A restaurant manager receives a recommendation to order 15 cases of beer. The immediate question is simple: Why?
The answer determines whether the manager trusts the technology or ignores it.
Raphaël Daverio, vice president of product at Nory, believes restaurant technology must do more than recommend an action. It should explain the data and circumstances behind that recommendation.
“If you’re telling someone you should order 15 cans of beer tomorrow, it’s like, ‘OK, why?’” Daverio said on the Digital Hospitality podcast.
Nory might explain that the restaurant is projected to run out before the next available delivery, making the recommendation easier to understand and approve.
Daverio joined host Shawn Walchef to discuss how Nory is building an AI operating system for multi-unit restaurants, why operators need control over automation and how better technology can help restaurants improve their margins without sacrificing hospitality.
Solving Problems Instead of Paper Cuts
Daverio entered restaurant technology after building, scaling and selling a travel technology company.
Although he had no restaurant experience, he was drawn to the complexity and competitiveness of the industry. He was also interested in the challenge of building an operating system with both breadth and depth.
Nory’s guiding mission is to create an intelligent, autonomous system that helps restaurants become more profitable.
“We wake up every single day and try to think, ‘How do we get one step closer to that?’” Daverio said.
That vision gives the product team a clear way to evaluate customer requests. The first question is whether a proposed feature can make a measurable difference in a restaurant’s margins.
However, restaurant operators do not always begin by describing their biggest problems.
Daverio calls this “paper cut mode.” Customers may focus on small frustrations because those are the problems directly in front of them. His team listens to those concerns before asking what the ideal system would look like.
“They talk to you for 30 minutes about the paper cuts, and then at the end you’re like, ‘What would the ideal look like?’” he said. “Then they say something completely different.”
Building Trust Before Increasing Automation
Nory’s long-term goal is to help restaurants operate more autonomously, but Daverio does not believe every operator should be forced into complete automation.
Instead, restaurants can control the level of automation they want.
An operator may begin by receiving proactive suggestions. The next step could allow managers to review and approve recommended actions. As confidence grows, certain orders, schedules or invoices can be approved automatically.
Customer review responses followed a similar progression.
Many Nory customers initially wanted the platform to draft responses but leave the final approval to a person. Some eventually allowed Nory to respond automatically to four- and five-star reviews while personally addressing negative feedback.
Daverio said approximately 90% of those customers eventually moved to fully automated responses after seeing the quality of the results.
Using AI to Improve Restaurant Margins
Nory has worked closely with Dave’s Hot Chicken as the restaurant brand expands across the United Kingdom and Europe.
Before automating ordering, Nory helped the company review its recipes, identify suppliers and evaluate pricing. That foundational work increased its theoretical gross profit by 18% in one year, according to Daverio.
With those systems in place, the company could begin testing Nory’s ordering recommendations.
Daverio said four out of five orders during beta testing were accepted without any modifications. The orders that required changes created additional feedback that could help Nory improve its recommendations.
The platform also considers more than food costs. Cutting labor or inventory without understanding the effect on guests can create new problems, including slower service, cold food and negative reviews.
“In the age of AI, you kind of need an all-in-one,” Daverio said. “If you’re optimizing in a vacuum, you’re actually missing the full picture.”
For Nory, improving margins is not the final objective. Greater profitability can give restaurant operators the resources to open new locations, pay employees more and create better experiences.
“The margin just unlocks the funds that you need to expand your restaurants, pay people more and deliver new things,” Daverio said. “It’s all in service of the people satisfaction and the guest satisfaction.”
