Toby Malbec joins the Tech Chef Podcast to talk about the future of restaurant technology and the key insights from the recent MURTEC Executive Summit. He emphasizes the importance of getting foundational technology in place before diving into advanced innovations like AI. Toby shares his experiences as the Vice President of Global Restaurant Technology for Church's Chicken and highlights how operators need to prepare for upcoming changes in the industry. The conversation dives deep into the collaboration necessary among brands to tackle common challenges and improve operations. Overall, this episode is a serious look at how technology can lead to success in the hospitality sector.

Takeaways:

• Restaurant operators to get their digital house in order before the next wave of technology changes hits the industry.
• The importance of foundational technology to leverage advanced innovations like AI and machine learning.
• There is a significant distinction between operational success and the technology tools used, highlighting the need for seamless integration in restaurant operations.
• Insights on the evolution of hospitality tech and the importance of collaboration among industry leaders to succeed.

You are listening to the Tech Chef Podcast.

This show is powered by Magic Gate Redefining the future of Hospitality.

For more information, visit magicgate.com this is Toby Malbeck, Vice President of Global Restaurant Technology with Church's Chicken and you're listening to the dulcet tones of Skip Kimball on the Tech Chef Podcast.

Offering a strategy business continu about a taste test of restaurant technology.

Drive thru or curbside, mobile apps or AI.

It's all on the menu.

Cook it up for the date.

It's a recipe for success.

You're in good hands with the Tech Chef.

Make a plan to be your best.

Strategize with the Tech Chef welcome back.

To the Tech Chef Podcast where innovation meets hospitality.

The recipe for the future is always in the making.

I'm Skip Kimpel, your guide, storyteller and fellow explorer on this journey through the evolving world of hospitality tech.

Whether you lead a brand, build the tools, or simply love a great guest experience, you found your place at the table.

Each episode we're blending insights and inspiration from the brightest minds redefining the industry from AI driven guest personalization and XR training to connected kitchens and digital twins that rethink how we work, serve and delight.

You'll hear from the disruptors, the dreamers and the doers, the people pushing boundaries and building what's next for restaurants, hotels and beyond.

So grab your earbuds and a fresh cup of whatever fuels your curiosity at the Tech Chef Podcast.

We're not just talking about the future of hospitality.

We're we're cooking it up together.

Let's get started in this episode of the Tech Chef, Toby Malbec returns to the show, this time wearing a new hat as the vice president of Global Restaurant technology for Church's Texas Chicken.

Fresh from the Mertech Executive Summit, Toby shares what it was like to experience the event from the operator side.

After years as a consultant, we dive into some pretty big takeaways from the summit.

From the growing gap between foundational tech and advanced innovations like AI to the urgent need for operators to get their digital house in order before the next wave of change hits.

Toby draws parallels to the industry's rapid transformation during COVID 19, emphasizing that those who prepare now will be the ones who thrive later.

At its heart, this episode is all about collaboration, execution and using technology not just to keep up, but to lead.

Look who we have back on the Tech Chef podcast.

Isn't Batman kind of a passation?

We moved on to some kind of Superman team by now or.

Yeah, I'm not going to pay to have another intro recorded for you.

Yeah, sorry.

I understand.

Or I have you less on the show.

You're actually right.

That's right.

You're actually my most frequent guest on this Tech chef.

Boy, is that a good thing.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think people have to kind of weigh in on that.

May speak to your ratings.

I don't know.

Well, you seem to be well liked out in the industry, so I'm going to keep you.

I'm going to keep you for now, if that's okay.

It's kind of you.

I appreciate.

Well, Toby, a lot has happened since the last time we got on the podcast to talk about anything.

Um, I moved off into a different direction.

You moved off into a different direction.

What are you doing now?

Well, actually, I'm having the time of my life.

I'm actually working with the fine folks at churches.

So I now I'm the vice president of global restaurant technology for churches.

Texas Chicken as well as Texas Chicken.

So we are actually two.

