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Special Coverage: Stirring the Restaurant Tech Pot: A Journey with RTN's Angela Diffly into AI Breakthroughs, Automation Urge, and Geeks Galore at MURTEC2024
Join the revelry as I, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, sync up with the incomparable Angela Diffly from the Restaurant Technology Network! Get the inside scoop on how RTN is stirring up the industry pot, from its origin as a much-needed forum for tech gurus to its rise as a powerhouse shaping restaurant tech standards. Together with Angela, we shed light on the network's explosive growth, the creation of seven cutting-edge benchmarks, and the vibrant atmosphere of MURTEC where tech mavericks and decision-makers come together to spark dialogue and drive innovation. It's a gathering that's changing the game, and you're getting a front-row seat to the action.
Excitement crackles as we peel back the curtain on the future of restaurant tech, especially the breakthroughs in AI and automation that are set to redefine how restaurants operate. Imagine a world where an AI co-pilot named Expo is the new sidekick for restaurant managers, helping to streamline operations with ease. We're not just talking about robots flipping burgers; we're discussing how personalization and efficiency can coexist, enhancing the customer experience and preserving jobs. For those who get a thrill out of tech talk and can't help but nerd out over the latest innovations, I've got an open invitation for you to join us at wirelessnerdnet, where kindred souls unite in their shared passion for the technology that keeps our world spinning.
Hey everybody, it's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and today I have a good friend, a special guest from the Restaurant Technology Network and the Queen of Mertek herself. We've got Miss Angela Diffley online. Say hi, who are you? What do you do? Talk to me. What's going on? It's good to see you Hi.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's so good to see you, so great to be on the program. I think that Abby Lowered might have a little took a little offense to that Queen of Murtek. I think she holds that title for, like I don't know, 20 years now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, but but hey, I could be second in command and I had a great time. It seems like it was like just a blur, but it was. It was a great show. We had record attendance and tons of great content at the show, so I'm excited to talk to you about it today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. So that's exactly what I want to dig into. I remember years ago five, six years ago, whatever it was when RTN was first getting started and I was there and everyone was asking for volunteers. Like breaking up into program groups and to see where it started and where it is now is phenomenal. It's great to see so many people adopting it and getting involved and big players. Tell me a little bit about what started the RTN, why you all started it and how far it's come in the last few years.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:So RTN, the Restaurant Technology Network, was started five years ago.
Speaker 2:The reason it was started is because we were hearing rumblings in the industry that it's all great to come to Mertec or F know or these RFS, tech or all of these buy sell conferences where you're walking around the show floor and you're talking you know here's what we have, you know, like trying to make deals happen. But what restaurant CIOs, ctos, chief innovation officers, architects what they really wanted to do is take a peek behind the curtain and talk to the people that are actually creating the technology, and there was really not space at the shows for them to come. I mean, you know they have a limited number of badges, let's face it. They were sending their enterprise sales folks and they didn't have that space for the technology folks to really roll up their sleeves and get involved in a show like Tech. And there wasn't even really an organization for techies to live that was like solely focused on restaurant technology and standardization. So we saw this kind of gap in the marketplace. We created RTN for that and we started off with.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember the first Smartech we just when we launched it, we only had like six or seven brands on the screen and we were so proud that those brands entrusted in like what we were doing and they joined us really early. But here we are a flash forward, five years later and we have over 400 brands associated with RTN and we've created seven industry technology standards. So, as you can see, drew, like you mentioned way back when, until now it's just been like it hasn't been. It's been five years in the making, but we've gotten a lot done in that short period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so MerTech. I remember I first got introduced to this when I was part of Comcast business and they said this is where you have to be. We've got so many customers that are here, so many different innovative things that are happening here. But when I walked in, exactly like you said, it wasn't the techies who were there doing tech stuff, it was a lot of suits and you were like, okay, well, these are the people that are making technology decisions. No-transcript, the technology network did a good job of merging those together. But to back up, what is Mertek and why is it such an important show for the industry?
