The Future and AI with Joe Carbonara of Zoomba Group and Dan Hartlein of Antunes: Part 2 Artwork

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Foodservice for Thought

The Future and AI with Joe Carbonara of Zoomba Group and Dan Hartlein of Antunes: Part 2

August 20, 2024 • Karey Clements & Justin Olivares • Season 6 • Episode 3

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This week and next, it's a two part episode where Karey and Justin chat with Joe Carbonara of Zoomba Group and Dan Hartlein of Antunes. The topic? AI and Automation in foodservice.

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My curiosity is about spontaneity. And that experience of dining out and how I get most people probably don't go to some of the fast casual to have, you know, the meal of their life. But I do know, I actually have a friend he enjoys going to McDonald's every week day, because he's retired and his friends aren't. But he has this group of people that he runs into there, and they have coffee together. And, you know, everybody knows the names of the counter. And that's kind of a big deal for them. And I just, but for me, you know, I don't want to know what to expect and every experience I have and like, and so maybe I'm gonna get lost in this, you know, but I wonder if this is I mean, I don't even know how you wouldn't you wouldn't be able to answer this unless you but your opinions are important. What about spontaneity? I mean, Jeff, you guys are in Chicago, you can go to some restaurants. And I mean, you know, it's going to be great service or what have you, but you don't know how the night's gonna unfold. And I mean, and I'm not, you know, some of these, you've got the 30 to $50 tickets. You know, I'm not talking about the, the, you know, for our dinners, but But you know, mid range. And I don't know if that's mid range, maybe 20 to 40 as mid range. I don't know, but I don't want to know what's gonna happen before I leave the house and have to order this what if I don't know?
What are your thoughts about losing spontaneity?
Well, I I think that you're confusing, a large dataset that in its total, I mean, we're not handing over control to the machine. We're not saying hey, I'm carry, where am I eating tonight? Right, right. Okay, so so we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not at that point. And hopefully, never will be. But what we're doing is we're taking a million samples of carry. And we're saying that the typical behavior on a sunny day in Chicago at 70 degree evening, beautiful night is going to drive these people, this, this, this kind of people and this number of people into these restaurants. And so it doesn't say that you are going to always behave in that manner. It doesn't say that you don't have spontaneity to, to go do what you choose, and everyone in that dataset does. But what it does say that across the numbers, it becomes moddable it becomes predictable, it becomes for castable. What number of people are going to do that under these conditions? And what what will they order and what what will they buy and where will they dine? And that becomes for castable, but not down to the particular individual. Right? It's, it's so you still have your spontaneity up where you want to eat, you're gonna go have the experience you want to have, you're gonna go be surprised by how that all unfolds. But the restaurant is likely more prepared for you. Because they've used the data in order to say, you know, how often did they run out of the special? You know, do you have pork chops? Sounds really good. I like that love. Sorry, sir. We've sold the last one. Because you didn't forecast right. And you had more interest in an item at a particular moment than you anticipated? Well, what if the data would have said were 100 porkchop. Short. Now, what's customer satisfaction? What's the result of that? I don't see losses there and spontaneity. I see improvements there in serving that spontaneity. Yeah,
and I think from a consumer, from a consumer perspective carry, what I would say is that there's a couple things that the technology can do for you. So like, for example, when you order something on Amazon like you buy or certain places, I go and buy books, people who bought this book might like this, or this or this where they kind of start putting in some recommendations. So I think that's that's one way that happens. I think the second the second way that some of that spontaneity comes into if you have a group of guys that that's coming in every day and you know that they're ordering coffee, and you're going to try a new hazelnut flavored coffee or brew or something like that, some of that guerilla marketing is still really relevant. So from an operator perspective, you walk out with a tray of tray of drinks, you know of coffee, hey guys, you come in, you're newer to this coffee every day, we're trying a new flavor of one, you should, once you guys, here's the, here's a sample for you to try, you know, the operator has to engage in make it make it aware. And if we're in a limited service, or QSR format, that's where the digital menu boards come into play. That's where the installer marketing, you know, comes into play. That's where the email saying, hey, the next time you come here, this is where we're testing this, you know, consider consider trying it. So I think I think it's it's not just on the part of the operator, and it's not just on the part of the consumer, I think it's there needs to be some interaction, kind of kind of between both. Does that answer your question a little bit?
