Companies love a good origin story for a technology bet.
They almost never love the cleanup story that follows
For the last three years, every quarterly call from a consumer-facing chain has carried some version of the same promise. Artificial intelligence would cut labor costs, speed up service, and turn legacy operations into something investors could value like a software company. Restaurants and retailers leaned in the most of anyone.
The global restaurant automation market alone ballooned to roughly $28 billion this year, according to the National Restaurant Association. The pitch sold, hard. Every chain wanted its own version.