Speaker 2:So Mertek is the multi-unit restaurant technology conference, almost 30 years in the making. So imagine 30 years. That's like some longevity.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that you know, one of the coolest things about it is just the networking opportunities. I mean it really is one-to-one, like they try to keep the ratio really close supplier to restaurant.
Speaker 1:It is, and it's not a large show, so I almost feel bad talking about it because I don't want everyone to show up to it. I mean I do, but at the same time it's a very specific group of people.
Speaker 2:It is it's restaurant technology. Decision makers, it's restaurant technology.
Speaker 1:It's hardcore restaurant technology.
Speaker 2:So we also have this like Mertek executive summit. That happens in the fall.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Changes locations and that's kind of a fancier white glove, exciting time to get together with the industry. But mertech proper, the big, big mertech that happens in march every year, is really like where everybody comes. It's techie. Yeah, sometimes the executive summit we have like like business folks, we have operations folks, we have cmos, coos, presidents, things like that, um, ceos. But at mertech it's really where the technology folks like to come together and so that RTN connection gives them a technology badge when they become a member, so they don't have to sacrifice their enterprise sales badges, they can bring their technology people.
Speaker 2:And then we can join working groups and work on cool things together in person at the show and I love the way that they work in tandem, right.
Speaker 1:And so there are two shows. There's the Mertek show and then the Executive Summit. That one is really good also, and when you talk about this being for the large scale, I mean you're talking about the people that are traditional attendees of Mertek. I mean these are the big restaurants, these are the big, you know large chains these are quick service, these are fast food, quick service. Sit down. I large chains, these are quick service, these are fast food, quick service, sit down. I mean everybody's there, white tablecloth. I mean it really is a whole group of people that's in there. And what's great about what y'all are doing is they have such a diverse technology need but at the same time, some of it is so similar that that's part of what helped launch Restaurant Technology Network. So there's seven working groups that are part of it. You said right now what are the? Do you know off the top? I mean I'm not going to, it's not a pop quiz, but can you think of the top seven or the seven that you guys have right now?
Speaker 2:Well, so the seven that I mentioned earlier are the standards that we've published, so I can rattle off those but the working groups we have going on now.
Speaker 1:We have a winning customer.
Speaker 2:We have a restaurant technology capabilities framework work group. That's on phase two. We just wrapped up a transactional data standard work group where we published actually the transactional data standard.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:That one is like evergreen it's continuing to iterate. Yeah so we like publish kind of a chunk of it, and now we've got another chunk, and now we're working on another chunk.
Speaker 1:We did a customer record data standard. Yeah, the api one is the one. I remember I was like I'll help with the api one. That's awesome getting people on the same page. Like how are you gonna? You know, is it a plate, is it a meal, is a serving? You know, like what are the words and terms that are going to use? Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:I mean, you hit the nail on the head. The open api framework was the first thing that we did and we consider that like the foundational framework over which everything else is layered. You know all the data standards, you know you have to have an OpenAPI, or at least some of those principles. We've defined eight key principles that consist, that make what makes an OpenAPI A lot of people don't have one, but do they really yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean, this was this, and I feel like this was birthed at the time when, when all the food service delivery things were coming out and you'd walk into a restaurant and I remember, you know, you would see six different tablets behind the checkout, where it's like, well, there's DoorDash, and there's this one, and there's, you know favor, and there's whoever else. And it was how do you consolidate that, build it into the POS and build it into the system to help, you know, get rid of those headaches and make it make everything a little bit more efficient. So then, this year, at at Mertek, tell me about what was going on, because I got to go to NRF this year and my mind was absolutely blown. You know, brian Klinger and I were walking around looking at stuff just like, oh my God, I can't even imagine what the next year is going to be like. So we saw some.
