Experts weigh in on how franchise systems are using AI in food service operations
By Mei Linh Cheng
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more effective, many franchise brands are now integrating AI into their systems. In a large industry with complex operations like the food service industry, AI tools are helping franchise systems streamline and automate processes to help franchisee operations—and their bottom line.
Franchise Canada reached out to three AI experts serving the franchise industry to hear about the ways food service franchise systems use new AI-based technologies in their operations: Madan Kanela, founder and CEO of Stratosfy, Mariam Al-Ansary, CEO of Intellino Tech, and Mary Jo Mahood, practice director of Tablespoon.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Q. What services and products does your brand provide for franchisors?
Madan Kanala: Stratosfy helps franchisors build what we call “operational memory”—the ability for every store to continuously learn from its own operations. Today, our platform delivers three AI-powered operational solutions: equipment intelligence, shift intelligence, and compliance intelligence. Each of these solutions contributes to a single operational memory layer that grows smarter across locations, regions, and ultimately the entire brand.
Mariam Al-Ansary: Intellino Technologyprovides an AI-driven suite designed to turn digital reputation into physical foot traffic for franchisors and multi-unit operators. As consumer trust migrates to online reviews and social media, we find that in-store content has failed to keep pace. We bridge that gap by bringing live, curated social proof directly to the physical storefront through our three solutions, Signamic, VUE Smart QR, and VUE Analytics & AI Responses.
Mary Jo Mahood: At Tablespoon, we’re really two businesses under one roof. The first is a technology business: we sell and implement Sage Intacct, the cloud ERP built for multi-unit, multi-brand operations, covering core financials—general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and cash management. The second is a services business: our Managed Accounting Services team acts as your back office, closing the books, running reconciliations, and keeping the numbers straight across every store and brand. Franchisors can engage us on either side on its own, or both together.
Q. How have you seen AI adoption grow in the food service industry in recent years?
Madan Kanala: A few years ago, most restaurant conversations around AI focused on customer-facing experiences like chatbots or ordering. Today, we’re seeing a shift toward operational AI. Restaurant operators are asking how AI can prevent equipment failures, improve food safety, reduce repetitive administrative work, identify operational patterns, and help managers make faster, better decisions.
Mariam Al-Ansary: Over the past few years, AI adoption in food service has evolved from novelty experimentation to core operational strategy. What’s most exciting today is how much more discerning operators have become with AI. Franchise owners increasingly view AI as a catalyst. They recognize that while AI excels at heavy data processing, it lacks the unwritten human intuition required to run a great restaurant. Equipped with this mindset, franchisors are making far smarter decisions about automating high-friction repetitive tasks while reserving human judgment for true hospitality.
Mary Jo Mahood: Our numbers roughly doubled this year. In early 2026, about a quarter of our clients were even asking about AI. By mid-year, half of them were using it or piloting it for reporting and analytics. That’s ahead of the industry. The National Restaurant Association’s 2026 report put AI usage across all of foodservice at 26% but that number includes marketing, ordering, kitchen tech, and admin, so it’s naturally lower than what we’re seeing.
Q. What are the benefits of using AI tools for franchisors?
Madan Kanala: Franchisors have one fundamental challenge: ensuring hundreds or thousands of stores operate consistently. AI helps by creating visibility and learning across the network. It’s now possible to detect operational risks ahead of time, maintain consistency across all franchise locations, and have a sustainable brand instead of repeating mistakes. The goal of AI isn’t to replace operators, but to support them.
Mariam Al-Ansary: When properly vetted, AI tools yield massive benefits across a franchise network. It attracts foot traffic without burdening store teams with manual content creation, assists customers with keywords, and processes customer feedback at scale in real time. Instead of reacting to bad reviews weeks later, franchisors and store managers receive early warnings to resolve operational bottlenecks before they impact brand reputation. Ultimately, the right AI tools support rapid franchise growth while giving franchisees their most valuable asset back: time to focus on running great stores.
