Atul Sood, Chief Business Officer @ Curry Up Now

Atul Sood, Chief Business Officer @ Curry Up Now

On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sat down with Atul Sood, Fractional Chief Business Officer at Curry Up Now. Atul co-founded Kitchen United as its first employee, raised over $100M, struck the Kroger deal that put ghost kitchens inside grocery stores, and launched McDonald's global delivery partnerships before that. Now he's helping the pioneer of Indian fast casual gear up for its next chapter. First came Mexican, then Mediterranean... Atul says Indian is the next wave, and Curry Up Now is the next brand. 🌯🔥 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How Curry Up Now built a powerful 15-unit brand in the Bay Area and why franchisee interest is now heating up across the country - including in Birmingham, one of my favorite recent stops! 👉 How catering is poised to become an even more monster channel than it is today (~20% of sales - including delivery for up to 250 people on less than 24 hours' notice 😮) 👉 Where Curry Up Now is placing its AI bets and where it's holding the line. 👉 Atul's take on point solutions: "I don't think they're products. I think they're features." And why platform plays like Ovation can be so compelling for brands at Curry Up Now's stage of growth ➕ PLUS: Where Atul sees capital flowing in restaurant tech this year, some hard-won founder advice from someone who's lived it, and some protips for founders to keep mental health operating at its peak ❤️ T'was great meeting you Atul and I'm excited to see where Curry Up Now is a year from today! 🚀

Adrian Deasy, Founder/CEO @ Octane Coffee

This might be the coolest concept I've ever had on the show. On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Adrian Deasy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriandeasy/], Founder & CEO of Octane Coffee [https://www.linkedin.com/company/octane-coffee/], the world's first fully automated, employee-free drive-thru coffee concept. A mechanical engineer by training, Adrian looked at a line wrapped around a coffee kiosk back in 2018 and asked the question nobody else was asking: why hasn't anyone automated this? 🤔80,000+ drinks served. Running 24/7. 200 drinks an hour at a single location with ONE daily service visit. 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How Octane built a fully automated drive-thru from scratch 👉 The guest experience magic: GPS-timed drinks released so your latte is finished SECONDS before you pull up 👉 How Octane sloughs off the 20-30% labor line that every coffee concept carries, and why a 240 sq ft footprint lets them fit where a Scooters or Caribou Cabin (600+ sq ft) can't 👉 Adrian's read on the coffee drive-thru wars (Starbucks, Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, Scooters) and who he thinks has the most to lose ➕ PLUS: The "Powered by Octane" vision, why he partners with local roaster Stone Creek Coffee Roasters [https://www.linkedin.com/company/stone-creek-coffee-roasters/] instead of owning the bean, and what the ideal early franchisee actually looks like. ➕➕ PLUS PLUS: Adrian's first coffee of the day, his very basic 🎃 PSL hot take, and what comes out of his mouth when the machine breaks at 2:00 AM Thank you Adrian! This one is a glimpse straight into the future of beverages. Can't wait to have you back in a year to check in on the growth story. 🚀

Andrew Pudalov, Founder & CEO @ Rush Bowls

🥣 FROM WALL STREET TO HEALTHY BOWLS 📈🥭 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Andrew Pudalov [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#], Founder & CEO of Rush Bowls [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#]. After 15 years trading derivatives at firms like Morgan Stanley, Andrew walked away from finance, bet on himself, and opened a tiny 400-square-foot bowl shop near CU Boulder in 2004. Twenty-two years later that store is still kicking and Rush Bowls has grown to 50+ locations across 25 states with 100+ more units in the pipe. 😲 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 How a math geek's obsession with hard ratios (e.g. COGS 25% or less, labor 22-25%) built a low-waste, low-labor model that corporate refugees are lining up to franchise 👉 Why Andrew stayed 100% independent - NO PE - and runs his franchise system like a trading desk 👉 Where Rush Bowls is going ALL IN on non-traditional 👉 Andrew's take on AI: why he's not throwing hundreds of thousands of $ just yet ➕ PLUS: Why off-prem now runs as high as 60% of sales, the surprising day part that's growing, and a friendly debate on voice AI + kiosks ➕➕ PLUS PLUS: Rapid fire gold, including the one fruit Andrew would vote off the menu forever and a moment of total alignment on a certain pizza topping debate 🍍🍕 Thank you Andrew for the discussion and for proving that betting on yourself, and on real food, pays off. 🚀

Margo Hughes, Executive Director Business Services @ Bluemont Group

🍩 DONUT WASTE: $3M PROBLEM, MEET YOUR MATCH 🍩 Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I'm joined by Margo Hughes, Executive Director of Business Services at Bluemont Group, a Dunkin' franchisee with ~100 locations across seven states. Margo's become one of the most visible voices in restaurant AI thanks to Do'Cast: the donut forecasting system Bluemont co-developed with PreciTaste that's already cut donut waste by up to 30%. 📉🍩 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 The wild origin story of Do'Cast 👉 How a $100/day waste problem becomes a $3M+ headache when you scale to 100 stores, and how Bluemont is on track to save another $1M 💰💰💰 👉 Why over-optimizing waste actually means you're "managing your business down" 📉 👉 The hyperlocal demand forecasting variables nobody sees coming: local election days, school field trips, sports games, weather, and that one neighborhood that always sells more sprinkles 🌦️🏈 👉 The puppy analogy every operator evaluating AI needs to hear. 🐶 ➕ PLUS: Margo shares what's next on her hit list AND drops a hot take in our rapid fire round on whether AI is more hype or more substance in restaurants right now. You'll have to watch to hear it. 👀 Margo, thank you for the puppy wisdom, and for proving that "small pond" reputations get built one great interview at a time. Now I gotta go try a sour cream donut. 🚀

David Cantu, CEO @ Craftable

🏢 FROM THE FLOOR TO THE BACK OFFICE 🏢 On today's 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with David Cantu [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#], CEO of Craftable [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#] and former co-founder of HotSchedules [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#]. David started on the floor at Outback Steakhouse and PF Chang's, then turned that operator DNA into a 20+ year run building tech that powers hospitality. Watch this for an insider's look into how David and the Craftable team are helping 😮80,000+ operators😮 protect their margins today 🚀 📺WATCH AND LEARN📺 👉 The origin story of HotSchedules, born out of a real problem he was solving as a PF Chang's GM. See how the team bootstrapped through the dot-com implosion and 9/11 before scaling over a decade - all before ever taking a dime of PE money 👉 Why David believes the current AI wave is forcing legacy platforms to rebuild themselves from the ground up, and how Craftable rebuilt its architecture to be AI-native 🤖 👉 How Craftable surfaces margin erosion signals in real time, from a 35% spike in lime prices to kilowatt-level waste, and why visibility alone drove a 600 basis point P&L improvement at a restaurant David recently operated 📈 ➕ PLUS: David's candid take on the Founder's Dilemma and knowing when to self-select out, plus why ops-led tech buying usually beats CFO-led ➕➕ PLUS PLUS: Rapid fire answers on lettuce wraps vs bloomin' onion and the most overlooked line item that kills restaurant margins Thank you David for sharing your hard-won wisdom from 20+ years of building in this industry. 🚀