Bullish is probably the most accurate word to describe smoothie chain Pure Green’s approach to integrating artificial intelligence across its system, but even that term may undersell the brand’s embrace of the technology.
With more than 80 units nationwide, Ross Franklin, CEO and founder of Pure Green, said the growing Florida-based chain is intentionally and aggressively turning to AI to transform the brand’s corporate operating structure and management workflows.
Ross Franklin is the CEO and founder of Pure Green, a smoothie chain with more than 80 locations operating across 25 states.
Franklin’s workdays kick off with an 8 a.m. all-hands-on-deck call with a team of AI agents that provide a report on work conducted throughout the night. That daily meeting precedes a call with human corporate team members, each of whom leverages their own stack of agents.
Pure Green relies on AI to design standard operating procedures in minutes, prepare detailed revenue projections and reports on demand, and reshape the franchisee onboarding process.
“A big disadvantage that these bigger companies have is it’s too difficult for them to jump on the latest tech,” Franklin said of AI integration within restaurant brands. “It’s too difficult for them to get the whole system on board. They’re very slow to adopt, but for us … we’re small enough, we’re flexible and we embrace tech, so we’re able to get ahead of competitors by doing so.”
Franklin said Pure Green’s franchisee base is generally optimistic about AI usage, especially after agent-assisted improvements to the company’s intranet aimed at franchisee onboarding and team member training.
“A franchisee built this [tool] where they want to do corporate catering for their specific store,” Franklin said. “It shows who the company is, what the size of the company is and who the key contact that HR is. It can write an outreach email for them with an offer on how to capitalize. So all done with AI created by one of our franchisees, accessible through our intranet.”
Yilmaz Yavuz, a franchisee operating one location in Florida, said Pure Green headquarters staff actively encouraged AI use through workshops and an AI contest, with submissions integrated across the broader system.
“Developing software is one thing, but testing it on the real floor is another thing,” Yavuzz said. “Because everybody has their own real-world scenarios, and everybody has their own problems to solve.”
Yavuz is the developer of Mays, an AI-powered operations app for restaurants and franchisees, now serving his own Pure Green location and several others concentrated along the East Coast. He created the alpha version of the platform for donut stores he operates in Turkey.
Yilmaz Yavuz is a Pure Green franchisee operating one location in Sunrise, Florida.
“[Mays] was coming from a pain that we have in the stores in Turkey; it was initially focusing on managing the tasks and creating an environment where you can see what kind of checklist items were completed with proof,” Yavuz said. …“We had to create our own application, like a mobile application for iOS and Android, and let our employees use that specific application to send the tasks that they have in the stores, and also we added the schedule later. Now, we are working on the inventory [tools].”
Franklin said Pure Green is in testing with the app, with the intent of a systemwide rollout that aims to replace two or three vendors and significantly reduce tech fees. Yavuz said Mays is now used by franchisees across four brands, including Baskin-Robbins and local bakeries.
“We have completely revamped training, leveraging AI for team members,” Franklin said. “All stores get access to a custom team member training page for their store, and their team members basically watch a video, and then there’s a quiz. [When] they read the manual, there’s a quiz. A lot of our team members are in high school or college, and their attention spans [are] used to watching videos on TikTok and Instagram. So, our production team built videos that are very fast-paced, designed to hold the attention of our team members.”
At the headquarters, Franklin said brand leaders lean on AI when making changes to the menu, such as the rollout of refreshers, a cold-pressed juice beverage that hit menus over the summer.
“We leveraged AI to basically give us McKinsey-style reports, reports that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to do all of these sensitivity studies,” Franklin said. …“It does revenue projections, and it basically helped us land on the right recipe, the right price, the right timing. We had pages and pages of data and reports. We were able to distill that down to a summary.”
Franklin said AI use hasn’t yet directly impacted the ability to acquire new Pure Green franchisees, but it has supported existing owners and improved communication as the brand expands toward 100 U.S. stores by year’s end.
“What’s really important as a growing franchisor is that the franchisees know that any decision the franchisor makes is based on the data, and the best data scientists—the best analyzers— are AI right now,” Franklin said. “It blows away any human because it could sift through so much data, thousands and thousands of pages of data and years of data, and come up with patterns and can project so much better than any human. So one of the best use cases is for menu innovation.”
The most common misconception he hears about AI integration among restaurant operators is that coding experience is required to explore and benefit from the technology.
“Every franchisor should be leaning into this and should be using it,” Franklin said of AI tools. “I think that a lot of them just have so many units, and they’re so used to antiquated ways, and they’re kind of stuck in those ways. The right move would be for them to embrace it. It has a massive impact throughout the system, but a lot of them just don’t know. They’re scared, they have to hire consultants, and they’re trying to test it and see if it’s right. We’re just leaning into it and going all in, and it’s transforming every part of the business.”
