When Luis Martinez-Moure and Adarsh Nagesh started talking, it wasn’t a pitch meeting. It was a collision of two people who saw the same problem from different worlds. Luis had spent years inside DoorDash and Instacart, learning how chaotic operations could get when data was scattered and decisions were made on gut feeling. Adarsh came from the applied AI team at Uber, working on intelligent systems that could see patterns faster than any human. When they met at a founders’ event in San Francisco, the conversation quickly turned to restaurants and the opportunity sitting right in front of them.
“For the first time since the 1950s, we have a chance to fundamentally change how restaurants operate,” Luis said. “AI isn’t here to replace hospitality. It’s here to give people more time to focus on it.”
Introducing Patty AI
That idea became Pathway, a restaurant technology company building Patty AI, an intelligent restaurant manager designed to make smarter, faster, and more data-driven decisions. Their first mission was to fix procurement.
Every operator knows the pain of overordering, underordering, and juggling invoices across distributors. Pathway connects a restaurant’s sales, recipes, and invoices into one brain. From there, Patty AI can determine what the restaurant needs to buy today without anyone digging through spreadsheets. It’s not just automation; it’s awareness.
“Every decision in a restaurant should be driven by data,” Adarsh said. “For the first time, that’s actually possible without operators clicking through dashboards or downloading Excel files.”
Why Hospitality Still Matters
What sets Luis and Adarsh apart isn’t just the technology. It’s the way they build it. They go into kitchens, walk coolers, and count boxes themselves. They talk to line cooks, managers, and GMs.
“We can only make your life easier if we know what makes it hard,” Luis said. “That’s why part of our onboarding process is literally going into the restaurant, looking in every nook and cranny, and understanding how things actually work.”
Adarsh calls it being an inventory therapist, the kind of partner who doesn’t judge your mess but helps you untangle it.
That willingness to go deep has earned Pathway trust early on. When potential customers are skeptical, the founders make a simple offer: We’ll take care of everything. We’ll make this risk-free for you. If that means showing up to count product by hand, they’ll do it.
“We started with procurement because it’s where restaurants lose a lot of time and money,” Luis said. “But the more we help with purchasing, the more visibility we get across the business. Patty AI can now see things no human could ever track.”
How Patty Can Help Your Restaurant
The next phase of Pathway’s product goes beyond ordering. Patty can identify unprofitable hours, suggest smarter scheduling, and spot menu mix problems that eat away at margins. A restaurant might see strong morning sales, but Patty can reveal whether those sales are actually profitable once food and labor costs are factored in.
“The best operators know their numbers,” Luis said. “But they don’t always have the time to find every hidden opportunity. That’s what Patty is built for.”
As the company grows, Luis and Adarsh are careful not to lose the human element that drives their mission. Every restaurant that works with Pathway gets direct access to the founders themselves, something Luis calls a gift for both sides.
“All these big tech companies lose their human touch because there are so many layers between people,” Adarsh said. “Right now, it’s just us. We get to build relationships that shape what this technology becomes.”
Long Term Vision
Their long-term vision is clear: to become the AI growth partner for restaurants. Not a faceless software company, but a trusted ally that helps operators grow their concept, their margins, and their peace of mind.
“Every stage of a company is temporary,” Luis said. “Right now, we have the chance to get our hands dirty and go deep with operators. The more we learn today, the more we can help tomorrow.”
For Pathway, the future of restaurant technology isn’t about replacing people with machines. It’s about giving hospitality back to the humans who make it happen.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More
