At FSTEC 2025, top restaurant leaders from Checkers & Rally's, GoTo Foods, and Shake Shack shared the secrets to balancing tech innovation with brand identity, customer focus, and operational discipline.
October 1, 2025
At FSTEC 2025, Qu brought together three industry leaders who are deeply connected to their brands and understand their customers inside and out. On stage:
Each represented a different corner of the QSR world. But the common thread was discipline: staying true to their brands, listening closely to their customers, and adopting technology not as a shiny object but as a strategic enabler of growth.
With seven brands under its umbrella, GoTo Foods faces a different challenge: scaling efficiently while protecting each brand’s identity.
For GoTo Foods, discipline means standardizing infrastructure — a single POS, unified data, and a comprehensive customer profile that drives personalization. The payoff is flexibility: the ability to pilot menu innovations quickly (like the churro ice cream mashup from Cinnabon and Carvel) and make smarter decisions across both guest engagement and supply chain.
Checkers’ turnaround story rests on clarity: delivering everyday value for a price-sensitive guest without compromising long-term health.
That mindset has guided decisions from piloting voice AI drive-thru to reassessing in-store systems. Tebben was candid about moving too fast: “We got a lot of good PR, but we never really thought about how to keep iterating quickly. Quick, but don’t hurry.”
For Checkers, discipline means resisting tech for tech’s sake. Every rollout must solve a defined operational challenge and be measured against clear outcomes — especially in areas like labor scheduling.
Shake Shack has always lived in the premium tier, and Thomas was clear that their differentiation isn’t price — it’s hospitality.
Kiosks, often seen purely as labor-saving devices, are positioned differently at Shake Shack. They’re a tool to redeploy labor, freeing team members to engage guests, recover service issues, and elevate the dining experience.
Shake Shack is stepping into the drive-thru arena, exploring a new way to connect with guests. Thomas emphasized that any additions—like combo meals or kiosks—will be guided by one principle: enhancing the guest experience, not just boosting margins.
While each brand approaches tech through its own lens, they aligned on key principles:
In a year where full-service restaurants outpaced QSR growth for the first time in years, the message from this panel was clear: technology is only as powerful as the discipline behind it.
Checkers & Rally’s leans into value with focus. Shake Shack elevates hospitality with thoughtful tech deployment. GoTo Foods scales through unified platforms and cross-brand collaboration.
Different brands, different strategies — but the same principle: know who you are, stay true to your customer, and let technology serve the brand, not the other way around.
Qu is the restaurant technology company evolving POS, responsibly, for a more sustainable future. With the industry’s first unified commerce platform, Qu’s fully integrated products go beyond fragmented ordering and tech experiences to create healthier connections for restaurant operating teams and their many stakeholders.