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Innovation Forums
8:30am – 9:15am

Innovation Forums (choose 1 of 5)

Led by the brightest professionals in foodservice, RLC's innovation forums are packed with hot topics and powerful messages designed to spark new ideas. Connect with the industry's game changers and gain valuable takeaways from the latest and greatest in foodservice innovation. There's something for everyone!

Learning How To Win The War For Talent
Location: Grand Sonoran F

Restaurant operators are facing unprecedented challenges in attracting and retaining talent. This session will describe how McDonald’s USA, LLC selected Aon to bring Rewards expertise as an optional resource to Restaurant Operators during this challenging time. Aon has been conducting hands-on interactive learning sessions titled “Pay Matters” to help prepare franchise owners / operators to make independent, informed, strategic compensation decisions to ensure they can best compete for talent in the current market.

Come hear from McDonald’s and Aon’s rewards experts as they discuss:
• The compensation challenges for Restaurants given the today’s talent market
• Education on tools and resources available to support operators 
• An overview of the approach Aon took to building the “Pay Matters” experience
• Learnings and feedback from McDonald’s “Pay Matters” sessions

Speakers:

Partner
Aon

US Rewards Lead
McDonald's Corporation

Consultant
Aon

Presented By:
Aon
Top Technologies Shaping the Future of Restaurants
Location: Grand Sonoran G

Join Ed McBride, VP of IT, Dave's Hot Chicken, Will Kelso, SVP Managed Network & Business Intelligence, Interface Systems, and Courtney Radke, Field CISO, Retail & Hospitality, Fortinet, discuss the top technologies driving changes in the way restaurants operate. 

This will be an interactive session with discussions with the panelists and the audience on best practices on leveraging technologies to improve the guest dine-in and take-out experience and enhance the employee experience to reduce turnover. 

Speakers:

SVP, Sales & Strategic Alliances
Interface Systems

Vice President of Information Technology
Dave's Hot Chicken

Field CISO – Retail & Hospitality
Fortinet

Presented By:
Interface Security Systems
Hiring in Days, Not Weeks with Conversational AI
Location: Grand Sonoran E

Paradox’s SVP, Strategic Enterprise Engagement, Ben Bromberg, discusses how 25,000+ restaurants have employed conversational AI hiring assistants to automate and simplify hiring processes -- providing 24/7 mobile-first candidate communications to increase speed and efficiency and returning hours of time per week back to managers. 

Key takeaways:
- Dive into why conversational recruiting is the go-to hiring experience for high-volume businesses, returning hours back to hiring managers each week and transforming hiring processes
- Learn how conversational AI and automation enabled restaurants to massively increase speed to hire to hit historical hiring numbers
- Explore how to remove friction from your application and hiring process to hire faster and get more candidates

Speakers:

SVP, Strategic Enterprise Engagement
Paradox

Presented By:
Paradox
Transforming the Culture of Quick Service Restaurants: How AI Innovation is Creating a Frictionless Guest Experience
Location: Grand Sonoran H

Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) face unique challenges such as speed, quality of service, staff turnover, drive-thru automation, and accuracy, making the “quick” of a QSR a moving target. Evolving customer expectations—increasingly driven by new digital capabilities—are pushing brands to offer greater speed, convenience, and personalization.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence is helping QSRs make the customer experience frictionless, fast, and significantly more pleasant. Leveraging AI-powered computer vision and NLP conversational AI unlocks enormous value for QSR operators eager to use technology to transform what’s possible in foodservice.

Deploying AI solutions in restaurants requires the technology ecosystem players to work together to optimize the configuration, performance, and cost of the solution. But knowing where to start is always the big question. So, we’ve brought together two CEOs from leading restaurant automation software companies, an IoT expert from the world’s largest CPU manufacturer, and an Edge AI expert to talk about real-life applications of AI-enabled QSR solutions that are already paying big dividends.

Key Learnings:

  • Understand the primary benefits of how AI can transform your restaurant operations
  • How to maximize the value of your data and gain deeper insights on your guests to drive higher levels of visit frequency and brand loyalty
  • How to leverage voice ordering and AI to drive greater order accuracy and labor efficiencies at the drive-thru and in-store
Speakers:

Head of Global Growth and Strategy
RadiusAI

CEO
Vistry.AI

Director of Marketing – IoT & Edge
Intel

CEO & Cofounder
RadiusAI

Founder and Editor-in-Chief | Moderator
Omni Talk

Presented By:
Lenovo
How Market Leading Brands Win!
Location: Grand Sonoran D

During this session we will explore how market leading brands create winning cultures, execute consistently, and win over consumers to achieve abnormal returns. This facilitator lead interactive session is designed to foster a "CEO's mindset" in all who participate. By examining some of the restaurant industry's most successful brands, clear patterns emerge that we can harness in our own organizations. Each participant will walk away with a step by step plan to focus, simplify, and deliver on five key drivers of growth; a perfect way to crystalize knowledge you've gained from this year's event!

Speakers:

CMSO
Market Force Information

Presented By:
Market Force Information
100+Speakers
1700+Attendees