Enhanced, Not Disrupted: The Agentic Case for Restaurant Chains

Forum3 co-founders Andy Sack and Adam Brotman explain why restaurant chains have become central to their agentic AI strategy. Drawing on themes from their book, Agents Inc., they argue that the agentic era is changing the nature of competition, and that restaurants offer a rare combination of stability and opportunity: the core product will not be disrupted by AI, but nearly everything surrounding it can be.

The discussion covers why chain restaurants generate both high transaction frequency and rich structured and unstructured data, from customer reviews and labor scheduling to pricing and marketing, creating ideal conditions for AI-driven analysis and decision-making. Brotman shares a concrete example: an AI agent producing a nightly research report on restaurant industry news, illustrating how quickly agentic workflows can be put into practice. Sack adds that gains from agentic improvements compound rapidly once applied across a chain's full footprint of locations.

For executives, the takeaway is that industries facing the least disruption to their core product may still see the most transformation in how they operate. Forum3's bet is that a narrow, defensible focus on restaurant chains, paired with agentic AI, positions both the company and its restaurant partners to compete as this shift accelerates.

What is AI First with Adam and Andy?

AI First with Adam and Andy: Inspiring Business Leaders to Make AI First Moves is a dynamic podcast focused on the unprecedented potential of AI and how business leaders can harness it to transform their companies. Each episode dives into real-world examples of AI deployments, the "holy shit" moments where AI changes everything, and the steps leaders need to take to stay ahead. It’s bold, actionable, and emphasizes the exponential acceleration of AI, inspiring CEOs to make AI-first moves before they fall behind.

Andy (00:00)
one last point that came up in my research and recently that we did not mention is that if you can figure out agentic improvements for one restaurant location, when you have a chain of say a hundred to two hundred to three hundred locations, it compounds instantly.

And that compounding nature really attracted me from a business perspective. So

Adam Brotman (00:20)
That's great

point.

Andy (00:21)
This

is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show for leaders turning AI from a tool they're testing into a workforce they run. I'm Andy Sack, alongside my co-host Adam Brottman. Each episode we bring you candid conversations with business leaders deploying real AI agents. What's actually working, what's not, and how they're rebuilding their companies around it. No fluff, just real talk, actionable use cases, and insights you can use.

Greetings, Adam, and our fellow listeners. Today we have a mini episode for you, and we want to give you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at conversations that Adam and I are having about the strategy that we're pursuing at Forum 3. And in particular, we want to highlight our focus on restaurant chains and why we think.

Restaurant chains are a great place for agentic workflows and the use of AI. so with that, Adam, let's give people a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at our conversations. And we've always been focused on

the use of AI predominantly in consumer businesses. But as we've worked across that spectrum, we've really come to and some of this came from our book, Agents Inc., and the changing nature of competition, we've really come to really like the restaurant vertical. So

You wanna let people in on why restaurants and restaurant chains why we're so excited about that category?

Adam Brotman (01:51)
Yeah, there are really two main reasons. One is that with all the stuff that's gonna change because of AI and get disrupted because of AI, were looking for industries to focus on where the actual primary experience and product wouldn't be disrupted by AI. And there's lots of them, by the way. But one of them we realized was like eating out, getting a latte from a coffee shop, getting

burger from a QSR place or something, or even from a casual dining place. So we were like, okay, that's not gonna change. It can be enhanced by AI, but you're not gonna eat AI. And so we like that part of the restaurant industry. And then we also like the fact that the restaurant business, particularly the chain restaurant business, just has all these frequency, it has a lot of frequency and it has a lot of data. So

Anywhere you have like, and I'm talking about structured data and unstructured data. You got customer reviews, you've got labor scheduling, you've got pricing optimization, marketing, and you've got all these transactions. So we like those two things about it. We like that it's gonna be enhanced by AI as opposed to eaten up by AI, no pun intended. And it's gonna be and then we like, we know where we'd apply.

you know, the benefits of AI helping you to do better analysis, making better decisions faster across all these different touch points that allow you to run your business better, which also allows you to have a better guest experience. And so we're like, wow, this is a great space. And and we also happen to be knowledgeable about the space and have experience in the space. So I guess there's three reasons to be honest, not just two. And so for those three reasons, we picked restaurant chains as an area of focus for us. And I couldn't be more excited to be honest.

