When Harri CEO Luke Fryer sat down with Amin Birju, VP of Technology at Taco Bell, and Doug Cook, CTO at Jack in the Box, the talk went straight to the everyday headaches operators know all too well. Thin crews, unpredictable rushes, late-night chaos, and avoidable waste.
On stage Tuesday at the Restaurant Finance and Development Conference at the Bellagio, the three broke down how AI could make running a shift feel easier.
Fryer asked, “How do we make the interaction between managers and technology seamless?” He added, “Imagine a manager knowing what they need to know when they need to know it.”
For Birju, that idea is already shaping how Taco Bell approaches tech. “AI should just surface within the operational workflow” he said. “Whether that is on POS, KDS, or mobile app, we want to be integrated into that experience for the RGM.”
Amin Birju, VP of Technology at Taco Bell
Taco Bell has deployed AI models for recommended ordering, and early results were telling. General managers often adjusted the model’s suggestions, but once they saw the side-by-side results, model versus manual adjustments, waste dropped, and food costs improved.
“They did not reject it, they just did not know why it recommended what it did” Birju said.
Taco Bell has also been testing voice AI in select drive-thrus. It is still a learning process as accuracy, noise, menu complexity, and team comfort all play a role.
“It is not something you can just flip on and expect to replace a person” he said. “It needs training, it needs context, and it needs to earn trust the same way any other tool does.”
Jack in the Box has been focused on labor, where operators already have real-time visibility into wage and hour compliance, overtime risk, and other key metrics. Cook said that gives teams a strong foundation before layering in more advanced AI.
“We are running so thin already” he said. “I would like to see us use technology to add labor in the right spot to build sales.”
Scheduling came up as one of the toughest challenges. Operators need systems that reflect real day-to-day dynamics, who works well together, who is strong at certain stations, and which shifts actually need more support.
Cook said full automation remains a trust hurdle, and the path forward is proving over time that the system can match or beat a manager’s manual schedule.
Luke Fryer, Harri CEO (left) and Doug Cook, CTO at Jack in the Box (right)
Cook also talked about a future where an AI assistant can flag stress in the restaurant.
“Imagine the system telling you here is what is going on, do you want me to take this action?” he said.
Stress came up throughout the session. Fryer shared a story of a UK operator whose numbers looked great on paper, but when he was in the restaurant, he saw 12-minute table turns slowing the dining room. Two extra bussers could have boosted sales 20 percent.
Birju said Taco Bell often sees the same disconnect. “The P and L may look great, but the RGM will say it was stressful. The team feels it before the data shows it,” he said.
Fryer ended by framing what he sees as a 12 billion dollar AI opportunity, not from cutting workers, but from precision.
The Restaurant Finance & Development Conference, presented by the Restaurant Finance Monitor, Franchise Times and Food On Demand, wrapped up on November 12 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
