Leon Davoyan, the chief know-how officer for Dave’s Sizzling Hen, has ramped up the applying of synthetic intelligence throughout the restaurant chain’s operations, together with the drive-thru, cell ordering, rover supply, and robotic arms that whip up french fries.
However he’s cautious to not lose the human contact of hospitality. That AI-enabled drive-thru—a stylish software of AI that traditionally hasn’t had the smoothest deployment for bigger chains together with McDonald’s and Taco Bell—isn’t supposed to switch staff. “Our strategy is to allow the human to do more with the robot assistant,” says Davoyan.
All that mentioned, profitable deployments of AI, robotics, and different rising applied sciences might give Dave’s Sizzling Hen an edge within the fast-growing and extremely aggressive rooster restaurant class that features incumbent manufacturers like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes and fast-growing ideas like Elevating Cane’s, Hangry Joe’s Sizzling Hen & Wings, and Dave’s. Fast-service and fast-casual rooster eating places expanded their home unit rely by 4.7% in 2024 from the prior yr, together with a gross sales leap of practically 10%, in line with market analysis Datassential.
Including extra AI-enabled performance to Dave’s Sizzling Hen’s ordering programs has been a core precedence for Davoyan over the previous yr and a half and can proceed to be an space of focus in 2026. He has launched AI drive-thru ordering and hopes that the learnings from this software can be utilized to coach massive language fashions that could possibly be tapped for related performance within the firm’s cell app.
Dave’s Sizzling Hen, which was acquired by personal fairness agency Roark Capital in a deal valued at round $1 billion earlier this yr, can also be working with a number of distributors to develop extra exact predictions for when meals might be prepared. The occasions are then displayed on a digital order board throughout the retailer. When shops are busy, orders can take as much as 45 minutes to be prepared. Davoyan says he needs the predictive know-how to get inside two minutes of accuracy.
On the take a look at shops the place these programs have been deployed, Davoyan says the chain is including seven to eight extra transactions per week above places that don’t have this function. “The hypothesis is becoming true that if you serve up order-ready times more accurately, then the orders will come,” he provides.
Dave’s Sizzling Hen has additionally carried out some text-based updates for cell orders, and sooner or later, Davoyan says he needs so as to add in-app order standing updates much like what DoorDash and Uber Eats provides.
On the entrance counter of the restaurant, Dave’s Sizzling Hen has deployed kiosks, that are positioned to be barely tilted so the cashier can monitor ordering progress and step in if there are any points. The corporate says 23% of in-restaurant orders are booked by the kiosks right this moment, they usually improve the examine quantity by a median of 5.9%. Davoyan says this income technology ends in a return on funding that’s underneath a yr.
“We don’t remove the human element,” says Davoyan. “We have yet to reduce head count with all the things that we’re testing.”
Davoyan has additionally rolled out Microsoft Copilot throughout the company workplace, although he’s not fully bought on the maturity of the know-how. “I think there are other solutions that we should explore,” he says.
Different inside purposes of AI embody customer support, the place favorable restaurant critiques get an AI-written response that’s mechanically printed on-line, whereas the critiques with extra vital suggestions are reviewed and edited by a customer support agent earlier than the AI drafted response is authorized.
AI can also be getting used for drone and rover deliveries and might be included within the firm’s two take a look at robotic arms on the fry station. “We’re going to use AI to predict how many fries we’re going to need,” says Davoyan, who needs these robots to provide a continuing stream of contemporary fries that doesn’t harm meals high quality.
He says that the autonomous french fry performance is seeing a return on funding, however not but under the two-year threshold that Dave’s Sizzling Hen appears for when spending on tech. “Robots are very expensive,” says Davoyan. “It creates a barrier of entry for restaurants.”
Dave’s Sizzling Hen additionally managed to fully keep away from the Amazon Internet Providers cloud outage that ensnared tech companies, banks, and airways in October. The corporate’s level of sale system depends on the seller Qu, which has put in a bodily system that runs cloud domestically in each retailer. “We made all of our customers deploy the edge device,” says Amir Hudda, Qu’s CEO, whose different purchasers embody Blaze Pizza and Jack within the Field. None of these eating places have been impacted by the AWS shutdown.
Davoyan says Infrastructure is straightforward to take with no consideration due to the overall reliability that tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft supply their clients. However massive outages have turn into extra commonplace, together with at Cloudflare final month and Microsoft Azure in October. And since eating places function on extraordinarily skinny margins, they can not afford misplaced gross sales when POS programs are down and orders must be halted or processed by hand.
“We knew that the day would come where there would be some level of meltdown and because we have high volume locations, we made that a priority,” says Davoyan. “You should always have a backup plan.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
Nvidia makes yet one more AI funding. The AI chipmaker introduced it purchased a $2 billion stake in Synopsys, a part of an expanded partnership between the pair as they plan to combine Nvidia’s AI capabilities with Synopsys’ engineering options focused to analysis and growth groups throughout various sectors together with aerospace and automotive. Nvidia has been on an AI funding splurge, lately pouring $100 billion into OpenAI, $15 billion alongside Microsoft in Anthropic, and $5 billion in Intel.