Speaker 1:My, honestly, my favorite thing was the tech that I saw from soundhound with samsung and with let's chat, where it was. You could pull up to the drive-thru and you could talk in in portuguese and it would translate it to spanish or, you know, translate it to english. Or you could come up and use american sign language and it would interpret that and then translate it to an order in Spanish and it was like what in the world that was? That was crazy. What did you see this year at Mertek that you were like, yes, that's like, that's a, that's a cool thing to see?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I loved everything you just said. Um, samsung and M tech were there and they had all of this cool stuff set up in their booth. It was like all about interoperability, going back to standardization and how things work together. I like the. I think it was let's Chat. Is the application you're talking about?
Speaker 2:They translate all of the language. I love when people layer in the AI, but the coolest thing I think I saw was the winner of Startup Valley. I don't know if you've heard about who won Startup Valley or what they did.
Speaker 1:I saw, and I saw the Ring of Fire one also. Tell me about it. Let's talk about those two.
Speaker 2:Let's geek out for a second on Startup Valley. I cannot believe so. I had the privilege of walking through Startup Valley with our three judges One was from TGI Fridays, one was from Jollibee's and one was from Costa Vida and we walked through that alley and they were joking. The judges were joking around. They're like we need $5 every time someone says AI Because everybody was talking about AI and how their solution has AI built.
Speaker 2:But the coolest thing is remember a long time ago when people were like oh, we built this mobile first and it was all about mobile first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now it's really about AI first, like how are you envisioning AI from the ground up, and not just like plugging it into your solution on top of something, but really engineering and architecting your product with AI?
Speaker 1:first, of course, with that mindset kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So, the guy who won. They're from Expo and Expo it was just. It was so cool to see him and you got to go see this demo. If you haven't seen it online, go look at their video demo. Expo is the name of the company. They do like a chat GPT style of like a co-pilot for a manager of a restaurant. So let's say, you're managing a restaurant and instead of going and having all these people pull all these reports and trying to spend hours of aggregating data and sort of sorting through it and analyzing it this thing you can just ask it. You know what you know.
Speaker 2:Looking at my enterprise, um, which five stores are doing performing the best in coke sales, uh, the week of may 10th through the 20th and it'll literally just pull up not only charts, all of your data gets sucked into this thing and it, like it, analyzes it, it pull in real time like chat gpt, that quickly, that's awesome pulls it all up and charts it out and graphs everything, the whole nine yards. I mean it is like literally having a manager, a restaurant manager, co-pilot, who's also a data scientist, in the palm of your hand. Yeah, I mean that's how they market themselves, but that's the way I understand it. That's what came across.
Speaker 1:I was blown away. I think you know I love that. I was blown away. I think you know I love that and I love the interaction between technology like that and technology like the Atro right, where you've got it in your ear and, instead of interfacing with it just like ChatGPT has now moved on to the actual voice side where imagine when that transition happens you've got it in your ear and you can say, you know, tell me how my stores are doing right now, tell me, you know, where do I need supplies or where am I, where am I low on cheese for the pizza people? You know, things like that.
Speaker 1:It's, it's this, is that real integration of AI into something that becomes useful. Because I think you're down in South Texas One of the things that I hear about a lot is on the workforce side is that AI, ml, blah, blah, blah. How many jobs it's going to take, specifically in the service industry, and we saw that a little bit at NRF, where we saw the robotics and the machinery and the stuff that was automated, and I think that there's a place for it there. But there's also, there's still a place for using AI to help people do their jobs better, and that's where that whole thing of you know it's not AI that's going to take the jobs. It's people that understand how to use AI that are going to take the jobs, you know. So a real world application like that, I think is is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:What, what else did you see? What else was was if you had to pick a theme for the show now that it's over and you look back, you know a couple of weeks and you go. You know what other than AI, what really stood out? Where, where's, where's the direction of the ship headed?
Speaker 2:What's the future looking like for restaurant automation? I think automation is the word I mean to me, because it really encompasses everything you just said, from robotics to like ai, just automating everything and aggregating data in a way that you can automate things to make things so much easier. And you can, you know, you can think about it, think about all the things you can save on you can save on labor, you can save on, you know, uh, your your cogs, you know like.