Andy (03:26)
Yeah, I mean this came up really for two just to let people in a little bit more. This came up for sure in our recent book, Agents Inc., where we talk about really the because of the agentic era, the changing nature of competition.

in the book, we cover a chairman who had a 40-person company, and he realized that he could run the entire business with 10 people. And one of the things that he did was he pointed the agent at a competitor website and then told them to go do an analysis on the features in that website and any features and content that were missing to basically duplicate and replicate.

And and that is happening, you know, every day all over the place. And so we believe that particularly in the digital domains, the nature of competition has completely chandel, and you're seeing this in the stock market, has completely changed. One of our appeals of restaurant change is not only are people gonna need to eat and drink, and that AI doesn't really affect that.

either that behavior or that product. But around that, AI affects all of that. So you have frequency, you have data, which you mentioned, but really by narrowing our focus on restaurants, it allows us to to really hone and we think that by honing agents on that the series of workflows in that space, we're gonna be able to excel and really

Help restaurant chains make this transition to the agentic future. So I'm a noob to the space, but as I've been working on investor decks and internal documents with Adam, I've gotten really excited because I think that those aspects make

restaurants, a sort of quiet it it's not as crowded of a space and it it's defensible and we actually believe because of the physical nature of the data and the product that we'll be able to have a defensible business at Forum3. That's what I think at least from my mouths to God's ears. Adam you have anything you want to close with?

Adam Brotman (05:22)
I yeah, exactly. Yeah, I would just

say, you know, just to make the point even more crisp, like that so let's talk, just to compare it. Like yesterday I had one of our agents, AI agents, doing a daily restaurant research report for me that I could send to our team.

that is super relevant to like what we just talked about. And I said, Hey, I want you to like find news from the restaurant industry every day for me. and you know, this agent I put together, happened to be on Grokbot in this case, because I've been playing with Grok bot, but I was like, it put together like this nightly research report for me and like wrote to me an email every night from itself saying, Okay, this is the roundup I did. And I sent it to some folks, and right away, some folks on our team, and one of them said, gosh.

I know this company that that's all they do is do a daily research report on the restaurant industry. They must be a little bit worried about AI disrupting their business. I'm like, yeah, like if you're in the business of doing something like that, like you're gonna have to find a different business at some point. or you're gonna use AI to be so much better at what you do that like maybe you're okay. But like I would be nervous being in a business where

just a regular old normie could just push a button, talk to an AI agent and have that have your product magically appear. And that's what we mean by like restaurants themselves are not gonna be directly disrupted by the AI. It's but they can be enhanced by it. And if you're not using AI, you can be disrupted. So I'm excited for our thesis of a focus on restaurants and you know it's

fun to then sort of play with the AI and figure out how it's gonna help all these restaurant chains that

Andy (07:00)
one last point that came up in my research and recently that we did not mention is that if you can figure out agentic improvements for one restaurant location, when you have a chain of say a hundred to two hundred to three hundred locations, it compounds instantly.

And that compounding nature really attracted me from a business perspective. So

Adam Brotman (07:21)
That's great point.

Andy (07:22)
with that, you'll hear more. I mean, we've already been talking about restaurants and restaurant chains, but we wanted to share with all of you our narrower focus and increased enthusiasm around the restaurant vertical and forum three becoming

an agentic player in that space and our rationale for that. So hopefully you got a little bit of info on that, some intel. with that, thank you all for listening, Adam. Thanks for being my chef, fellow chef in this journey. And

For more info on how to become AI First, head to Forum3.com. You'll find case studies, research briefings, executive summaries, and our book, Agents Inc., How to Rebuild Your Company in the AI Age. And Vera, our co-author, who's always up for a conversation. If you want to connect with other leaders doing this work, join the AI First community, our hub for turning AI hype into action. We truly believe you can't overinvest in your AI learning. Onward.