ABOUT THIS EPISODE
They built their own POS. For bagels. On purpose.
Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Aaron LeClair, VP of Technology at Jeff's Bagel Run, the Orlando-born chain famous for bagels baked hot ALL day long, now closing in on 40 locations (and eyeing 50 by year's end). A career technologist who came up in defense, climate tech, and supply-chain startups, Aaron traded enterprise software for fresh-baked bagels and built the brand's tech stack - POS and all - from scratch.
📺WATCH AND LEARN📺
👉 How "we just need one more piece of data" snowballed into building the ENTIRE stack in-house
👉 The two-layer forecasting problem that makes bagels harder to predict than pizza or donuts
👉 How they scaled the "what's hot?" moment every regular loves - without anyone yelling to the back
👉 The thing they could easily build but flat-out REFUSE to (prepare for a controversial take)
👉 Where he thinks the next phase of franchise growth is actually won - and it's not where everyone's looking
➕ PLUS the rapid fire round: Aaron's no-diplomacy bagel order, the cream cheese schmear that actually KICKS, the restaurant tech he says is most overrated, and a coffee confession he admits is "basic."
Aaron's one of the rare builders who'll tell you exactly which tech to skip - and as someone whose own daughter works a bagel counter, I loved every minute of this one. Give it a watch and let me know what you think 👇