Speaker 2:you can save on your inventory, you, you can save on everything in the kitchen, everything from the front of the house to the back of the house, to everything in between. I think automation, and so I think anything you can automate. And also I love the theme of data being harnessed to hyper-personalize the customer experience.
Speaker 1:I think that's a little bit over Personalization. Yeah, really I think it's a little bit over Personalization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really I think it's getting better and better and better with AI. I mean it's getting so good. Now that you know, I feel like we're going to be so spoiled as consumers. We're going to be so spoiled in a couple of years.
Speaker 1:So that's so. So there's a couple of things. One is the one that I've always loved, since I saw it at B-dubs, was the, the, the, the grease, the fryer robot that that takes the wings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, flippy, I mean that just on insurance alone, it's, it's. I'm looking at that going because as restaurant owners, whether they're big or they're small, you're always trying to find every way that you can do something more efficiently and to save money so that you can increase margins, whatever it is. But from a safety perspective, when you talk about a wings restaurant that serves primarily wings and french fries and fried fried, fried, fried fried something like Flippy is just incredible there. But the cost savings just on the insurance, it feels like would pay for that. Now. Granted, that may take a line job somewhere, but it also may give someone the chance to do a better job doing something else than having to run over to the fryer every five seconds. It's that whole idea that it gives them more time to do a better job doing other things by taking those scary things off the menu, if you will.
Speaker 2:I mean now they have sippy flippy, sippy chippy and a chipotle using it, you know, for the tortilla chips and you've got sippy flippy, and I'm sure there's a lot more. But I know White Cow is kind of among the first to start using miso robotics in the kitchen.
Speaker 1:They really embraced it early on, which is that organization is just impressive in the way that they, they, you know architecture and tech the second thing that comes to mind with that is is you know good restaurants are are reliable for their consistency right consistency in food and that's one of the reasons people continuously go back to certain restaurants. A friend of mine who's got a place here in south texas called the blue onion. He's been making the exact same spinach and artichoke dip for 20 years and it has never tasted just even any slight difference over the last 20 years. And it's so great because that's that's one of the things that drives us over there. From a consistency perspective, I feel like the whole automation component can help bad restaurants be better. It's like maybe bad, I'm just saying that it helps there.
Speaker 2:I agree 100%. I mean think about McDonald's. I mean McDonald's. It's not the greatest hamburger, it just reminds you of when you were little. Yeah, I had.
Speaker 1:McDonald's yesterday in the O'Hare Airport and I generally I try and watch what I eat, but I was like man, it's just good, you know. And my't I try and watch what I eat, but I was like man, it just it's just good, you know. And my kids listen, their Sprite mixture is like crack, is all I'm saying. And there's a whole YouTube conspiracy about their Sprite and their taste with the French fries and the this and the that.
Speaker 2:Listen, I'm a Diet Coke addict, you don't have to tell me. But let me tell you now did you hear the latest they announced yesterday? No Krispy Kreme, they're going to logistically roll out all the Krispy Kremes to all the McDonald's. Now they did a pilot a couple of years ago in Kentucky oh my gosh, A small pilot where they were delivering the Krispy Kremes over and having the pilots go in the McDonald's and see how it goes. They're going to have donuts, the Krispy Kreme donuts, not only in the breakfast but like all day.
Speaker 1:I live in the diabetes capital of North America. Fyi, I live in what is constantly ranked as the fattest city in the United States Beautiful McAllen, texas. So, oh my God, here we go. When are they going to?
Speaker 2:do that with like fresh fruit, you know Apples at McDonald's.
Speaker 1:Come on yeah right, well, that's fantastic apples license, if you so choose. Yeah, it's true. Okay, so you've got the executive summit. If I'm right, the executive summit's coming up right. It's like April or May or something like that.
Speaker 2:It's coming up in October. You know what, though? Here's something October, sorry that you don't. You probably don't know. We have a new executive summit coming up in June, a brand new in Canada. For our first time, we're going up to Canada.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Toronto in June and then in October we'll be in San Diego for the, for the executives, the traditional executive studies in San Diego this year in October.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. So it's gonna be all Tim Hortons is what you're saying. In Canada, it's going to be poutine and Tim Hortons, it'll be fun, it'll be fun.