Well, I don't think I asked the question in the right way. The question I have about spontaneity is, I don't, this may say a lot about me versus other people. But I may not know, you know, some people who are. So let's just use a restaurant where you can order on the app. Okay. And you're ordering on the app 15 minutes before, or however many you know, before you get there. This is a person who doesn't change their mind, apparently, because I often don't know until I get there. If I'm ordering on an app. That's it. If there's a poster showing this new thing, and now that sounds great, or I actually see somebody order it, and then they get it and I'm like, oh, I want that I'm done. I've paid for this drink. It's there. And that's it. It's done. And that's what I'm talking about spontaneity. Now. To your point, Dan, about forecasting, I do think that takes away some spontaneity as well, because the store is so tuned in on these four castable items, which I get from a business standpoint, but I mean, even while I'm talking to you, I phones blowing up with something about Netflix. And I'm, I reminds me of my choices of what to view are picked by Netflix, because I've watched three movies like this, they think I always want to watch these movies. And unless I know about these other action movies, or have Justin to talk to me about the matrix, I'm not going to know to go look for that Matrix movie. I'm gonna watch a rom com Again, or something, you know, and it is, gosh, do I sound like a conspiracy theories about freewill and stuff like that? And I guess that,
I mean, it would help if you took your tinfoil hat on. But other than that, you're fine.
I think that's
what I won. And I don't I, I think you may have changed that say, if you don't order 15 minutes before, before you get here. We don't want your business, right? I can't imagine that. But you might, those are not going to be your customers, they will be somebody that you're not going to be their customer, let me restate that. They're going to be somebody, somebody else who loves the fact that it's that efficient in that organized and that predictable, because that's the way they're wired. You want to walk in and see the special on the Sunday, that's fine. But But I think those stores need to continue to offer that selection and that capability in order to keep those customers. Now some may not so may say, you know, we make decisions every day, and what kind of products we want to manufacture and how much variability we do a lot of variability. But other companies build widgets, and they won't do anything. That's a slight curveball away from the standard. Yeah, that's a decision they make too, right? So so it's a matter of where, where you go where that's a part of the business model. And in maybe even moving away from those who don't offer that kind of select selection at the point of sale.
Right, which is what says you can look for. Yeah, I agree with everything you said that. And I also think that this is where old school marketing comes in, whether it's, you know, one to one, I see you in place, hey, you should try this, take a sample on your way out the door. email blasts to you, you know, texts, you broadcast or print advertising. I mean, I think if there was a perfect way to reach everybody, everybody would you know, with fire that one magic bullet, but it doesn't exist. So it's really on the part of the operator to figure out to know its customers and figure out ways to build awareness to pique to pique your interest in other things that they have. Well,
and that yes, that's 100% true and carry one of the things you made me think of his what I've tried to do over the last several years is, is leverage the predictability in my favor so that I can make time for For the stuff that I want to have spontaneity for, so I'm going to get a target grocery order, I'm going to get all the staples. And then I'll take time, one night after work or on a weekend to go bum around to Whole Foods or sprouts or something to take my time and see like, Oh, this looks good today, or this looks good, or whatever. Or if I'm out for coffee shop, right? I just need a coffee. I know I can order on Starbucks, and I'm done. But if it's Saturday, my wife and I are bumming around a shopping area, and we want to go in and just check out something and get a something kind of snickerdoodle latte or whatever, then we've given ourselves sort of the time because we can leverage those moments when we just need something to work. And then we can make room for time when we just want to have the spontaneity. And
that's and then there's Amazon Fresh to continue your grocery example. Amazon Fresh is eliminated the checkout counter, what a great idea. It's so easy. You could do the Browse. And it's more efficient than doing the Browse somewhere else because you've paid for it as you put it in your cart. It's cool. It's it's a good use of technology. They're changing that paradigm, you get, you get to have both in that case, it's efficient. And it's, you get to browse. Right, you do both.
