Anybody Can Open a Restaurant!?!

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

I was perusing some of the industry publications that come across my screens and I saw a headline from an article in TechCrunch titled “Marc Lore says that AI will soon enable anyone to open a restaurant.”

Well, that’s a bold title that got my attention (or was I the victim of a little clickbait?). Let’s go with the former and accept that it was a bold title.

Often, when I hear the words “anyone” or “everyone,” I think of the story about responsibility (and unlike my typical Top of the Fold article, this story is a quick one).

The story is about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job that needed to be done, and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, b/c it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized Everybody wouldn’t do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

First, let’s either all agree or at least understand that I believe Marc Lore is one of the smartest entrepreneurs of this generation. The man helped reshape e-commerce, sold companies for billions, and is now taking his swing at reshaping foodservice through Wonder and AI-powered “restaurant factories.” His latest thesis? AI will soon enable anybody to open a restaurant. Respect!

Now let’s be honest, he’s right.

Anyone can open a restaurant, but tweak that sentence just a little bit, and reframe the statement, and I think you’d agree it sets the stage for a healthy debate.

Yes, anyone can open a restaurant, but actually getting it done, keeping it open and being a successful restaurant owner / operator, well, that’s a horse of a different color.

I’m obsessed with fairness, so technically, Marc Lore is technically correct. Anyone can OPEN a restaurant. As for AI, it can already generate menus, create branding, recipes, pricing models, social media posts, digital ads, loyalty programs, and maybe even the fake five-star reviews before the first order even hits the kitchen. 

But here’s where Branded respectfully parts ways with Silicon Valley b/c opening a restaurant has never been the hardest part. Successfully running one is.

The restaurant industry isn’t a software problem masquerading as a food problem. It’s a people business disguised as a logistics business wrapped inside an emotional experience economy.

And that’s where the “anybody can open a restaurant” thesis starts to lose its footing (at least for me) b/c restaurants aren’t Shopify stores with French fries. And as long as we’re at it, I believe Domino’s is NOT a tech company that also sells pizza and despite the criticism, to this day I believe the sad and “life is unfair” ending to the movie The Last American Virgin was a bold, unique and the absolutely right way to end this teenage RomCom. (The Last American Virgin movie ending).

But I digress.

You can’t prompt-engineer hospitality, meaning, that genuine warmth, empathy, and personalized human service can’t be replaced or manufactured by simply writing a better AI prompt. Please understand, while AI can handle tasks and efficiency, the core emotional connection in hospitality relies on human judgment and authenticity. Hospitality requires more than just efficiency and while prompt-engineering is excellent for creating Standard Operating Procedures (“SOPs”), it fails to replicate the emotional intelligence needed for a truly welcoming experience.

It’s Branded’s conviction, despite being an active investor and believer ResTech, that guests value authentic warmth and personal interaction, which AI can mimic but not truly feel or deliver with genuine care. We view AI as an important tool, not a substitute. We believe that artificial intelligence should be used to support staff, not replace the human element of service. Effective AI use in hospitality is meant for back-end efficiency rather than front-facing emotional labor.

To my knowledge, you can’t automate the energy of a packed dining room on a Friday night. You can’t replicate the veteran server who knows when to interrupt a table and when to disappear. You can’t AI-generate the line cook who stays an extra hour b/c the dishwasher called out sick. You can’t algorithm your way into culture, chemistry, leadership, or trust.

Respectfully, the best restaurants aren’t built on code. They’re built on people.

At Branded, we’ve always believed the stack works in this order:

Please understand, my conviction is that technology matters enormously and AI will absolutely reshape restaurants (and so many other industries). In fact, it already is.

AI is already helping operators optimize labor, reduce waste, improve procurement, personalize marketing, forecast inventory, streamline customer engagement, and I expect will save operators millions of dollars over the next decade. We’re incredibly bullish on that future.

But AI is the amplifier, not the artist.

Restaurants are still fundamentally analog experiences in an increasingly digital world (and I liked that last sentence so much, I’m making sure it stands on its own line). 😊

And maybe that’s exactly why restaurants matter more than ever. B/c while Silicon Valley keeps trying to eliminate friction, hospitality has always understood something different, and that sometimes the friction is the experience. 

The conversation with the bartender. The imperfect handwritten specials board. The regular whose drink gets poured before they sit down (I see you Schatzy). The manager touching tables during a rush. The birthday candle that shows up unexpectedly.

That’s not inefficiency. That’s hospitality.

Marc Lore is trying to build the Amazon of food. And to his credit, he may very well succeed in building one of the most important food infrastructure companies of the next decade. I for one will not be betting against him or Team Wonder.

