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Revolutionizing Restaurant Automation with Generative AI: A Conversation with Maria, Co-founder of Palona

• Erika Rivas

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In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian interviews Maria, co-founder of Palona AI. They discuss how Palona is transforming the restaurant industry through generative AI, voice automation, and multimodal technologies to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. With a background in leading tech companies like Google and Meta, Maria explains the capabilities of AI in hyper-personalization, conversational marketing, and overcoming challenges such as AI hallucinations. The episode also covers the onboarding process for AI solutions in restaurants and how these technologies can provide consistent and individualized guest experiences.

00:00 Palona.Ai

01:03 Introduction and Guest Welcome

01:40 Guest Background and Experience

03:04 Defining AI and Its Impact

07:04 AI in the Restaurant Industry

08:47 Multimodal AI Solutions

11:14 Human-Like AI Interactions

17:04 Standardizing Guest Experience with AI

20:05 AI-Powered Customer Interactions

21:04 Personalized Dining Experiences

22:34 Implementing AI in Restaurants

25:11 Guest Identification and Data Management

26:04 Ensuring AI Reliability and Security

28:48 Handling Special Requests and Continuous Learning

32:31 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Jeremy Julian:

In today's episode, we are joined by Maria, who is uh, one of the founders of palona. Pal's really solving the world's problems as it relates to voice automation, and not just ordering, but all of the different items that you can use voice for. To deliver a better guest experience. She's got a fantastic pedigree where she's worked at a lot of large brands and is using all of that skill and the relationships that she has and the team that she has built to really change the world of restaurant automation and how it engages with voice Sta until the end, where we talk a lot about how restaurants can implement this solution today to ultimately drive bottom line profit to their brand. If you don't know me. My name is Jeremy Julian. I am the Chief Revenue Officer for CB S North Star. We wrote the North Star point of sale solution for multi-units. Check us out@cbsnorthstar.com and now onto the episode. I. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. Like I say, each and every time, I know you guys got lots of choices. So thanks for hanging out. Today is, um, we're gonna talk a lot about kind of AI and really, quite frankly, with our guests talk a lot about. How the consumer continues to change and how some of the non-restaurant tech is really, um, making a huge impact in our space. And so I'm gonna introduce you to our guests. Maria, why don't you introduce yourself. Let's talk a little bit about where your background is and where you came from, and then we can talk about what you've built and what your latest project is.

Maria Zhang:

Yeah. Hi Jeremy. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I. From you and share a little bit from my story. Yeah. So I stu I studied computer science and have been in this industry, for over two decades. Um, most recently I was VP of engineering at Google. I supported a large global, product development team of, several hundred people. and before that I was at meta. And, I also have done a startup, back in, um, thousand 10. I left Microsoft and when iPhone came out, I got really excited and the product I built was called Alike. It's a local discovery and recommendation tool. So during that time, already get to work with, local restaurants and such, and how to make smart recommendations. And that product was, acquired by Yahoo in 2013. So fast forward, this company Palona. I started with a few co-founders, last year in 2024. and we really excited about this generative AI technology. And then we want to bring the most advanced, multimodal, multimodality generative AI solution to serve, restaurants and make the guest experience better and make the operations, more seamless and more cost effective.

Jeremy Julian:

Wow, you got your, you got your pitch deck down. I like it. Um, as far as where it came from and the fact that you've got such experience, Microsoft Meta, um, Google is awesome. I. We were only, about 55 seconds in before AI came up. And so Maria, I would love for you to define what is ai, because I think there's a lot of people that it's a misnomer and being in the tech space, you've been in the tech space for a long time. There's a lot of these things that have been happening for some time now. But I think because of. Open AI and chat. GPT has really put it in consumer's hands in a way that, I think, even five years ago or three years ago, nobody really knew while some of this stuff was happening in the background with, with Google and some of these other large companies, now it's become almost mainstream where you talk about it. And so define what it is and what is this large language model and why do you think it has such an opportunity to solve so many problems within the restaurant space?