I love Dan's enthusiasm in and for technology. I mean, I think I've shared that with y'all before AI is fascinating to me. I mean, it frightens me because I'm a smart person. But I'm also super excited about it. Something that I think about just from a psychology standpoint, is the fact that we we have such a hard time keeping up with all the information that's coming at us now. And you know, we haven't evolved to deal with this yet. We just haven't. And now we're layering on more and more and more. And I'm sure there's some people listening that are like, Okay, well and good. But where, where's the restaurant owner? Who's not, you know, who doesn't have 600 stores? Going to even think about this? Okay, I know what my problems are? Where do I even go? Who do I talk to? Is there a class that can help me learn about AI as far as food service goes? And, you know, we're not there. I mean, AI is advancing so quick, and automation, and data analytics. And all of these, these technologies now are just, I mean, not that we were keeping up before. But I mean, it just seems like in the past six months, everything is changing even more rapidly. And it's too much for the human brain, not just mine. You know, I know Justin thinks, well, she's an old woman, but I'm not. And that's something that I take to heart is there's nowhere to go for this kind of education. Well,
I think it comes back to vision, you know, because it can be overwhelming trying to understand all of it. You're exactly right. It's like, you know, the old cliche of drinking from a firehose, and things are changing and happening and that sort of thing. But you have to remember that the technology works for you, you don't work for it. So you have to understand, I think, just for starters, what do you want? Why do you why do you want to get involved? What is what is what is the issue that you want to address, and then you can start really working toward finding out what it is, I think we're at a better time now than before than we were before. In that there's more things as Dan said, so perfectly before there are there are more scalable options for smaller operators versus larger, you know, for the longest time, given the nature of ROI on these things, you know, AI app ordering kiosks, all that sort of stuff was really just a it was a pool that only the big fish could swim. And now we're seeing it scaled down for to medium small sized companies. And I think that's a, I think that that's a that's a really positive thing. But it really comes back to vision. You know, here in Chicago, we had a C store concept called Fox Trot is kind of an upscale Seastar kind of concept, and it went bankrupt and closed abruptly last week. And the part of the reason why a lot of speculation is that they closed is that coming out of the pandemic, they didn't really understand what they wanted to be when they grow up, they didn't have a vision. So they were struggling to deal with, they provided what I thought was a pretty decent in store experience. I had been there many times, but they also had a large tech or delivery and in app component. And they were having a hard time figuring out how to balance it. And as a result, having that that lack of vision was one of the factors I think that really contributed to their downfall. So they went bankrupt. So I think having a vision and knowing what you want, I think is a great step is how you get started at all.
That's something just for even our business. I think that's true. You know, we were at the mossy conference earlier this year and I met a rep that was talking about some things that they were doing. And they had, they had a need and they had a vision, but they had no idea how to get there. So they started asking questions of the resources or vendors that they already worked with, this is a rep firm, okay, so it's not, you know, not a restaurant or manufacturer or whatever. But they decided we're gonna torture ourselves and figure this out and go through what what I understood to be a really, really clunky process and they're still in the work. But at the end of this, they will have, they will have solved some problems that were really morale downers for some of their key employees, so. And it's AI, just using AI, just out of
automating some of their processes. And
well, thanks, guys very much. I guess. Justin, do you have any other questions before we ask him the hard hitting? So what's next?
