Restaurant AI with Matt Wampler is your weekly deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on the restaurant and hospitality industry. Hosted by tech entrepreneur and industry insider Matt Wampler, this podcast explores how AI is reshaping everything from kitchen operations and customer service to marketing, labor management, and the guest experience. Whether you’re a restaurant operator, tech innovator, or hospitality enthusiast, each episode delivers insights, expert interviews, and real-world use cases that help you stay ahead in a competitive and tech-driven landscape.
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Restaurant AI with Matt Wampler is your weekly deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on the restaurant and hospitality industry. Hosted by tech entrepreneur and industry insider Matt Wampler, this podcast explores how AI is reshaping everything from kitchen operations and customer service to marketing, labor management, and the guest experience. Whether you’re a restaurant operator, tech innovator, or hospitality enthusiast, each episode delivers insights, expert interviews, and real-world use cases that help you stay ahead in a competitive and tech-driven landscape.
Rudy Miick – Designing Restaurants That Restore the Soul and Inspire Growth
Restaurant AI
1 hour 24 minutes
5 months ago
Rudy Miick – Designing Restaurants That Restore the Soul and Inspire Growth
In this thought-provoking episode of the Restaurant AI Podcast, Matt Wampler sits down with Rudy Miick, Founder and President of The Miick Companies, for a deep dive into what makes restaurant culture truly transformative—and how technology fits into the equation.
With over four decades of experience shaping restaurant brands from the inside out, Rudy shares why restaurants are more than food and service—they’re leadership laboratories, soul-restoring spaces, and the stage for daily human evolution. The conversation challenges the conventional view of operations, blending awareness, emotional intelligence, and data-driven coaching into a new vision for sustainable profitability and human-first leadership.
They explore how to architect every touchpoint—sound, smell, eye contact—to deliver not just meals, but moments. Rudy also breaks down how to quantify the unquantifiable, replacing punitive management with a culture of daily coaching and radical positivity.
Links:
The Miick Companies
Connect with Rudy Miick on LinkedIn
ClearCOGS
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
00:00 Intro
01:31 Evolving through life
04:25 Nature vs nurture
09:18 Restaurants are “leadership labs"
14:13 Equipping everyone to rise to the top
19:45 The age-old restaurant model is dead
23:50 Awakeness and emotional intelligence as operational assets
27:07 The senses of a great restaurant
30:00 The power of sound, smell, and vibe
33:00 Crafting "the pitch" of a great restaurant
39:50 Rudy's passion for the hospitality industry
47:00 Rudy's greatest dining experience
51:19 Where technology makes sense in the restaurant industry
54:02 Mapping out human vs tech-driven touchpoints in the guest experience
1:00:25 Culture driving the brand experience
1:03:00 What today’s tech companies are getting wrong and what restaurants really need
1:08:11 Turning prime cost tracking into a daily discipline
1:10:33 The arithmetic of the restaurant business
1:14:15 A new model of leadership: coaching to the positive in real-time
1:18:30 Using AI to free up managers to be people-first leaders
1:22:07 Rudy's hope for the restaurant industry
1:24:30 Outro
Restaurant AI
Restaurant AI with Matt Wampler is your weekly deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on the restaurant and hospitality industry. Hosted by tech entrepreneur and industry insider Matt Wampler, this podcast explores how AI is reshaping everything from kitchen operations and customer service to marketing, labor management, and the guest experience. Whether you’re a restaurant operator, tech innovator, or hospitality enthusiast, each episode delivers insights, expert interviews, and real-world use cases that help you stay ahead in a competitive and tech-driven landscape.
