Why was the restaurant down 30% last night?
That question sent Brian Kelley down a path that would eventually lead to building Butter AI.
At the time, Kelley owned a restaurant in New York while living in California. Every day seemed to bring new variables that affected business. Weather. Sports schedules. Reservations. Reviews. Local events.
The challenge wasn’t finding the data.
It was finding the answer.
“I wanted to know why we were off by 30% last night,” Kelley said.
During a conversation with Shawn Walchef on Digital Hospitality at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Kelley explained how a problem he faced as a restaurant owner became the foundation for a platform designed to help operators make faster, smarter decisions.
Looking For Answers
Long before artificial intelligence became a buzzword, Kelley was pulling information from his POS system and combining it with outside data sources to better understand his business.
What started with sales reports quickly expanded. He wanted weather data. Customer reviews. Sports schedules. Reservation information.
Anything that might explain what was happening inside the restaurant. As he gathered more information, another problem became obvious. Managers were spending too much time looking at screens.
“I always hated going in and seeing my manager at the bar on a laptop,” Kelley said.
“The business is managing them.”
For Kelley, technology should help operators spend more time running restaurants, not more time generating reports.
Making Data Useful
That philosophy became the foundation of Butter AI.
The platform combines restaurant data with information such as weather forecasts, sports schedules, reviews, and reservations to provide daily insights and predictions.
Instead of digging through multiple dashboards, operators can receive a simple daily briefing and ask questions through text message.
“If you know how to text, you know how to use Butter,” Kelley said.
The goal is not to provide more information. The goal is to provide answers.
Finding Money Already Inside The Business
One of Butter’s newest tools analyzes restaurant menus and compares pricing against local competitors.
The platform looks for pricing gaps and opportunities operators may have overlooked.
At St. Michael’s Alley in Palo Alto, Kelley said the analysis identified approximately $1,800 per month in additional revenue opportunities through targeted menu price adjustments.
“I was literally leaving money on the table,” he said.
The feature is designed to help operators make informed pricing decisions without spending hours conducting competitive research.
Helping Managers Lead
While many restaurant technology platforms focus on owners and executives, Kelley believes the biggest impact often happens at the store level. Managers are constantly balancing staffing, service, scheduling, guest experience, and operational challenges.
Giving them faster access to information creates more time to focus on people. One manager told Kelley the platform could save him nearly 10 hours each week. Another renamed Butter in his phone contacts to “Little Mike” because using it felt like texting the owner.
For Kelley, those stories matter more than product features. The restaurant industry doesn’t suffer from a lack of data. It suffers from a lack of time. And sometimes the most valuable technology isn’t the technology that gives you more information.
It’s the technology that helps you understand what matters most.
