This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Matt, I think we might have gone about two hours and twenty three minutes without mentioning AI. Wow, and we're gonna blow for this show.
By the way, that's your record, because Carrol's record.
Carol will talk about AI in relation to dealing with your pet like anything.
All right, how about it dealing with the restaurant business. And this won't be a first because we've heard a couple of people talk about automating like.
The drive through.
Drive through that's a slam dunk, right, We'll taking to upsell you every time.
Yeah, we're taking it to a different level here.
Robert Irvine, he's celebrity chef host of Restaurant Impossible on the Food at network. He joins us on the phone from Tampa, Florida. Robert again, Matt and I. It seems like when we talked to members of the C suite and almost any industry out there, one of the top topics is, you know, artificial intelligence, how can it impact my business, either positively or if I'm in the tutoring
business negatively. Talk to us about kind of restaurant business house technology in general kind of impacting that business for good and bad and kind of what are you what do you look for the next several years?
Well, think think about technology in general has changed, right, We went from paper menus to iPads.
Now now every airport has an iPad without people. Yep, people just deliver food.
So technology has changed from the point of sale over years and years being imagery controlled. Also, pictures sell faster than words. So I think literally the next generation of restaurants will have very few people. I think AI will will be a huge part of the forward customer facing as well as the back end where the food is produced and served.
So it's going to change dramatically over the next two years. I guarantee is that is that.
A net positive? It sounds like a net positive for the restaurant business business. From a financial perspective, I know that, like a lot of industries, the restaurant industry has a very difficult time. I'm finding labor for sure.
Look right now, we're paying.
Anywhere from twenty two to twenty seven dollars for a cook that can't cook, you know which. It sounds funny, right, So are there are obviously ways we can make better. We have a server or a or a host that sits there and we're paying them to do nothing.
AI will upsell by twenty eight percent.
We know that, but fact so, the average check goes up, the service time is faster. You know, the restaurant industry is having such a tough time right now with not only going through COVID. We lost fifty four percent of our restaurants through COVID across the country.
Fifty four I've never heard it.
Yeah, that's huge. Wow. Think about what we have and what we don't have now.
The majority of Mama Pop restaurants can't afford to pay with inflation, with salaries, with everything like that, AI is always going to be I think McDonald's spent a billion point five one point five billion dollars on AI for their grab and go restaurants.
So I get that it works well at McDonald's.
But if I come to a restaurant where you're cooking food, I want a human to tell me, you know, what's tasting good tonight, or what the chef is interested in, or you know, I just need an opinion that can only come from a person.
Well, you're never gonna you're still going to get that.
You're not going to remove humans, but the mundane tasks of humans, I dishwashing, fris French fries, uh, chips, things like that. We're going to be all by robotics and AI are ordering systems. Are going to buy by AI simply because we make less mistakes, we less waste, and we're not paying people do we don't need to pay. You're still gonna have somebody to serve the food, of course you are. It depends on the style of restaurant that you have as.
To the AI that works for you.
I also need to bribe the matre d Robert, so you know.
So instead of bribing it, you can spend more money on that butler wine that you wanted.
Exactly So, Robert, you know, Matt and I here in our studio, we have a bank of TV screens from all the cable networks. And invariably it's illegal immigrants rushing over the border in the southern border. And I know one of the industries that has historically benefited from migration, both legal and illegal, has been the restaurant business. Talk to us about kind of how your industry views this country's immigration policy or lack thereof.
Well, here's the thing right now, we're struggling with labor no matter what. It's not just the restaurant industry. You know, load paying jobs. And I say when I say load paying jobs, it used to be seven dollars per person. Right now it's fifteen, twenty, twenty two, twenty seven. It has gone over the years. We don't have themeople to
do those Mondays asks. If you look at cruise ships as a great example of how we've changed doing business, cruise ships don't have very many many Americans doing mundane charts. They don't we go all around the world to pick up people that we pay less money to do. That's simply the facts really is. And AI is going to change that. It's going to rededicate the labor that we do have to doing a better job instead of sitting in a chewing gum or being on their phone.
You know. The immigration policy that I can't talk on.
I don't get involved in that policy, although I would love to see people that come to this country or people in this country being able.
To work and do the jobs. Look, you can.
Make twenty seven thirty dollars fifty dollars working from home. Now, why should I go and be a dishwasher or a server or a cook in a restaurant. If you imagine, every film star that wanted to be a film star in La started in restaurants doing something different. We don't have them people anymore. So that's why AI is going to take over that role.
I got to say, you know, people know you, of course, Robert from your hit show on the Food Network. Restaurant impossible. I feel like AI, you could put AI to use replacing a lot of your staff on the production crew as well.
Absolutely, and we do. And here's the funny thing. You know, I'm working with Grubber. I'm putting Grubber, the new technology self serving or ordering technology into the Pentagon itself that might have a restaurant inside the Pentagon, right, think about that? How does how do we put AI into the Pentagon when you can't use your phone in the Pentagon.
It's really interesting.
I mean, but you have to have a closed circuit system or how do you do that as to go out, it has to has to go out of the building to get cleared, to make sure it's safe to come in to get paid.
It's kind of interesting. But AI is always going to change, it will continue. Look, I did a restaurant last year that had bowling alleys that were still using pen and papers to tell you the scores. You know, people mum and pop and big business has to change because you know, it's not only the customer experience that we're talking about now, it's every facet of commerce, whether it be restaurants, whether it be hospitals, whether it be doctors' offices, retail stores.
We just don't have the workforce.
So you know, if you and other Walmart is a great example, they have a store that has no people in it. Right, whether we like it or not, Who's going to do those jobs? If we can't employ them, do the stores or the restaurants or whatever close or do we keep them open using AI and other ways? And I think the hospitality industry think about before we used to have front desks in hospital in hotels, you get your key. Now you can do it on your phone. You don't need to talk to a person. You can
order towels, food, everything from your phone. So we've advanced dramatically over the last ten years.
For sure, grubber is a pretty cool technology. Where does grubber who uses grubber besides you. I mean, I know you use it in the Pentagon, but where else is brand new?
Is brand new technology between Samsung having a hard case and then grubber having the intellectual property.
Inside of it. Right now is out testing all over.
I mean, I think it's the newest and I'm saying this the newest technology, the fastest technology there is out there. So we're testing it in lots of places. You'll see it all over. I mean there are different ways as tablets as phones.
Says. Look, you can go to a stadium.
How many times have you ever been to a football game or a baseball game? And the restaurants are twenty three or twenty five in number, and you want a French fry from one, You want a chicken nugget from that you want right.
They all have lines like forty fifty sixty people standing in line.
You don't need that anymore.
With grubber, or as you do, you get the barcode on your seat, which are there in stadiums, You order your food and it all comes at the same time.
And the back end, this is what I love and this is why I partnered with grubber.
The back end solution that goes into the kitchen is so so fantastic. It's not only that you can order an upsal on the front, the way it's split up into the back out of the house. I use less labor, I get a better product, less mistakes, and it's delivered.
Fact.
Technology all right, technology again in the restaurant biz, it's coming. Robert Irvine, celebrity chef, host of a restaurant Impossible on the Food Network, joining us on a phone from Tampa, Florida,