Who sells $1 Billion of Ads to Restaurants?

Send us Fan Mail

This week on The Digital Restaurant, I’m joined by a new co-host — Alex, an AI avatar — as we break down five headlines showing how delivery, automation, and AI are shaping the next wave of restaurant operations:

01:10 – Olive Garden’s off-premise engine is humming
Uber Direct integration, buy-one-take-one offers, and nearly 7% same-store sales growth from delivery alone

05:25 – Yum China rolls out Q Smartt
 A voice-activated wearable assistant for managers, designed to surface operational insights in real time

11:05 – GPT failed at report building
 QSR’s Mary Pillow Thompson spent a weekend trying to automate daily ops. The issue wasn’t the model—it was the lack of orchestration

13:30 – DoorDash acquires Symbiosis for $175M
 A strategic bet on local commerce advertising, with closed-loop attribution from ad to order

17:45 – Coco raises $80M to scale delivery bots
 Semi-autonomous, human-guided, and aiming for 10,000 units deployed by 2026

Quote of the week:
 “Coco isn’t replacing humans — they’re redeploying them smarter.”

Full episode: https://thedigitalrestaurant.buzzsprout.com

#restauranttech #AI #offpremise #DoorDash #OliveGarden #CocoRobotics #YumChina #InvisibleTechnologies

Shoutouts:
 Zach Rash, Joey Simons, Sam Altman, Ryan Graves, Mary Pillow Thompson, Alex (AI co-host)

Support the show

🔔 Subscribe to The Digital Restaurant Podcast and follow us on YouTube for more episodes that combine the love of food with the latest in technology. Your next restaurant tech adventure starts here!

📖  Get your copy of the Delivering the Digital Restaurant books at www.theDigital.Restaurant

🎤 Have Carl come and speak at your company conference! Learn more at www.theDigital.Restaurant

🎙️📰Please subscribe to our newsletter and connect with Carl's Delivering the Digital Restaurant page on LinkedIn for their twice-a-month newsletter.