Demystifying AI: Practical Paths for Foodservice and Retail From the outset, Weber positioned his presentation as a chance to strip away the mystery around AI. As he put it, “how you approach AI should not be a secret. It should not be kept inside of a black box of […] a technology partner or a consulting firm.” His goal was to help attendees grasp what AI can do today and, more importantly, how each business can shape its own AI journey. At Upshop, he acknowledged, the team continues to explore the “realms of possibilities” for AI, guided by a belief in the “art of the possible.”
Weber underscored the stakes with a clear message: “AI is rewriting the rules of pretty much everything,” a shift that will profoundly reshape foodservice and retail. To ground that vision, he outlined three ques- tions at the heart of the discussion: “What should AI do?” “What does that really look like?” and “Where do I start?” He illustrated the daily challenges of foodser- vice, from food safety and disconnected tech to task overload and costly blind spots, using the familiar rhythm of prep and production, where staff are left wrestling with constant “mental math” about how much to make or how much more they could sell.
Ideally, he explained, AI should take on those bur- dens: forecasting demand by location and day, guiding production, optimizing markdowns, man- aging waste, and even enhancing traceability for high-risk ingredients, nutrition facts, and allergens. Weber walked through AI’s history, from 1950s com- putation to 1980s expert systems, 1990s statistics, 2010s machine learning, and today’s explosion of generative AI. The turning point, he noted, is shifting from asking “Did I reduce shrink today?” to “Show me how to reduce shrink and what are my options?” The ultimate aim, he said, is to “optimize thousands of these big and small decisions every day to drive performance and to do this in a relatively small amount of time.” From there, Weber and Brask introduced a four- step framework for embedding AI: introduce, train, partner, and autopilot. The big ‘aha’ has obviously come in the past couple years with GenAI. And instead of using rules or relationships or patterns, we can now simply say, given an outcome, discover my inputs. Mike Weber, CMO, Upshop
AI is rewriting the rules of pretty much everything and it certainly has and will continue to have massive impact on foodservice and the business, your businesses. Mike Weber , CMO, Upshop
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