Yeah, I mean, I could go on for days. But no, I think we've had a pretty good conversation. And you guys just, you bring it. So thank you. So
it's always a pleasure, what,
what is next, whether it's for your operations, or the things, you know, maybe there's some new things since the last time we talked? That, because everybody's fascinated by this. So it's not like it's a subject that's not applicable to someone, if you if you're alive right now. I mean, you could be 150 years old, you still are using AI or automation of some sort. When you go to doctor with Medicare, what have you, you know, so what's next? You know,
what's really interesting is how fast this whole world of AI is accelerating. I heard an interview with Sam Altman. Sam is the CEO of chat GPT. And they're arguably one of the closer to artificial general intelligence is anybody. They've been adopted, I understand by Microsoft Office platform, which means they've had billions of users to it around the world, which only enhances its ability to learn. He was asked a question in this interview.
How does it learn?
And his answer was, I don't know.
He said, I don't know. And it's learned by it's well, it's learned things that aren't in the training model. It's learning things that we know, we didn't attempt to teach it. So this is becoming, you know, I don't want it to sound like you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, you know, everything that that happens in the Terminator movies, but this is starting to roll at that level and catching attention. It's moving very fast. I also listened to a podcast by the thickies former because he's pretty old. But the head a G, the G AI, or the AI General, General, artificial intelligence for Google. And his, his forecast of the future was not mine, in terms of the combination of man and machine and how we improve people, you know, through this kind of interface. So you know, that may be a bigger answer them what you were looking for. But I think that, you know, we need to pay attention to our policymakers. And we meet need to pay attention to how this is going to be managed and controlled. It is it's happening, it's going to happen, cats out of the box, can't put it back in. But, you know, how do we manage it and control it because it can have incredible positive contributions to what we consider human life. It could also have the negative consequences that you hear about as well. So So from an AI perspective, and a big picture, what we've seen since we spoke last is some rapid acceleration, deployment and expansion of those general use platforms. And it raises all sorts of, I think, the ethical questions and who gets to make those ethical answers. You know, I made the comment in our in the in Dallas, I said, Listen, I said, as long as people stay in charge here, we're okay. We don't have the all those scenarios or for nothing. But when Sam Altman says, I don't know how it's learning, I'm not sure we're in charge anymore. All right. So where does it go?
By Mustafa Solomon, he was he I don't remember the name of his AI company. He you know, he created it and sold it in 2019, I think to Google for a gazillion bazillion dollars. And during this process, he's been talking to world leaders like the cats out of the bag. This is here, you guys. I mean, we if we're not paying attention to this, we're right now Is there is the ability for somebody to hack some kind of I can't remember if he was talking about DNA, or but some kind of bio terrorism, you know, he said, You can make the case now of a 17 year old person in their mom's basement with the ability to, to just like that. Kill 500,000 People with the push of a button, and we don't even our leaders don't even understand that, then. So when you think about policymakers, I mean, it seems to me a lot of the things that we will be voting on in America and our upcoming elections. That's not even on there for most people, like that's not on their radar. And now is the time, you know, now is the time so yeah, it's scaring the shit out of everybody. Maybe Joe has something less scary?
Well, I do think your point about garden Rails is excellent. And there's stories that are coming out here in the local media in Chicago, one of the TV stations is doing an in depth report about how they were people were AI was being used to create pornography with people's faces that weren't even involved in what was going on. So yeah,
a young lady in New Jersey killed herself over that death is terrible. As
a father of three daughters, that kind of stuff scares scares the life where I think so I think the the issue I think moving forward is how do we harness it, so we're amplifying the good, and we're keeping the bad and check. One of the things I'd like to be able to see us do more with with AI and, and these advanced technologies is to become more collaborative, you know, to be able to work together more, whether we're in different locations, different companies, that sort of thing. Being at a few conferences this year, I've heard some conversate, like, ways to make meetings and other things more important, like you're more productive, I should say, by, you know, do some brainstorming while you're at home by yourself or answer some questions, and then use AI to kind of roll all that up. And okay, here's the common themes that emerge. So then when the four of us get in a room together, we start discussing it, we already know, were three or four areas that we agree on, here's the five or six, we don't have to waste any time on. So to make us more productive, and in some ways, maybe more creative. So that's kind of what I would like to see happen. And my fingers are crossed, that will be the case.
