Chili’s operator shifts from Wi-Fi fixes to cautious AI tests

Brinker International is preparing to test more artificial intelligence in its restaurants after spending two years repairing basic technology systems that employees said were slowing down service. The operator of Chili’s and Maggiano’s is treating AI as a restaurant tool only where it can improve food, service or atmosphere, Fortune reported.

Chris Caldwell, Brinker’s chief information officer, told Fortune that AI work depends first on reliable infrastructure across the company’s restaurants. Caldwell joined Brinker in February 2024 after nine years as CIO at KFC, where Brinker CEO Kevin Hochman had also worked through Yum Brands.

Hochman, who became Brinker CEO in June 2022, told Caldwell that as much as 70% of restaurant employee feedback involved technology problems that made jobs harder, according to Fortune. Frequent Wi-Fi failures were among the main complaints.

Network rebuild came first

Caldwell reviewed network infrastructure vendors but kept Comcast, the company’s existing provider, Fortune reported. Brinker and Comcast installed new networking equipment, replaced every Wi-Fi access point across 1,200 restaurants and added cellular backup to reduce outages.

In some locations, the work went as far as cutting into parking lots to add fiber connections, according to Fortune. Caldwell said the company has now reached a more stable position after rebuilding much of the restaurant network infrastructure.

Brinker then addressed another recurring complaint: slow back-office computers used by managers. Caldwell showed senior leaders a video of the delays restaurant teams faced, and each restaurant received a new laptop, Fortune reported.

The technology refresh also included 23,000 new iPads with longer battery life and updates to 9,000 kitchen touchscreens. The redesigned kitchen screens now show each station only the work it needs to complete, rather than a full list of orders that was harder for staff to read, according to Fortune.

Caldwell is testing a new iPad ordering interface in 12 restaurants. The goal is to cut the number of clicks needed to enter an order by 50% and make the software easier for new employees to learn, Fortune reported.

AI plans stay tied to restaurant operations

Brinker has performed strongly under Hochman and Caldwell in a restaurant sector pressured by inflation-weary consumers, Fortune reported. Chili’s has recorded 20 straight quarters of same-store sales growth, according to the report.

Caldwell told Fortune that Brinker is expanding Microsoft Copilot in corporate offices and seeing more use of AI tools for coding. At the restaurant level, he pointed to early AI uses in demand forecasting and other functions connected to HotSchedules, the employee scheduling technology vendor.

He also sees possible applications in forecasting, inventory management, logistics and a restaurant-focused AI chatbot that could answer operational questions, Fortune reported. Caldwell said Brinker is still early in that work and is weighing outside vendors against tools it may build itself.

The company has also rejected some automation ideas. Fortune reported that Brinker ran limited robotics tests, but Hochman ended those efforts after joining the company, and Brinker has no immediate plan to return to them.

Brinker also explored using AI to handle phone orders, but Caldwell told Fortune the company was not satisfied with the service quality. He said the labor-cost case may look attractive on a spreadsheet, but Brinker would not use the tool if it fell short of the company’s hospitality standards.

AI adoption in restaurants has been uneven across the industry, Fortune reported. Starbucks recently dropped an AI inventory tool, Yum is facing a lawsuit from a Pizza Hut franchisee over alleged problems tied to an AI system, and McDonald’s is making another attempt at AI drive-thru ordering after an earlier effort failed.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.