Two concepts which are really the same, but outside of the United States, we go by simply Texas Chicken.

And a lot of stuff going on.

It's just great to be back in operations.

Really didn't realize how much I missed it until I got back into it.

Just a lot of fun stuff.

For years, having consulted, you kind of suggest to people what they should do and then you hope they do it.

And now I get to kind of, if you will eat my own dog food.

So it's, it's a lot more fun to actually come up with a plan and then execute it.

And I think the famous.

What was that?

That show, the A team.

I love it when a plant comes together.

I feel that way now.

I feel like I love it when a plan comes together and see it actually come together.

So it's, it's, it's very rewarding.

Well, I know you.

When we worked together at a previous company as consultants, you always talked about your love for operations.

I was so happy to hear that you got back into that.

And it sounds like you're loving it.

You're right in your.

Your, your comfort zone.

So super happy for you.

Congratulations on that move.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I've never worked so hard, but I've never had so much fun.

So it's, it's, it is a great time.

Well, here we're talking about the Mirtech Executive Summit.

Really.

That's the goal of today's show, we're going to cover a couple other things, but you're going to the show here this year in a different capacity.

Tell me what it's like to be on the operator side versus.

And I don't want to say vendor as a consultant, but it kind of is, you know.

Yeah, yeah, it really is a very different vibe.

So it used to be when you went as a.

As a non operator, let's just say that there was.

You were kind of always looking to.

To fill your time and make sure that you are adding value.

And Mirtech is a good example.

I've had the privilege of being on the Myrtech board for a period of time, so I would always reach out to them before I got there and said, look, you know, you're taking care of my fees here.

Let me do whatever I can do to help.

And I would always try to volunteer as much as possible.

When you go as an operator, it is a very different, very different vibe.

And so some of it is to be expected.

I mean, obviously, being that it's sponsored by vendors, there's a fair amount of expectation to reach out to vendors, to spend some time understanding different solutions.

There is an element of stalking that is less desirable when people follow you into the men's room to have conversations.

You could probably do without that.

But all said, it does create a very different perspective.

And I can't say that I don't enjoy it because, again, going back to my prior roots, it's really important for, I think, any operator, especially at any size, to know what is going on out there.

And just because you may have a vendor partner today that helps solve that problem doesn't mean that you're not constantly looking and grooming that list to make sure that you have other folks and you understand what they're up to, especially the pace at which technology is moving today.

You'd be remiss to not.

To not listen and to understand.

And I think that that's.

That's probably the biggest difference is just the.

The element of the expectation that people have of your time is much more.

It's much, much, much heavier demand on that.

Mm.

Well, to your point of not knowing what that company's been up to, I mean, I'm gonna use the air quotes.

Nobody can see this because this is an audio podcast, but AI, Everybody has an AI offering this day.

And, yeah, we're never gonna get away from that conversation.

I know in.

In times past, we've brought that up on a podcast or during a presentation and we actually kind of get sick of talking about AI But AI is here to stay and it's not going anyplace.

So.

And we heard a lot of that at this show as well.

Yeah.

And it's another case where.

And we've gone through this, for those of you who are long in the tooth like I am, have been in the industry for a while.

We've done this a couple times.

We went through this with cloud, we went through this with big data.

We went through this on a number of occasions where people misrepresented what they had or were a little bit ahead of themselves in terms of representing it.

So AI is one of those.

And make no mistake, AI is going to have material impact on our industry, and it's already having some impact.

But just putting AI in front of your name doesn't make you AI.

And so we just, we keep running into situations where organizations say, yeah, we use AI and then you start to understand.

Well, what do you mean by that?

Well, you know, we can, we can predict how many, you know, slices of bread you're going to use today.

And it's like, well, that's not A.I.

you know, that, that's, that's pretty simple, you know, calculations.

So I think we just need to be very candid with each other and recognize that AI is important and there are certainly very valid use cases and where chasing down a number of them at churches ourselves.

But you can't just, as I said, put AI in front of your name and all of a sudden change who you are or change what you do.

