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Tech debt isn't a liability to wipe out. It's leverage to manage - like debt on a balance sheet. Too much and you're bankrupt; too little and you can't move.
That's the idea Dr. Ken Knapton literally wrote the book on. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Ken, Chief Information Officer at WIN Brands, the parent company of Costa Vida, Fresh Mexican Grill and FatCats Entertainment. Ken took the scenic route into restaurants - two decades in the CIO seat across enterprise software, banking, and security - and it shows in how clearly he thinks about the why before anyone writes a line of code.
📺WATCH AND LEARN📺
👉 How he runs IT for two brands that could not look more different - a made-to-order burrito line and a 70,000-square-foot cinema-bowling-arcade - and where he found economies of scale everyone told him weren't there
👉 Tech debt as LEVERAGE, not liability - the ~20% "sweet spot," and why your org will never (and shouldn't) hit zero
👉 The "have the WHY conversation first" rule - and how a simple Fat Cats CRM request turned into a single customer-data foundation across both brands
👉 Why he's NOT chasing all-in-one nirvana - his four-vendor, best-of-breed, plug-and-play philosophy
👉 Where customer-facing AI is genuinely READY vs. still on the cusp - and why "watching your burrito be born" down the line is a brand promise he won't automate away
Shout outs to Toast, Olo, Snowflake, Tableau, and Sparkfly for the tech-stack love along the way.
➕ PLUS the rapid fire round, where Ken breaks the one-word rule twice, names the most OVERRATED tech in restaurants and reveals the best money he spent on tech this year.
Give it a watch and let me know what you think. Full episode linked in comments 👇