Yep, I agree. And I want to just echo that, because because I brought out the dark side. That that it's real it and so it and we can we can, I'm an optimist, we said that earlier, we're going to find the ways to manage this, control it, take advantage of it. If you're not you're at a credible competitive disadvantage. Take advantage of it, find ways to use it, stay in tune with what's happening in what's available. It's getting more and more cost effective every day. Put it to work. You know what, what you could do today is drastically different than what it was six months ago, what it's going to be in six months. It's even it's moving at a rate that it's hard to fathom. Okay, so and that coupled with faster computing, and some of the cloud computing and things that just unleash incredible power. It's going to change things. Questions, how do you harness it to your point, Joe? Agree 100% Find a way to harness it put it to work. Yeah,
and I think it's easy to get numb Sarkaria it's easy to get caught up with the potential of illness. I love the potential. We all love the potential. You know, a couple of us have to be adults and keep our eyes on the other, you know, on the other part of just to make sure we don't get too far. Too far, right? Yeah, I
look forward to the learning recently. I've got to use chat GBT quite a bit. I had it actually draft a legal document and my my, one of my good friends is an attorney. And I said, How's this is like, I mean, not all the language is what I would use. But did you put in for Texas? And I said, Yep, you know, a special deed warranty deed for state of Texas, that Odetta wrote it up and saved me $650 That was the that's how much the attorney told me it would Causton you know, I mean, a little back and forth. And yeah, it's amazing. And Justin, I put in not too long ago, making an organizational system for me using and I listed the things that I use, like teams and tasks set by teams, SharePoint, Outlook CRM, and I can't remember in a 13 week planner, and it just did I mean, it was thinking for a minute and then it just spit it out. And this was on a Sunday and the next Monday I started I changed the way I organized my to dues and tasks completely and it was just like that, and I was so stumped. So that's the potential right? That's the ease
well, and that that ability to do mundane, not that that's a mundane task, but but certainly handing off you know, sent send a letter to my accountant to do this boom. You don't have to take time to write it. It's done. And write simple code, write software. You know, in an IT department, graphic designers the graphic design that this stuff can do. Oh, my God is astounding. You know, it's amazing. And be careful with the deep fakes. I mean, I see advertisements every day. i i saw one with Bezos today. I've like he's not advertising now that way, but boy, look, sir looked real. So anyway,
well, so I think y'all can do what I do is when I can't think of anything nice to say to Justin just as chat GPT to make up some nice letter. So after the shock is writing a nice thank you for putting together a podcast. Check up joke's
on you. I'm not even here. I'm outside on a walk. This is my deepfake going right here. I'm leveraging the hell out of AI right now.
I would say there's some some people we know that have mastered deep fake. Well, guys, thank you so so very much. I know that we just scratched the surface. This is, you know, for the rest of our lives, this conversation is going to be happening. It's just going to evolve and evolve.
For sure. And soon with AI, the four of us might have a conversation that we didn't actually
sound smarter.
I don't think I don't think any of us are of the profile that they want to copy. So I think we're okay.
All right, everyone. Well, thank you to our guests for being on Thank you, Carrie. Appreciate it. And thank you for listening audience to another episode of the food service for thought podcast. And we will be back again in a couple of weeks.
Thank you, everyone. Thanks, guys.
Thank you for listening to the food service for thought podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. And a big shout out to Forbes Heever and Wallace and everyone on the team for producing the first ever food service rep driven podcast. Please subscribe rate and review. Oh, and go eat out at your local restaurant or grab some takeout or delivery even if you are just in the mood for some apps or dessert. Every bite helps