DeepSeek debuts new AI fashions that rival OpenAI, Google. China-based AI startup DeepSeek debuted two new variations of an experimental AI mannequin that it claims match some od the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini-3 Professional. Bloomberg stories that the brand new AI fashions have contemporary capabilities to assist mix reasoning and execute sure actions autonomously. Venturebeat stories that the declare of parity with DeepSeek’s American rivals is predicated on testing throughout arithmetic, coding, and reasoning duties. There’s been a gradual drumbeat of recent AI mannequin rollouts over the previous couple of weeks, together with from Anthropic, Google, and Runway—the latter on Monday unveiled a new video mannequin it says is sweet at understanding physics, human movement, digital camera actions, and trigger and impact.
HP slicing jobs because it contends with larger chips prices. The PC maker introduced it could reduce 4,000 to six,000 workers by means of fiscal 2028 because it plans to use extra utilization of AI instruments to areas like product growth, buyer assist, and gross sales and advertising and marketing, CEO Enrique Lores advised Bloomberg. The corporate has lately benefited from elevated demand for brand new AI PCs however can also be coping with larger reminiscence chips costs, which is slicing into earnings. Layoffs have additionally lately been introduced at Apple, which reduce some gross sales jobs, and at Verizon, with the telecommunications big trimming 13,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce. The cuts throughout main tech giants comes as a latest KPMG survey confirmed that 52% of U.S. staff concern AI will substitute their jobs, a concern that’s practically doubled from final yr.
Campbell’s fires IT exec after accusations of racist remarks caught on audio. Campbell’s final week disclosed that Martin Bally, a VP of IT, was now not with the meals big after the corporate reviewed an audio recording during which the chief allegedly mentioned the corporate’s merchandise have been “highly processed food” for “poor people.” The audiotape surfaced as a part of an ongoing lawsuit with a former worker who alleged Bally had made racist remarks about Indian staff. Bally had labored at Campbell’s for practically 4 years and beforehand served in know-how management roles at automotive producer Stellantis and automotive merchandise provider American Axle & Manufacturing.
ADOPTION CURVE
Actual property business embraces AI however few are totally happy with their AI pilots. The variety of company actual property property managers working AI pilots has soared from 5% in 2023 to 92% by July of this yr and these property occupiers are pursuing a median of 5 pilot initiatives concurrently throughout a broad swatch of use circumstances starting from documentation to vitality administration to design and building planning, in line with a survey of over 1,000 senior CRE decision-makers carried out by business actual property and funding administration firm JLL.
“That is really surprising, because the commercial real estate industry is usually considered to be a laggard in terms of adopting technology,” says Yao Morin, CTO at JLL, in an interview with Fortune.
Nonetheless, Morin notes that the survey discovered that solely 5% of CRE leaders report they’ve achieved “most program goals” with their AI pilots. She mentioned some ache factors that JLL has noticed embody the messiness of organizing actual property information, which depends on plenty of unstructured information from bodily operations, and precisely measuring how a lot effectivity can really be derived from AI instruments.
Courtesy of JLL Analysis
JOBS RADAR
Hiring:
– Operation Smile is in search of a CIO, based mostly in Virginia Seaside, Virginia. Posted wage vary: $145K-$165K/yr.
– Veeam Software program is in search of a subject CTO for the Americas, a remote-based position. Posted wage vary: $226.2K-$323.1K/yr.
– Waterford Analysis Institute is in search of a CTO, a remote-based position. Posted wage vary: $265K-$290K/yr.
– The College of Vermont is in search of a deputy CTO, based mostly in Jericho, Vermont. Posted wage vary: $110K-$150K/yr.
Employed:
– Expedia Group appointedXavier Amatriain as its first chief AI and information officer, overseeing the long-term imaginative and prescient for AI and machine studying for the journey know-how firm. Amatriain joins Expedia from Google, the place he most lately served as VP of AI and compute enablement. He additionally beforehand held senior positions at LinkedIn and Netflix and has mentored expertise who went on to discovered Perplexity and Scale AI.
– AmeriLifeappointedSulabh Srivastava as CIO, reporting to Tim Calvert, who serves as chief working officer. Previous to becoming a member of the life and medical health insurance supplier, Srivastava most lately served as international CIO at insurance coverage firm Acrisure. He additionally beforehand served as CTO at Michigan-based Sparrow Well being System and as a VP of IT for Indiana College Well being.
– Gecko Robotics has promoted Ed Bryner to the position of CTO, elevating a founding engineer to the C-suite after he joined the AI robotics firm as a founding engineer in 2016.
– Dualboot Companions promotedBilly Boozer to the position of CTO, lower than 5 months after he joined the software program growth firm as VP of AI technique and product innovation. Beforehand, Boozer has served as a founding father of a number of tech startups, together with Letr, MerchantMob, and Boo Digital. He additionally beforehand held the CTO position at funds supplier Safe Bancard.
– ZeroFox namedShon Myatt as CTO of the cybersecurity firm. Myatt joins from Babel Road, which provides danger intelligence providers to legislation enforcement companies and the personal sector, the place he served as president and CTO after co-founding the corporate in 2009.
– Duck Creek Applied sciences appointedRajesh Raheja as CTO to supervise the engineering group and international tech technique as the corporate advances new AI capabilities for the insurance coverage business. Raheja joins the software program maker from cloud-software firm HPE, the place he served as SVP of the personal cloud and AI software program enterprise. He additionally beforehand served as chief engineering officer at software program supplier Boomi.