But restaurants aren’t just distribution points for calories. They are community infrastructure, culture, and theater. Restaurants, of all shapes, sizes and formats, are human connection (with appetizers). 

Yes, anybody may soon be able to launch a restaurant concept with AI, but building a restaurant people actually care about? That still takes humanity. And last time I checked, there’s no API for soul.

The restaurant business has always been filled with people who learned the hard way that opening the doors is the easy part. Keeping them open? That’s the game b/c no algorithm has ever had to calm down an angry guest, jump on dish during a Friday night rush, comp a table, inspire a team before service, or create the kind of atmosphere where people linger for “just one more drink.”

That’s not artificial intelligence. That’s hospitality.

Silicon Valley loves scalability. Restaurants run on humanity.

And while AI may eventually build the playbook, it still takes people to call the audibles.

As we see it at Branded, technology may power the engine, but hospitality is still the driver.

And no matter how smart the machine gets, nobody’s ever tipped an algorithm 20%. 😊

It takes a village.

🍸 Drinks are so expensive that adults are pregaming like they’re back in college—stretching both their budgets and their buzz before going out.

🎵 After early skepticism, the Sphere has become the highest-grossing arena in the world, drawing sold-out crowds with its immersive tech spectacle.

✈️ Why do airplanes still have ashtrays decades after smoking bans?

🥂 The ultra-luxury air travel arms race is heating up, with airlines, semi-private carriers and members-only aviation clubs competing for elite travelers.

🏈 The Big Ten Conference distributed a record $1.37 billion to member schools during the 2024–25 fiscal year, underscoring the enormous business of college sports.

Tell us what we should read next →

DEAL ROOM: The Smartest Screen in the Restaurant Might Finally Be the Menu

This week, Branded hosted a webinar with one of the more quietly important companies in restaurant technology, Vistify, titled “Menus That Think: An Operator’s Case for AI-Driven Display Technology.”

And if you walked away thinking this was just another conversation about digital menu boards, you missed the bigger signal.

To access the webinar, please clink the link here: Menus That Think | An Operator’s Case for AI-Driven Display Technology

The menu is no longer static signage. It’s becoming software. 

For years, operators treated menu boards like wallpaper, expensive to install, painful to update, and largely controlled by hardware vendors and disconnected workflows. Price changes took days or weeks. Limited-time offers missed windows. Franchise systems struggled with consistency. And nobody really knew what was live across every store at any given moment.

That’s not a design problem. That’s an operating system problem.

Vistify is attacking that exact pain point by turning menus into an intelligent, real-time, AI-powered communication layer for restaurants. Their platform allows operators to push menu updates across hundreds or thousands of locations in minutes, integrate directly with POS systems, dynamically localize content, and create what they call “software-defined menus.”

Translation?

The menu board is evolving from a passive display into an active revenue optimization tool.

That matters b/c the menu is arguably the most-viewed piece of media inside a restaurant. Every guest looks at it. Every transaction begins there. Yet historically, it’s been one of the least intelligent systems in the tech stack.

Meanwhile, restaurants are entering an era where speed, pricing agility, labor efficiency, and personalization increasingly determine margin performance. Intelligent display technology sits directly in the middle of all four.

The winning operators tomorrow won’t just have better food. They’ll have smarter merchandising infrastructure.

Imagine menus that automatically shift based on weather, sports events, inventory levels, dayparts, regional preferences, or profitability targets.

Imagine enterprise operators knowing exactly what is being displayed across 5,000 stores in real time.

Imagine marketing, operations, and finance finally working from the same dynamic interface instead of PDFs, USB sticks, and ticketing queues.

That’s where this category is headed.

And here’s the part investors should pay attention to: The restaurant industry is sitting on one of the largest under-modernized media and merchandising surfaces in commerce. Thousands of brands still operate with outdated signage systems built for a pre-AI world. The replacement cycle isn’t just about hardware refreshes, it’s about migrating toward software intelligence, observability, automation, and data-driven merchandising.

That creates a meaningful infrastructure opportunity.

Vistify isn’t pitching “screens.” They’re positioning themselves as the operating layer between the POS, the brand, the guest, and real-time decision-making.

And that’s exactly the kind of category shift Branded pays attention to b/c in a world where AI is changing how restaurants order, price, market, and operate, it was only a matter of time before the menu itself started thinking too.

I want to give a big thank you to our friend Norbert Renteria, the project manager at C&R Restaurants Group, a leading Taco Bell franchisee, Andres Garcia-Civita, the CTO at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (a Branded portfolio company) and Michael Mathieu, the CEO at Vistify, for participating in this webinar. The Branded team loves bringing operator-centric technology companies that are connecting in such a meaningful way.

To learn more about Vistify, and opportunities to engage with this company, please click here (or contact me directly).

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