Exactly.

Well, today we're here to talk about the MerTech Executive Summit.

And we had it this year at the PGA National Resort.

What a beautiful place that was.

The phenomenal grounds were amazing.

The hospitality was great.

Yeah.

If I could have afforded the number of golf balls it would have taken me to play the course, I might have actually played.

But they don't pay me enough.

I think my handic is 18 per hole, and so that would have cost me a lot of.

A lot of golf balls.

So I, I saved everybody the time and the groundskeepers were very appreciative of that.

Now, we all know what happened the last time you tried to play golf at topgolf, which we won't go into that story.

Yeah, that's over.

That's over.

A drink at the next conference.

And I'm pretty sure that lawsuit has been settled at this point, so that shouldn't be an issue.

So those of you who have not attended the Executive Summit, if you've been to the Myrtek, the show in Vegas every year in March.

That's a much bigger show.

It is a ton of vendors, a showroom floor, a lot of operators.

Mirtech Executive Summit is quite a bit different.

It's a smaller group of people, just some thought leaders in the room.

The vendors don't have booths, they're just there mixed amongst us as operators just to talk about, you know, challenges we face in the industry.

Toby, what were your first impressions walking into this year's summit?

Well, I do, I do really like the fact that HT has two very separate, two different offerings, if you will.

And to your point, the executive conference is more of a strategic going forward sea level and a more intimate setting.

As you said, no trade show booths or anything like that.

And as a result there's a lot more interaction and I actually like that a whole lot better than trying to carry on a strategic conversation on a show floor with all the distractions that are inherent with that.

So Mirtech in January or February and Vegas has a place and I think it's really good to be able to hit a number of different, you know, vendors at, you know, during that course of that.

But the, the Executive Summit is, is for more heavy conversations, more one on ones, a little bit more about strategy than the tactical day to day.

And I actually prefer that just because it allows you to be a bit more forward thinking and take a little bit more time instead of having these kind of sound bite conversations that, that will lead to something else.

You can actually have a meaningful conversation during the period of time and they do a really nice job.

Enough networking time.

So there's content and then there's probably an equal amount of networking time.

So you can say hey, let's catch up after this and you know, let's go sit in the lobby and have a conversation about that.

So and so I like the concept very much and I thought that they had a very good mix this year of very high end operators as well as, as, as well as vendor partners.

And sometimes you don't have a good mix of both and that leads to an imbalance.

I actually thought the balance this year was quite good.

Dive into some of the big ideas that shaped the event this year.

You and I both sat in on some incredible sessions.

What were your biggest takeaways from the content this year?

I think that there's a, an understanding amongst a lot of the large players and as I said just a moment ago, I mean there were a number of large players that were represented there Whether it's Jack in the Box or obviously churches or a number of others, you know, Danny Myers, you know, steak and not Steak and Shake, Shake Shack and another other large one.

So it's always wonderful to hear people talk about all of these very lofty, aspirational types of technologies.

But there was really this kind of feeling that said, we need to get our house in order.

We need to be able to have foundational technology in place to be able to leverage some of these things.

And there was a very heavy emphasis on that this year, which was interesting.

I mean, Doug Cook, a friend of mine who's the CIO at Jack and Box, talked a lot about, you know, this kind of, we've got to have all of this stuff in place before we can put the jet fuel in the rocket.

And so I feel very strongly about that.

And I think sometimes we lose that in our conversations.

We all want to talk about shiny objects that we forget to talk about foundational issues.

And for years, I've always said, when a house gets built, it looks like nothing's going on for six months, and then all of a sudden, bang, the house is built.

And it's like, wow, you went from a concrete foundation to a fully finished house.

And I think that that's a lot of what we see going on right now is that organizations are pushing their it, say, hey, we want to leverage AI, we want to leverage machine learning.

We want to leverage all these technologies that are coming out.

And some of the.

Some of the larger organizations are saying, we really need to get our IT house in order to be able to do that.