Maria Zhang:

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So, you are absolutely right. the term right now is both ubiquitous and honestly a little overused. Um, but AI is not a new concept, right? this concept started decades ago. and I think as a. Say 20 years ago, we avoid, use this term artificial intelligence because they sound so dystopic at all the movies we all watch the Sky night and such. And so, so we, use alternative terms like machine learning, predictive models. lemme give you example. I worked at Zillow in know very early days of Zi. There's. Long, long time ago, 2006, I think. but if you think about Zillow, that is definitively artificial intelligence because you could, spend what,$1,200 and hire assessor to give you a estimator assessment value. Or you can go to Zillow and have the algorithm right. Gave you estimate, which is. All, but then Zillow positioned themselves as useful product, right? Um, so fast forward, I think, was 2022 a chat. GPT came out in 2324, as you can see, spearheaded by AI and Microsoft copilot, Google Jam and Perplexity. the name just layers on Apple Intelligence, right? Amazon has a. Is it's inflection point. So a couple things happened. one is, they're called large language models. and it's a descrip. They're very large. They have, many billions of, perimeters, parameters. And what made this. possible is, high performance computing. And that's why Nvidia stock is so high because of GPU. And then there was another algorithm called Transformer that really empowered, massive parallel computing. So this is another, Of computer science called high performance computing. So it's h PC that empowered very large models that enabled all these capabilities. Yeah, so, so they're generative, right? Meaning they can, not only return a paragraph, but even a article even, you can write a novel if you want, if you wanna read that novel, a large amount of text, This is I mentioned earlier is multimodality.

Jeremy Julian:

and I think even going back to some of your early days, it's amazing because again, it's been around, we think about the friend suggestions that are on your Facebook feed or on your Twitter feed, or just even what shows up in your feed. When I sit next to my wife on the couch and we're both scrolling, Instagram, her Instagram feed looks very different than mine when I log into Gmail. Um, her Gmail looks very different than mine, and I think. Because the world of compute has become so ubiquitous, as you said, I think everybody likes the hyper-personalization. While some of the previous generation and even current generation go, how do they know so much about me? They must be listening at the same time. I. If I'm getting the same suggestions that my 17-year-old daughter gets, I'm gonna start to figure out what is going on with this. And I think restaurants have been so far behind that curve as it relates to being able to do hyper localized suggestions because I. Investment in restaurants hasn't been as great. It's an offline commerce thing rather than an online commerce thing. So I'd love to understand why you think now is the time to invest in this future, to help restaurants, to be able to excel.'cause I think a lot of people have thought about it, but I don't necessarily think that, that the, the feed on the pavement have been there quite yet to get there. So I'd love to kinda get your thoughts and your co-founder's thoughts on why investing time, money, and energy in this area is the right way.

Maria Zhang:

One is, I think timing is everything, I do think it's perfect timing, to invest in, ai, automation, hyper-personalization, like today. Yeah. So, because I think 2023. The technology was still immature. now I think it's gone through, this process of maturing both the foundation, models and also the layers of technology on top of it to really serve, your guests because it's important to always deliver a perfected guest experience. Yeah. So, timing on one side is technology, and of course on the other side you mentioned, the consumer expectations. We are all used to receiving this personalized experience and we all use chat, GPT, And so, when I call the restaurant and then I expect that instant answer targeted to me and can give me what I want right away, right? I wet to be put on hold. If it's put on hold. If you say hold.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, exactly. You'll hang up and call somebody else that's not gonna put you on hold or figure out another way to order from them.

Maria Zhang:

Yeah, because the consumer expectation has just elevated to a point. It also makes the adopting this technology necessary, right? Because otherwise they'll be disappointed. And then, and then your, if your competitor adopts and you don't, and they're gonna choose to, to go there because that's the experience that they expect and.

Jeremy Julian:

So Maria, talk to me a little bit about,'cause you brushed over the surface of it and we've had some people on that are really focused on voice AI and nothing more than voice ai and it feels like Poona iss taking a different approach. You guys are taking a multimodality approach, which I think is. Very ambitious and amazing from the perspective of you've got voice, you've got SMS, you've got an agent, you've got, all of these different things. So talk me through you've given me an idea why you think now is the right time to do this. I. From a consumer perspective totally makes sense. From a restaurant perspective, they're struggling to hire people. Automation needs to be able to help them to be able to deliver on their guest experience'cause they've got more capacity, but don't have enough people to answer the phones or do whatever. So why did you guys take on the ambitious goal of trying to do multimodality? Because we've had people that are like, and just even getting voice right is hard. Nonetheless, all of these other kind of, um, transient other areas.

Maria Zhang:

Yeah. So, um, we are a, um, a very committed team, right? We took on these challenges fully understanding the complexity that it comes with, but we're very committed to solve them for our customers. and the reason why the one word answer is it's human likeness. say, you give me my number. Sometimes I call you, but say I'm going through a tunnel or something, I lost, I'm gonna text you. You're gonna know it's me. And then you'll remember the context. So that's exactly the experience we're delivering to the restaurants as customers and their guests. You don't wanna just, you can only call, you cannot text. Is there a friend? Is you have a friend, you say, you can only call me. You can never text me.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, exactly.

