The Shift Index.

We want to build a research series informed by the people responsible for restaurant operations—not just the products being promoted to them. We're inviting franchise and multi-unit leaders, operators, and practitioners to share where current technology works, where it falls short, and what they expect next.

What we're trying to learn

Our first-wave goal is to speak with 25–50 relevant industry participants. That's a recruitment goal, not a claim about interviews already completed or a representative survey. The objective is to identify useful patterns, tensions, and ideas worth investigating further.

1. What's the operating decision you most wish your existing systems helped you make?
2. Which technology has actually saved your managers time—and which tools add work?
3. What problems become harder as a restaurant group grows from 10 to 100 locations?
4. When a rush goes wrong despite an apparently adequate schedule, what do you investigate first?
5. Where is the gap between an alert or prediction and getting the right action taken?
6. Which AI use cases would you trust today? Which still need human judgment?
7. What evidence would convince you that a new tool truly improved service, labor, or margin?
8. What do you expect restaurant operations to look like five years from now?

How participation works

We can begin with a short exchange or a longer conversation, depending on your preference. Sharing a perspective is voluntary. Please don't send confidential employee, customer, financial, or proprietary operating data. We will seek permission before naming a participant or quoting their comments publicly.

We intend to disclose the number and roles of participants, recruiting approach, questions used, and any material limitations when publishing findings. Early interviews will likely be a convenience sample rather than representative industry statistics. We will label them accordingly. No paid placement is promised.