So I won't say it was a departure from the future forward look, but it was very much a prepare for takeoff type of theme, I thought this year, I don't know.

Did you share that idea?

I did.

I liked a lot of what Doug Cook was talking about because he got real in that conversation.

And by the way, it surprised me when I saw his sizzle reel.

I had no idea Jack in the Box had so much automation within their organization.

Yeah, yeah.

Their kitchen is highly sophisticated.

Did you have any knowledge of that previously?

No.

It was fascinating.

And yet, at the same point in time, you still need to conduct business.

And that was really kind of the theme, which was, you know, we could talk about all this really cool stuff and the automation that we have, but at the end of the day, we're still in the burger business.

Right.

You know, we.

We have to sell burgers.

And that.

That's.

That's a major concept.

That's a major theme that, that we promote at churches, which is at the end we sell chicken.

That's what our people do.

And I don't want my restaurants having to be starship captains.

That's not their role.

And so the technology has to be pretty seamless in terms of just, it just works.

And so a lot of that theme I think permeated this year in terms of we've put things in place to allow our businesses to operate.

Yeah.

And we've talked AI a couple of times here and I'll try to keep it just, just generic at this point because I really want to move on from that.

But I think there's an important piece of AI in today's conversation.

We've, we've talked about it to death.

Right.

How do you see the conversation around AI maturing from theory to practice?

Because even at this conference I was hearing we don't know where our best benefit's going to be.

I feel like we need to be at a different point in the maturity of AI and understanding it.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think what we find is that, that AI in our business is still kind of, it's kind of Germin.

And so we see a number of vendors in like the AI drive, drive, drive thru space or AI ordering, I should be more specific, or labor scheduling or even suggestive ordering using AI.

And I think all of those are really good, strong use cases that are just being validated at this point.

And I always come back to the fact that we as an industry have such, just such scant margins that we have to really leverage the learnings that take place in other industries.

So I actually attended a conference a couple weeks ago where retail was much more heavily represented and retail has higher margins and higher IT investments.

So I continue to think that as an IT professional in the restaurant space, we need to really keep our eyes on what's going on in some of our peripheral industries like retail and see how they're leveraging it and then see how we can create a use case to kind of technology transfer some of those good learnings.

And so we at churches are what we call a fast follower.

We're not out there there on the bleeding edge.

We can't afford to be that.

You know, the cost of being a pioneer in that particular space is just prohibitive.

And there, there are a number of vendor partners who are actually very accommodating about doing it.

But there's, there's a cost and there's a time cost and, and to some degree we almost need somebody else, you know, in the industry or in peripheral industries, as I said, to kind of take the heavy lifting to get to the point where we can use it.

But it's, you would be foolish to not believe that AI is going to ma.

Materially change the way we do business in our restaurants.

So.

Sure.

You know, there's a lot of workforce transformation and automation as far as recurring themes during this conference, we heard that a lot.

What's your read on where operators are truly making progress from, from sharing their examples?

Yeah, I think that the areas, you know, one of the things that, that we're looking at, as I said before, is just the, the using AI, the drive thru and we want to make sure that we're not solving a problem that doesn't exist or that we're not creating other problems.

So that's one that I think is going to improve as the technology improves.

But I see immediate results in things like just, you know, our restaurant managers, like many restaurant managers, really manage through tribal knowledge.

And so we're at a very good point in our, in our history and that we're growing.

But you can't grow tribal knowledge.

So how do I capture tribal knowledge and then be able to, to create when I open a new restaurant that the new restaurant has all of those learnings and all of those capabilities and I think AI provides that, that, that ability so that as organizations grow or as people transition either into the organization or into the industry out of it, that there's a baseline subsistence of understanding and knowledge that just keeps getting better and better.

And, and you know, we look at everything to, all the way down to, you know, what, what was our inventory carry costs, what are our weight, what's our waste?

You know, we're right now piloting a kitchen production system which is going to save us 50 to 100 basis points.

Excuse me, in terms of food cost.

