meez podcast

Ben Pryor on Augmented Intuition

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About this episode

In this episode of The meez Podcast, Josh Sharkey sits down with Ben Pryor, a former restaurant operator turned tech leader at Fourtop, to explore the real-world impact of AI in the hospitality industry—and why it should empower teams, not replace them.

With more than 30 years of experience running restaurants like Noodles & Co., Brinker, and Dewey’s, Ben brings a sharp operator-first perspective to restaurant innovation. He unpacks his concept of “augmented intuition”—a rebrand of AI that’s rooted in support and empowerment rather than substitution—and shares how technology can be used to enhance human decision-making across teams. From simple tools like Expensify to AI-powered note-taking apps, he breaks down the systems that have helped streamline his own day-to-day work.

Josh and Ben also dig into the intersection of technology and hospitality, talking through why investing in people and processes is still critical, the role of friction in the guest experience, and the operational challenges restaurants face when integrating new tech. They explore the importance of service in shaping memorable dining experiences, what scalable leadership really looks like, and how restaurant teams can take ownership of their internal systems and data.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone thinking critically about the future of hospitality—whether you're navigating AI tools, building smoother workflows, or trying to create a seamless experience for both staff and guests.


Links and resources 📌

Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com

Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez

Follow Josh on instagram: @joshlsharkey

Visit Ben: https://www.fourtop.ai/

What We Cover

00:00 - Investing in People and Processes  

07:47 - Augmented Intuition in the Restaurant Industry  

14:54 - AI Tools and Daily Operations  

22:57 - The Role of Friction in Hospitality  

30:46 - Rethinking Restaurant Operations and Technology  

40:08 - Understanding Restaurant Economics  

43:52 - The Importance of Service in Dining Experiences  

46:05 - The Role of Technology in Restaurant Operations  

51:54 - The Intersection of Technology and Hospitality  

56:34 - Data Integration Challenges in the Restaurant Industry  

01:01:46 - The Future of Restaurant Technology  

Transcript

Ben Pryor: [00:00:00] It's actually what really clicked for me getting into restaurants was I realized like if I continue to invest in the people and the process and try to align those things. Then I become scalable and I can also fill in knowledge gaps with other folks and just kinda built my entire operations career around that.

Josh Sharkey: You are listening to the ME podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of me, a culinary operating system for food professionals. I'm the show. We're gonna talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level day after day.

And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky Anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support and as always, I hope you enjoy the show. [00:01:00] We agree on a, on a couple things that might be controversial.

So yeah, we'll see. Well, I actually wanted to kick it off with augmented intuition. Because I heard you talk about that. Yes. Can you sort of double click into what you mean about that? 

Ben Pryor: Yeah. I, I guess taking a couple of steps back, that was maybe two years ago when the AI buzz started at conferences and in articles and the way AI has been positioned, I guess in some ways globally, but definitely within the restaurant industry.

And then it's gotten 10 times worse I think, in the last few months around AgTech ai, which is this idea of like people or the problem in our industry. And if we could just figure out a way to have fewer of them, or ultimately none of them, then this would be a really great business. You know, from a, a financial modeling perspective, it's like you don't have to worry about no call, no [00:02:00] shows.

You don't have to worry about cashiers not, uh, upselling or all that. And, and therefore the. I guess the ROI conversation, and I won't pick on any one part of the industry specifically. 'cause I think it's broadly across all these different tech products. Um, kiosks and digital ordering are probably the two newest versions.

There's also AI listening into cashiers and under the guise of training and development, like KU only upsold 17% of the time last shift. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna coach you to, to do it 50% then a hundred percent right. It's like, it, it's kind of the zero sum game. And so I was trying to figure out a way to, in my own mind, a rebrand AI of being more human centric and additive versus, uh, you know, replacement of humans.

And, um, I, I'm not naive enough to think that there's not a version of tech that can replace some humans. Um, I've [00:03:00] been an advocate for replacing humans initially that. Sit in front of laptops, which generally are not people running restaurants. Those are people that have a bunch of AI tools available to them.

Um, but there's very little discussion around, you know, scaling restaurant brands while minimizing g and a, minimizing all this kind of bloat in middle management. Um, you know, I, I scaled Noodles and Company decades, it seems like ago. And remember just hiring a unit accountant in a formulaic sense of every 10 locations.

We'd hire another accountant to do all the things for those 10 locations and then supply chain and, you know, it, it propagated throughout the entire organization, but we kept adding a bunch of g and a and overhead to kind of run the business. And those are the tools that have been available for a while around automation and AI enablement.

I think if, uh, I'm sure you use a lot of these tools. I've got a bunch of 'em installed on my laptop, um, that help me in many ways be a [00:04:00] lot more productive. Uh, the augmented intuition piece came from the idea of what is, what is a version of AI or automation look like that's additive to the people running restaurants on a day-to-day basis?

And what I wish I had when I was an operator, what I still hear operators asking for today is like, man, if I could get a, the equivalent of a 10 year exceptional general manager that could join my organization and be up to speed in 90 days, that would be a, a huge solve for me. And so when I think about augmenting intuition, it's that it's like, you know, having been in the industry for decades just like yourself, you have learned a bunch of things and synthesized it and added it to your tool belt.

Um, around people development, around guest interactions around how to coach, you know, people in the middle of a busy shift. All those things are kind of this intuition set that you've built over a long time doing the work shoulder to shoulder with a team every day in restaurants. [00:05:00] But most of the tech doesn't view that as like, how do we kind of incrementally learn and improve on the, the management team.

It tends to be a, how do we replace or, you know, massively upscale an hourly team member at 15, $20 an hour versus the $75 an hour, you know, manager or the a hundred dollars an hour multi-unit manager, $150 an hour, you know, director of operations or regional director. Like, there's all these different versions of that that a lot of them spend most of their time talking about.

They call it the help me understand conversation. Um, it's like I'm not in the restaurant every day and so I'm trying to figure out from this report what's happening and then I send a text or an email say, help me understand why you are. Out of compliance on food variance last night. You know, help me understand why your labor was high last week.

And so it's kind of like putting people on the spot to explain what actually happened every [00:06:00] day in the restaurant, um, versus more of a growth and and augmentation mindset of how do I give you the tools where I never have to ask those questions anymore. So that's, that's my idea around augmented intuition.

Some of it was just a cheesy rebranding of the, uh, the AI acronym. Um, that made a lot more sense to me. Like, if I could wave my magic wand and get a mass, uh, you know, massive adoption of technology and day-to-day operations, it would be a version of that. Yeah. It's like, how do I not have to wait two years to have a GM or even a kitchen manager in a restaurant, pretend like they've been there for 10 years and know all those things and have those capabilities in their tool set from day one or day 90, or whatever that 

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