What Restaurant Leaders Can Do to Unlock Growth Again: Recapping Food on Demand Conference 2025

Fresh from the floor of the Food on Demand Conference in Las Vegas, Adam Brotman and Andy Sack unpack what’s top of mind for today’s restaurant leaders. In this episode, they reflect on the slowdown in digital growth, rising consumer price sensitivity, and the evolving challenges facing operators in 2025.

They also explore how AI is transitioning from hype to practical application, powering smarter decisions in areas such as guest feedback, menu optimization, and operational efficiency. With insight, clarity, and candor, Adam and Andy offer a timely recap of where the industry is headed and what brands can do right now to unlock sustainable growth.

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Andy (00:00.642)
This is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show that takes you straight to the front lines of AI innovation in business. I'm Andy Sack alongside my co-host, Adam Brotman. Each episode, we bring you candid conversations with the business leaders transforming their businesses with AI. No fluff, just real talk and actionable use cases and insights for you.

Andy (00:26.734)
We have a special episode. just you and I today. We're coming back from Las Vegas, the Food on Demand Conference, and just thought we'd debrief on the experience a little bit.

Adam Brotman (00:39.739)
thought it was a great conference, first of all.

Good speakers. I say that because we keynoted, but I'm joking. Besides us, I thought the speakers were great. And we got to talk to a lot of different restaurant companies. it was like, we talked about AI in our keynote and kind of gave some key insights and some use cases from our book. But it was great to be with our people, our restaurant.

executives and leaders that are going through a really interesting time right now. I don't know what you, I mean.

Andy (01:17.614)
Yeah, so what was one or two observations that you took away from the conference that you didn't have before? And I'll share one or two of mine too, and we'll call it good.

Adam Brotman (01:25.348)
Well.

I yeah, so I'd say the number one thing that's on every restaurant company's mind right now is price sensitivity. So you've got a consumer that's pulling back after, what, three, four years of inflation, whatever you want to call it. it's now, I guess, its price elasticity is kicking in, I guess. I can never get that right if I'm saying it the right way. But it's kicking into where now

you know, it's hard to just keep taking prices to make your revenue goals and make your growth goals. And the customer is sensitive to that. So they're eating out less and or being more discerning about things like experience and price. And that's just affecting the entire industry right now, which is fascinating because it's not an easy thing to come back. Right. I mean, you you're not going to like lower your prices overnight. That's that's would be that could be devastating to your business if you weren't careful.

And you've got to get on your game when it comes to understanding how to improve your value proposition to the customer in a lot of different ways. so I thought that was interesting. The other observation I have is that just the digitization of the customer experience right now between the table stakes-y stuff like having a loyalty program and a mobile app and doing online ordering to the absolute massive factor that

DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub have become. so those two things stood out to me as really affecting an entire industry. And I'm fascinated by how to help restaurants think that through and sort of piece back growth again.

Andy (03:06.51)
Yeah, I thought it was, I mean, this is more your world than mine. was awesome to be at the conference with you because, you know, just hearing both the respect of the audience for you and your experience at Starbucks, but also just you being in your wheelhouse of restaurants and cafes and

and really viewing the digital flywheels and your insights was just awesome to be there with you. Not to mention we were in Las Vegas together and got to gamble, which was always fun. For me, the big takeaway is really that second point, but the conversations that you and I had after talking to a number of restaurateurs around really the

Adam Brotman (03:50.873)
Yeah, that's fine.

Andy (04:03.98)
the availability of now customer reviews, whether that be on DoorDash, UberEats, Yelp, Google, and really seeing those as like a potential unlock for AI to provide feedback on all aspects of the restaurant business and really tie into the flywheel really sparked my imagination and my

insights as to how to use AI with alongside those those reviews. So I'm excited to do some of that at forum three with you and and see where this goes.

Adam Brotman (04:44.121)
Yeah, I I, on that point, maybe kind of, we're going to keep this short. We're going to try and do like five, 10 minute episodes every once in a while. So in trying to kind of wrap it up, I'd say what's amazing to me as someone who's been in the restaurant and retail space for so long is that you've got this new set of data. used to be, needed a loyalty program in order to understand what your customers were doing and get insights and have a digital relationship with them. And now

that's still true and there's DoorDash and Uber Eats and Google reviews have become really, really commonplace. And so there's a variety of surface area opportunities for brand leaders and restaurant leaders to take all that data and understand how to unlock growth again, if they've been suffering because of the other factors we mentioned. And it's perfect for AI because I mean, you and I have talked about this AI, Gen. AI is like,

It's super, one of its superpowers is, is just taking huge volumes of like structured and unstructured data and making sense of it. And, you used to have to have a BI team and data scientists to do all that and, you know, consultants and here's AI and you can just like, it just sucks in this stuff and really gives you a lot of unlocks. And so I'm excited to sort of start working with some of our clients and with you, Andy on like,

getting after that topic because I think that that's gonna be a fun theme for us over the next couple months.

Andy (06:16.92)
Yeah. So if you're a executive at a restaurant or cafe chain and you have questions about your business first, and then also how AI might be an unlock to improving your business or playing defense differently than you have in the past, reach out to us. With that, thank you for listening to AI First with Adam and Andy.

For more resources on how to become AI first, you can of course go to our website, forum3.com. We've got case studies there. You can join our newsletter. We've got research briefings, a lot of amazing material on the website. We truly believe you can't over-invest in your AI learning. Onward.