So that's, that's where we see some true ROI on a lot of these types of initiatives.

It's funny that you mentioned tribal knowledge.

So when you were speaking, I can't remember if you were on stage talking about that or if that was a question you were asking, asking during one of the sessions.

But it prompted me to make a phone call yesterday.

A vendor, a potential vendor in the market space, they're not known for hospitality.

About a year and a half ago I had a conversation with them.

They created an AI system that specifically captures all of that tribal knowledge for every employee and creates what I call a digital twin of that employee.

So by the.

If they leave you, you understand exactly what they did on a day by day basis, all their tasks.

Fascinating.

I'll share the conversation and the vendor with you after the show.

They're new.

We're trying to help them kind of break into the restaurant and hotel space.

But fascinating because it solves for a very unique problem I haven't seen anybody else solve for in the AI realm.

That's fascinating.

I mean, because we don't see a lot of turnover in our management team in the restaurants.

We're really blessed and I think the culture at churches is such that people stay.

But as I said, as we grow know it's really hard to replicate that excellence and we really want to be able to put our new managers in a position to be successful.

So I think it's one of those a rising tide raises all ships.

So we want to, you know, just increase the level of excellence in all of our restaurants.

And no better way to do that than to really leverage the, the tribal knowledge that exists and build upon it.

So that's, that's an interesting one.

I hadn't heard that before.

Toby.

We're going to take a little bit bit of a break and when we come back we're going to get more into, I'm going to quote you on this out executing everybody in the industry.

You were very forcible about that statement and I want to dig into that a little bit more as well because I think it plays into a bigger picture of all of us collaborating together to solve for the bigger problems and the competitiveness of it.

So everybody hold on.

We'll be right back.

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So Toby, when we took the break, I had put a little teaser out there about the session you spoke on and I would like to go back and revisit that a little bit because I believe the context was around everybody needs to work together and the competitiveness of potentially there being an issue with that.

But you had a very strong opinion about let's work together.

There's no trade secrets out there.

We're going to out execute you.

Did I phrase that properly?

No, very much So I mean, I believe that again, getting back to the margins that we work within the restaurant industry and equally appropriately, the margins we work with within our IT technology, we can't afford to make a half a million dollar mistake or a $250,000 mistake because that just kills your margins.

And it can be a career limiting type of decision.

And so in my mind, we should all be working towards creating a technology platform that we can all leverage.

So I have been really fortunate in that I have great relationships with a number of brands and I mean, I want to call out a couple folks.

I mean, you know, I've worked with Bojangles in the past and Rich Di Valle is just, is wonderful to work with and he's very collaborative.

The folks at White Castle have been just tremendously helpful.

And I mean, and it's a two way street.

I mean, I want to share our knowledge and our learnings.

Culver's another one.

I mean, we're all competitive in the workspace, but we all have the same IT challenges.

And so to me, if somebody gets on the phone with me and says, hey, how are you finding working with this particular product?

Or what challenges have you faced?

It's counterproductive for me to be anything other than forthcoming and say, this is what we found.

Have you found a different way to do that?

Have you found a better partner to do this with?

Because at the end of the day we are going to build a good, good foundational platform.

And then where I, where I was more passionate was I said, you know, I don't care if you guys use the same technology.

I even said this to the vendor partners.

I don't want you developing specific curated software for me because that creates an upgrade path which is very challenging.

It creates costs that I should not have to bear, make it universally available.

Now where we're going to go to war is in operations.

And our operations team will go to war with any one of those other brands because we'll out operate them, we'll out execute them, we'll out customer service them by providing the technology that they need to be successful.

So to me, that's where the real competition takes place, not behind the scenes in terms of providing tools for our restaurants to be successful.

I mean, let churches go be churches and let, let Bojangles go be Bojangles and let's take it out in the operations and have the food fight there, but not behind the scenes.

Love that.

I think that's a brilliant concept and I wish more people would adhere to that philosophy.

Unfortunately, they don't always do that.

