I've spent my career on both sides of a business: running it, and building the technology behind it. One lesson keeps coming back. The tools get better every year, but the companies that pull ahead are the ones that change how the work gets done.

That's why I'm starting The Front Runners.

The factory lesson

When electricity arrived, most factories swapped the steam engine for an electric motor and kept everything else the same. Output barely moved. The gains came later, when owners redesigned the floor around the new power.

AI is following the same path. Adding a chatbot changes little. Rebuilding the company around it is where the gains are.

The gap

In tech, finance and professional services, about one in two large firms already use AI. In owner-led businesses that feed, make, build and move things, it's about one in ten. The gap is widest where the work is physical, and that's where I want to spend my time.

Source: US Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey AI Supplement, 2026.

Season 1: Restaurants

I'm starting with restaurants. Margins are thin, good staff are hard to find, and the P&L arrives a month late. If AI can earn its place anywhere, it's here.

In each episode I sit down with a leader from one of the most popular restaurant brands and ask how they're rebuilding: what they tried, what worked, and what they'd tell an owner starting today. We're recording now.

The AI Maturity Index

Alongside the podcast, we're publishing a quarterly ranking of how far companies have come, on five levels: Manual, Assisted, Connected, Delegated and Autonomous. The first edition covers restaurants.

Join us

If you're rebuilding your company with AI, I'd like to hear how. Apply to be a guest or nominate a brand at thefrontrunners.org.

Say "AI restaurant" and most people picture a robot flipping burgers. I picture something quieter. The host still remembers your name. The cook still cares about the plate. What changes is the work nobody sees.

The work nobody sees

Every location creates its own admin. Card and delivery payouts to match against the day's sales. Vendor invoices to code and check against contract. Shared costs to split across locations. Most of it is still done by hand, and most of it waits for month end.

So owners tell me some version of the same thing:

"I find out we lost money in March in the middle of April."

What changes

In an AI-native restaurant, that work happens every day. Agents match the payouts, code the invoices and close the books overnight. When a vendor bills over contract, an agent spots it, asks the rep for a credit and follows up until it lands.

By Monday, the owner has a P&L for every location for the week before, instead of a month later.

A morning at Midtown

At 06:40, an agent sees labor at Midtown running 11% over plan this week. It works out what that costs and sends it to Maria, the general manager, before she sets the lunch schedule.

Maria owns the rota, so Maria decides. She adjusts the shifts she can. The owner sees one line in the morning brief and gets on with the day.

Nobody chased a report. The person who could fix it heard first, with the number attached.

What stays human

Good staff are hard to find and harder to keep. Nobody should rewrite a rota mid-week because a dashboard said so. Hospitality, cooking, hiring and the final call stay with people.

Agents work inside rules the owner sets. A vendor payment over $10,000 waits for a named approver, usually the controller. Every action is logged, and any entry can be reversed.

Where to start

You don't need to rebuild everything at once. Start with the work that repeats every day and that nobody enjoys: the payouts, the invoices, the daily close. Once that runs, the numbers arrive in time to act on.