“AI, I have no idea if the doomsayers are right, and I'm just not even thinking about that. What I'm thinking about is that we have a concept we call ABCD. … always be collecting dots so you can always be connecting dots. And the dots are pieces of information about people so that we can customize experiences, which is what I think hospitality is. And we have never had a greater dot collecting agency than AI. It's almost malpractice to not know who you're serving in the restaurant.”
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Kara Swisher asked how the guests think about technology in restaurants, including QR codes, touchscreen ordering and AI. Meyer says he has always seen tech as a way to add humanity by removing friction, and sees AI as a memory for hospitality.
…to help and grow your business. And I love it because it gives you a voice out there to talk about things that are important to you and why, you know, people that don't use leftovers use them. I mean, it's crazy waste. There's too many people starving. Don't waste food. So it gives you a voice. And
Danny, it's impossible, again, to ignore tech in restaurants, QR codes, touchscreen ordering, weird AI slop ads, marketing photos. How do you think about using things like AI or what Susan is doing for yourself and your restaurants? Well,
I've never had a TV show like Susan has had, but technology for us is, I've always looked at tech and restaurants as a way to advance touch. So if we can take the friction out of the hospitality industry and actually add humanity to it through tech, we do that. So AI, I have no idea if the doomsayers are right, and I'm just not even thinking about that. What I'm thinking about is that we have a concept we call ABCD. So you can ABCD, always be collecting dots so you can always be connecting dots. And the dots are pieces of information about people so that we can customize experiences, which is what I think hospitality is. And we have never had a greater dot collecting agency than AI. It's almost malpractice to not know who you're serving in the restaurant. Everybody has preferences. You know, hospitality is not one size fits all. That's what service is. Hospitality is customizing it. So I love it. I also love the degree to which we can use it in the back of the house to take administrative tasks that are really boring that actually keep our managers off the floor instead of greeting guests. That's another way that we really like to use it.
You use it in both those ways. I would agree with you about it knowing customers, including in regular retail. Now, Elizar, I think your biggest story that got tons of social media attention was a $60 loaf of rye bread that's being sold in this bakery. I read the hell out of that story and it was…
Well, thanks for reading. You know, that was a story that had already lived sort of a full cycle of internet virality by the time I got to it. And so when I went to New York, ate the bread, was trying to form sort of some thoughts about it. I mostly was just thinking about how to write a story that…
And the bread was good. And