As you're talking to these other operators, I'm sure the discussion about prioritizing tech investments differently than maybe a year ago, do you see that happening right now?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, we get a lot more influence from external folks.

Everybody's readings, seeing what's going on in the world and there's always an expectation that restaurants should be equally forward thinking in terms of their technology.

So yeah, I think that the priorities are changing on a regular basis.

And so again, coming back to kind of the theme this year, you got to have your house in order to be able to leverage some of this stuff.

And there are a number of brands, you know, from our previous life that would say, hey, we really want to go leverage kiosk, we want to go leverage AI ordering, we want to put a first party app in.

And you say, well, wait a minute, you've got 12 different point of sale systems in your restaurant brand here.

It's, it's, you need to clean up your house before you can do that.

So this is almost, if I had to create a different theme for this week, this, this year's session, it's almost like prepare for launch.

I think the folks that have done homework in terms of some of these benign types of, you know, having consistent pos, having a consistent data structures, having consistency in their, in their world are going to benefit more, more quickly than the others.

It's funny, I was just about to ask you to summarize the state of the industry in one sentence after this event, but prepare for launch.

I guess that's the.

Yeah, yeah.

And, yeah.

And, and I really think that, as I said, organizations that have done their homework will benefit.

This is almost like another Covid moment.

I mean, when Covid hit, we really found a number of operators who, you know, proverbially speaking had their pants down because they were not ready to support a contactless world.

And we both can speak to a number of the clients that we worked with back when that we said, hey, you need to be prepared for this.

And you know, there was such a distinction of the ones that were ready versus the ones that weren't.

I think we're going to see another aha moment like that in the next 12 to 24 months.

Unfortunately, we have Limited time here today and we could talk forever about each individual session at the show.

But I, I want to branch.

First of all, kudos to the restaurant technology network, RTN and hospitality technology for putting on together a, a pretty impressive event.

It was pretty high caliber.

I always love the executive summits because we always stay in a nice place, we always have really good food.

And we had a great night that night when we all got together together, saw some old friends, made some new friends.

So once again, HT is, and RTN is great about curating that experience for all of us.

Even, you know, there's, it seems like it's doubled or tripled.

What are your thoughts on that?

I mean, how do we, how do we deal with this?

I mean, we can't go to every single show out there.

But how are you picking your shows and what you're going to.

Well, that's what I was about to say is that, you know, in a different world as a, as a vendor or as a consultant, you almost felt like you had to go to all of these shows for fear of, what is it?

Fomo?

Fear of missing out.

But now as an operator and obviously, you know, the amount of work that we're following up on, and I'm sure our colleagues and our peers likewise, you really have to choose very wisely in terms of where you commit your time.

Your dollars for that matter, too.

None of, none of these are inexpensive and props to many of the, many of the opera, many of these conferences for helping offset some of the operator costs.

But there's still an opportunity cost in terms of time and a question of whether it's worth the time.

The thing that I've been probably more vocal than many about is the fact that as an operator, the last thing you want to do is go to a conference like this and be, be infomercial to death.

I call, I kind of call it the Home Shopping Network.

And we, we were at a conference recently when, when I think I shared with you that I, I felt the content was really poor in that it was vendors who were putting forward a token customer who could only speak to certain aspects of the product or the solution or the capabilities because they're like, well, we don't use it that way or we didn't ask for that.

There were a couple of bespoke solutions that, that vendors had created and then said, hey, if it's good enough for fill in the blank operator, it must be good enough for everybody else.

And I just found the content to be extremely lacking.

So I think that restaurant or conferences need to recognize that just because they can generate a lot of money by selling vendors sponsorships and saying, oh, as part of your sponsorship, you also get a speaking engagement, they are eventually going to cut their own throats because eventually operators will say, that's not what I'm coming to these conferences for.

I'm coming for thought leadership.

And the folks at heck have better thought leadership will survive.