Speaker 2:I think it's really going to be fun to go up there and see you know what the what the restaurants are doing up there and explore a little bit of their world, and how can we take the standards that we've created? That are pretty, they're universal, you know, and share them with our, with our friends across the globe really is what we're trying to do of course we gotta get one down in mexico, man, which is like five minutes from my house, it's.
Speaker 1:There's so many people moving conferences to mexico city right now. It's so cool to see Mexico City is closer to me than Dallas is, so if that gives you any idea where I am on the map but no, that's incredible, that's good to hear. And coming into those then, what are the key themes? What are the key takeaways? What's the focus that you all have in the Executive Summit? Because it's one thing, from the tech perspective, we can talk about Wi-Fi 7 and we can talk about near field communication and we can talk about all these things that are used for payment transactions and whatever. But at the C, you know, at the C-suite level, cxos what's top of mind for them? Is it moving into a world where they've got more automation and personalization to increase, you know, not only just efficiency but profit and everything? Or where do you think their heads are right now?
Speaker 2:as like a sneak peek into the executive summit, I think you know from executive service in the past the theme has always been kind of like where business and technology kind of intersect and I think what people are really trying to figure out is how to use technology to enhance not only the customer experience but the employee experience, whether it's automating, like you mentioned, in the back of house, and sort of reallocating employees so that they can do their jobs and add more value in whatever way that they're most talented in. It's trying to reimagine the enterprise, where you're taking technology and you're using it to wow both of those really critical audiences, both your employees and your customers.
Speaker 2:So however that comes to life in your brand and whatever you believe is the way to do it. There's a mix of all of that that can happen. And listen, I think loyalty is big.
Speaker 2:I think that reimagining loyalty and making sure that you're using the data in the right way and, of course, with the right governance- to make sure that the right people, the way they want to be spoken to in the channel in which they want to receive that information, is critical too. So all of those high level conversations I mean I remember the last more tech executive summit speaking of Flippy, Nicole West was on stage, the CMO of Chipotle talking about Flippy and the decision that went into that, rolling out that, and it was all about what you just mentioned about consistency, and they were like, if it doesn't, you know, make our chips taste the greater or just as great as they are now. We're not going to do it, it didn't matter about the.
Speaker 2:you know the labor and stuff. So they really made sure that the quality was there before they rolled. They thoughtfully roll out automation, so I think that's key.
Speaker 1:Keyword, yeah, keyword. Lots of good intent there and making sure that they do it correctly. Well, that's awesome. This has been such a fun conversation and I'm going to end it there on that high note. Thank you so much for taking the time to join and talk a little bit about Murtech Again.
Speaker 1:My audience may not be the audience that goes to Mertek every day, but I think that's why I wanted you here, because every day, the thing that sticks out in my mind and I remember hearing it somewhere, and I believe it was at Mertek is that every day, everybody interacts with the brands that are there when they make that decision. I went to Subway for lunch. I had a meatball sub. I mean, here we go. I interacted with someone that is a Mertek member or someone that could be on the RTN, and I think that that people really need to see what you all are doing. For the people that are not familiar with it I got lucky enough to be a part of it, you know. But for anyone that's interested, uh, you can find you online. Can you tell me quick, you know what? What's your website? Where do people find you? Where can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Find me on LinkedIn, angela Diffley on LinkedIn, or go to restaurantechnologynetworkcom. But you know, I think what I'd like to say to your audience is like, geeks unite, like we are all about tech Techie to techie talk. The people in these work groups are tech driven, they're techies and they geek out all the time in these work groups. So if you have that kind of you know, infrastructure makes it all happen, right, we can't do anything without the right infrastructure and the right systems to build the frameworks for all of this new creative, cool tech that we've talked about on the program.
Speaker 2:Join us, you'll be among good company.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm going to end this recording and let everyone know you can find us online wirelessnerdnet. You can look for the Waves podcast, everything.
