you're gonna see more and more, but it's, you know, it's gonna be driven by the business case and you'll start to see the proliferation as the dollars make sense, right? Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yes.

Jay Fiske: These enterprises will be investing more and more of these kinds of tools and it will all be tied to the cloud, know, providing the automations and the integrations and the data and the insights, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it's an exciting place to be. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Love it.

Thank you for sharing. know that I pivoted a little bit from our script. Jay, talk to me a little bit about how do people get in touch? What can they expect from your team?

If they're at a place, you talked about your process, but I'd love, do they go? ⁓ does that look like? ⁓ show won't come out till after we're in Chicago, but ⁓ guys are at different trade shows, but how do they engage with your team and what can they expect? Whether they have a dumb kitchen, a smart kitchen, a half and a half.

Jay Fiske: Yeah. All good. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: What does it look like and how quickly could you guys get somebody on board and figure out if it makes sense for their business?

Jay Fiske: Yeah, that's it. Thank you for asking that. So it's pretty straightforward. You can go to openkitchen.

com. There's plenty of buttons to click on to book a demo or get a conversation going with our team. You can email me directly, j at powerhousedynamics.com.

So j ay at powerhousedynamics.com. And, you know, happy to engage with any of your listeners. We have a very, I'll say consultative selling process.

We don't want to just sort of sell you a thing. We're going to start with, hey, what are your operational challenges? What are your challenges around your equipment? What are your challenges around operating costs?

How would you like to solve them? And then work backwards from that to say, cause I don't want to, know, if I'm just going to sell you some transactional thing and then we're going to, you not, you ⁓ continue to do business together, then that's not success for us. It's I want to make sure that, you know, if your biggest challenge today is ensuring low risk around refrigeration by ⁓ tracking alerting it, all that stuff. let's start there and we'll work backwards to say, does that, you what does the configuration look like?

How do you want to prove the value of this team? What are your success criteria? Who on your team needs to be involved? All those things.

So it's a very, it's not a, you know, it's not a click here and enter your credit card and you get a, you know, a thing. It's not how we roll. And it's not typically the kind of conversation that our customers or prospects are interested in having anyway. It's really more of that long-term partnership.

So yeah, openkitchen.com. ⁓ to book a demo and engage with our team to learn more. And we want to learn more about you and your challenges as well.

Or certainly you can email me directly jay at powerhouse dynamics.com. Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Well, I very much appreciate you coming on.

And for those that have made it to the 44th minute of the show, a reminder, you don't have to take it all on. ⁓ team will work with you through, we can start on HVAC and then work Friars. then, you it's not a ⁓ size fits all. You got to equip every single piece of equipment in your ⁓ can continue to grow ⁓ as they start to figure out where the pain points are and work with you on that.

So ⁓ that I'm on your sales team, Jay. ⁓ just know it's not a... ⁓ Jay Fiske: Correct. ⁓ We do like to start, let's start focused.

But you're 100 % right. People are like, ⁓ do I have to connect? No, just let's connect one thing. Let's start focused, build success, and as you said, yeah, and then go from.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Awesome. Again, to our listeners guys, as I say at the onset every time, thank you guys for joining us. I know you guys have got lots of choices.

So thank you for hanging out. Jay, thank you for coming on once again and continuing to innovate, man. I love what you guys are doing. Like I said, now that I see it out there, it's like I keep getting blown away and I'm excited seeing you coming up soon in Chicago.

⁓ To listeners, make it a great day. Jay Fiske: Thanks so much Jeremy. Thanks everybody.