And those of those that just sell everything known to mankind, including all the content, so that you, about five minutes in, realize that it's not a conversation about AI, but it's a con conversation about Joe's AI and what he did for, you know, Howie's House of Cheese is not going to have relevance to everybody.

And so there needs to be a thinning of, of the, of the market here or consolidation of the market.

And I think we'll get back to the point where, where a good conference and there are some good conferences out there, recognize that their job to be successful is to provide a, a great networking opportunity.

And many of them do that.

But, I mean, but that networking opportunity will be more and more driven by the level of content that they can actually provide.

You know, if, if I go to, you know, my CEO and say I want to go to this conference because this person speaking about thought leadership and, and, and you know, all of these other operators are going to be there and we do a think tank, I can get that sold easily.

Much easier than going and say, I'm going to a trade show where I'm going to be, you know, just, just listening to infomercials on the Home Shopping Network for the next three days.

By the way, if I ever open a restaurant, I am going to call it Howie's House of Cheese.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I appreciate that.

That's inside how we thanks you as well.

Yes, of course.

How long have I been using Howie's House of Cheese in my analogies, Mr. Kimball?

Oh, man, a long time.

I now I'm.

I sorry, but I stole it from you.

I, I now use that.

So there we go.

I hope Howie out there doesn't mind.

Well, speaking of content, this is a very interesting question.

Have you ever gone to a trade show specifically because there is a keynote speaker that you really want to hear?

I think the last time was probably, I think it was restaurant leadership When George Bush Jr.

Spoke and truth in lending here, I was never a big fan of his when he was president, I, I developed a much better appreciation for how intelligent he was and how thoughtful he was afterwards.

And so, yeah, that would probably be the only one that's the corollary to that was, I think who was it Clinton spoke the year after that And.

Well, the opposite.

So that was, that was W. W is actually funny.

He was hilarious on stage.

Yeah, he, he showed a side of himself that I hadn't seen before.

And there have been occasions when keynotes have actually, you know, have over exceeded my expectations.

You know, gave me some real interesting things to think about and you know, some things to pause and it's, it's a tough job because I mean, you know, the restaurant industry is really a very, when all things are considered is a pretty segmented market.

And so I know we've had people like Taffer and Robert Irvine and those folks obviously know our business, but it's really hard to take somebody from a, from a non restaurant background and have them speak to things that are relevant.

So it's, it's not an easy ask.

That's true.

Well, we are almost out of time.

By the way, did you move down to Alabama yet?

I did, I did.

We made the, the Great Pilgrimage last weekend.

So move from Northern Michigan where it actually has already started to get awfully cold to.

Yeah.

To just outside of Birmingham.

So.

Yes, thank you all as well.

Well, please say hello to your better half.

And we know she's definitely the better half.

Goes without saying, doesn't it?

It does.

Toby, thank you once again for joining me and, and for everything that you contribute to this inter industry.

A big thanks again to the teams at Hospitality Technology and the Restaurant Technology Network for creating that kind of event that truly moves our industry forward.

And if you missed Myrtech this year, make sure it's on your list for next time.

The conversations happening there are really shaping the future of hospitality.

I appreciate Skip.

It's always great to catch up.

So it's.

You're right, it's.

The industry is.

However large it is, it's still quite small and I've been really blessed.

I've spent about 40 years of my career in the hospitality industry and it's been very kind.

So it's really nice to be back in operations and it's great to catch up.

A huge thanks to Toby Malbeck for joining us again and sharing his perspective from the front lines of restaurant technology.

That's the kind of insight that keeps this industry moving forward.

If you have any questions for Toby or myself, you can reach out to me on social media, IIP Kimple and Magic 8 Tech we're on X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

For past episodes and show notes, head over to skipkimple.com and to catch all of the latest episodes, visit magicgate.com that's it for today's episode of the Tech Chef Podcast.

Thanks for tuning in and being part of the conversation around where hospitality and technology meet.

Be sure to join me now next Tuesday for another fresh serving of insights and inspiration.

So until then, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay hungry.

My friends.