David Cantu | Restaurant Back Office Should Be a GPS, Not a Rearview Mirror | ChatGTM S2 E44

Restaurant back-office technology has spent decades telling operators what already happened.David Cantu believes it should tell them what to do next.David, CEO of Craftable and co-founder of HotSchedules, returns to ChatGTM with Michael Beck and Chad Horn to talk about rebuilding restaurant back office around the people actually running restaurants.His analogy nails the shift: the old back office is a rearview mirror. The new back office should be a GPS.That means forecasting sales, determining what to order and prep, planning staffing, identifying leakage and surfacing the few actions a manager can take before the opportunity is gone.The conversation goes deep into restaurant profitability, technology adoption, inventory, waste, forecasting, AI and David's belief that we need to connect managers emotionally to margins.And despite building heavily with AI, when asked what's currently overhyped in restaurant technology, David's answer is simple: AI.CHAPTERS00:00 Welcome to ChatGTM 01:53 David Cantu Returns 04:13 What Followed David Home From Prosper? 05:34 Why Great Leaders Never Stop Learning 06:00 Removing Friction From a Manager's Day 08:09 The Power of Connection 10:47 Developing the Next Generation of Leaders 12:00 Removing Back-Office Friction 12:49 Why Back-Office Implementations Fail 14:17 Connecting Managers Emotionally to Margins 15:10 Are Your Highest-Sales Stores Really Your Best? 16:14 The Fear of Another Tech Implementation 17:13 Making Restaurant Tech Implementation Work 18:26 The Items Driving Restaurant Profitability 19:57 What's Changed in Restaurant Technology? 21:26 Restaurants Are Still Using Fax Machines?! 22:21 Modernizing Restaurant Workflows 23:21 The Restaurant Ordering Problem 24:15 What David Learned Checking Deliveries 25:09 How Much Purchased Food Never Reaches the Plate? 25:37 Why Restaurant PARs Are Outdated 27:02 From 60K to Nearly 1M Lines of Code 28:15 Finding Money in Any Economy 29:00 Adoption, Adoption, Adoption 30:34 Stop Burying Managers in Dashboards 32:11 From Rearview Mirror to Restaurant GPS 32:49 What Prescriptive Restaurant Tech Looks Like 34:00 Forecasting Sales, Orders, Prep & Staffing 35:34 Building Forecasts Operators Trust 36:32 How Accurate Can Forecasting Become? 38:55 When Is It Time to Leave Legacy Tech? 39:29 Why Generic AI Isn't Enough 41:28 Turning Restaurant Data Into Action 42:46 Finding Voids, Comps & Hidden Problems 43:40 Building Technology for the Front Line 44:06 Are Managers Getting Their Share? 44:58 A Million Ways Restaurants Lose Margin 46:45 Why David Is Going to FSTEC 48:56 Why David Doesn't Obsess Over Competitors 49:42 Rapid Fire 50:02 AI Assistant or AI Agent? 50:14 The Metric Operators Don't Understand 51:07 The Most Overhyped Restaurant Tech: AI 51:18 David's Leadership Advice 52:54 The Future of Restaurant Operations 53:20 Stop Selling AI. Tell Operators What It Does. 55:01 Where to Find David & Craftable 56:00 Why ChatGTM Has These Conversations 56:56 ClosingIs your restaurant technology telling you what happened, or helping you decide what to do next? Tell us below.▶️ Subscribe to ChatGTM for conversations with the people building what's next in restaurants, hospitality, technology, AI and GTM.Know What's Next.#ChatGTM #Craftable #RestaurantTechnology #RestaurantOperations #RestaurantAI #HospitalityTechnology #IncTankGTM