WHY NEXT-GEN RESTAURANT TECH SHOULD AUTOMATE THE TASK, NOT THE MOMENT
Female restaurant technology leaders from 7 Brew and Smoothie King on how they are using AI to remove fric- tions while pro- tecting hospitality. By Joanna Fantozzi “ A utomate the task, not the moment,” said Smoothie King Chief Information Officer Jyoti Lynch during the New Architects of Foodservice Technology closing session of the 2026 FSTEC conference in Dallas, Texas. This women-led session was presented by the Women’s Foodservice Forum, and also featured 7 Brew Chief Technology Officer Danyel Bischof-Forsyth, as well as WFF Chief Brand Officer Ellie Doty as
moderator. Technology consistently
Technology leaders at FSTEC consistently emphasized a key principle: automation should ideally run seamlessly in the background, removing friction without distracting from the hospitality experience. Photo by Jon Mouer
leaders
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emphasized key principle: automation should ideally run seamlessly in the background, removing friction without distracting from the hospitality experience. This balance between technology and hospitality was a major theme in this session. a “People can show up in the digital channels, the drive-thru or the store, and you don’t want to automate any of that because those are your personal
touchpoints with guests,” Lynch said. “But everything behind that to make their jobs easier is where automation comes in.” Lynch gave the example of a typical challenge a franchisee might face: If the point-of-sale system’s end-of-day process doesn’t complete overnight, stores can’t process sales the next
morning — creating immediate chaos when team members arrive. Smoothie King has worked on automating this process to run in the background while the store is closed overnight, so baristas walk into a fully functional system when the store opens the next day. Primarily, though, her team’s focus is on automating back of house tasks, which
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