Q. If a prospective franchisee is looking into a franchise opportunity, what questions should they ask about AI adoption/tools? Are there any ‘red’ or ‘green flags’ to look out for?
Madan Kanala: Rather than asking whether a franchisor uses AI, franchisees should ask whether AI genuinely helps them run a better business.
When it comes to AI adoption, franchisors should look out for these green flags: AI that continuously learns from operational data, provides recommendations as opposed to overviews, gives clear operational outcomes, and is easily adopted by frontline teams.
Franchisors should keep an eye out for these red flags: AI that’s primarily used as a marketing feature, stagnant operational improvement, systems that generate alerts without context or recommendations, and AI that doesn’t learn after installation.
Mariam Al-Ansary: When evaluating a franchise opportunity, prospective franchisees should look closely at how tech tools affect daily storefront operations. They should ask the franchisor if their AI tool streamlines human experiences, how much maintenance it needs, and what happens when it encounters an error.
Some green flags include automating background tasks to deepen guest trust without replacing genuine human hospitality; having ”redundancies,” or backups available if a tech tool experiences downtime; day-to-day store operations that continue uninterrupted; and providing vetted, central AI solutions to protect brand standards across every location.
Some red flags to watch out for are software that forces guests through rigid digital channels and prevents staff from resolving customer issues directly, tools requiring heavy daily manual updating that turns managers into software operators instead of store leaders, and tech stack glitches that threaten to halt daily store operations until resolved.
Mary Jo Mahood: Before implementing an AI tool, there are questions that need to be addressed. Franchisors should ask themselves which AI tools are required versus optional, and who’s paying for them: is that baked into royalties and tech fees, or billed separately? Who owns the data these tools generate? How well do they plug into the POS (point of sale), accounting, and payroll systems already in place, and what happens if they don’t? What training comes with the rollout? And the big one: is this meant to help staff work faster, or replace them? If it’s the latter, there needs to be a real transition plan.
Green flags: a franchisor who can show actual performance numbers from systems already running in the field, a rollout that’s phased or opt-in with real training behind it, straight answers on cost and data ownership, and tools that plug into existing back-office systems instead of duplicating them.
Red flags: fuzzy answers on total cost, mandatory tools with little support, no policy on data ownership, big promises about labour savings with nothing behind them, and lock-in with no way out if the tool underperforms. If AI shows up anywhere in the FDD or franchise agreement, ask why now, and what happens if the franchisor changes vendors later.
Q. What trends are you seeing regarding AI in the restaurant industry?
Mariam Al-Ansary: We’re seeing a massive shift toward Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Physical Social Proof. Modern consumers are no longer just typing in broad keywords. They’re asking conversational AI engines specific questions about where to eat or do business. Since these engines favour brands backed by dense, descriptive, and highly detailed customer review data, operators need to capture authentic guest feedback and bring that live proof directly to their physical storefronts.
However, not all AI trends are positive. In some cases, we’re noticing growing, detrimental AI usage in the industry, such as fully automated social media content generation and agentic services where authenticity is traded for pure efficiency. This inauthenticity creates a false representation of the brand, which ultimately diminishes customer trust. A conscious effort in differentiating when AI is used as a tool to empower human teams versus when it is a replacement for human talent and genuine hospitality is imperative to successful AI integration.
Mary Jo Mahood: Finance is the piece I know best, and it’s moving faster than anyone expected a year ago. Accounts payable is still the clearest example: the platform pulls invoice details, matches them to POs (purchase orders), and catches duplicates before they turn into a real problem. It’s actual AI doing that work, not a rules engine wearing an AI label.
Next, I’m watching the spots where franchisees feel the most pain: bank reconciliation, cost allocation across units, and matching delivery platform payouts against POS and bank records. These are manual, multi-source matching problems, which is exactly where AI tends to help. We don’t have anything built for delivery reconciliation yet, but it’s on our list.