Maria Zhang:

like, you're weird. Yeah. and vice versa. And also we just wanna give them flex flexibility to call and text. And then you made a acute observation. a lot of companies offered this. We're not the only one, but, but very few because it's very hard to manage the context,

Jeremy Julian:

Yep.

Maria Zhang:

So we invest a lot in both the short term memory management and long management. text is asynchronous, right? Call is synchronous, I'm on the phone, right? So how you manage memory and context for call and texts are completely different. And we just overcame, this tremendous challenge and deliver this very seamless experience. And ultimately it's a humanlike and we really wanna meet, the customers and the guests. We wanna meet them where they're,

Jeremy Julian:

So talk me through what it is. again, I think I've skirted around it, but just give our listeners directly, we are going to solve X and I think it's great'cause then it's gonna add to some other questions that I have for you about how you guys are going about it and what the guest experience gonna look like and the staff experience. But ultimately, is it orders, is it just finding out if they're open and the patio's open today? Help me understand what it is that you guys are trying to solve for.

Maria Zhang:

The, all of the above. Going back to the ambitious and committed. so we call our agent the employee of the century, right? and of course we all know employee of the right. Just imagine you have this employee. and a phone rings. And in he or she's gonna answer the phone and whatever the guest asks for, he or she'll respond. And wouldn't be like, oh, I only take orders. I don't, I'm not gonna tell you the hours. So, so that's why it has all the general information. It can make reservations, I can place order, you can track order status. We. Process, right? We really wanted to, create this virtual experience, um, that you could say, oh, this is the best employee I could ever have. And of course this employee would work 24 7 concern 500 guys simultaneously. I would never call you in a sick day. so a lot of, the product decisions such as why should we support both, voice Texas, because.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. So how do you get around the whole idea of we're in the hospitality industry and a lot of people that are listening are gonna say, yeah, a computer's not gonna be able to do it, as well as Susie, I. You know who, I just trained on how to do this and I know the answer, but I'd love to hear your take and why you guys think that this is, you already talked about the scale, which is great. They also never call out sick, which is also amazing. And, um, I think, as an owner, as a, as an executive, you can tell it what to say, whereas telling Susie what to say or Jimmy what to say. They may or may not decide to say it on this Tuesday'cause they had a bad day driving to work or whatever else. But I'd love to, to help you explain, have you explain why in the hospitality sector do you think that this is a hospitable way of going about doing business today?

Maria Zhang:

Yep. So, I love your question. actually, came to this industry with humility, not with expertise. Yeah. Um, so I say I'm a, I can say I'm a computer scientist, but I'm a amateur chef.

Jeremy Julian:

Got ya.

Maria Zhang:

I can cook for maybe four or five people. They're decent. They're decent, but I wouldn't say, I know, what hospitality means. Right? And so, so the product is two part, right? One is the guest experience, and it just feels like a virtual employee who's serving the guest. Um, and with voice, with text, but on the. of the product. Um, we actually call it agent Academy. And this is the product for the restaurant owners. The restaurant owners will train the AI agent. Yeah. Um, and this is also, um, the advancement of the generative AI technology to have the ability to learn. as you interact with chat GPT, you can tell, you can morph check gt a personality you want. You can give them instructions, right? And you can say, write this longer. Write shorter. You see the, this new, advanced AI model has this capability of listening and taking feedback and adapt to your command. And so we. we also tongue in cheek created the name like Agent Academy, and then the restaurant owners can define what hospitality mean for your restaurant. a fine dining restaurant and then the Qi store restaurant and then, um, and then, and some ethnic restaurant. And that they all have different interpretations. For example, our, client pizza on my heart, um, west Coast, you probably heard of them. I know you are also from California. on the coast of California is Surfers pizza, right?

Jeremy Julian:

Yep.

Maria Zhang:

everywhere. They used to have TV ads, this surfer running around. And so defined

Jeremy Julian:

I.

Maria Zhang:

Jimmy, the surfer, and when you call them, visit Jimmy and. if it's, Hey dude, it might not be

Jeremy Julian:

It is not appropriately for Morton Steakhouse. Probably, yeah.

Maria Zhang:

exactly right. So, so we actually put the restaurant owners on the driver's seat, we just facilitated the technology, the flexibility, the, to be adaptive and really serve every brand. Is.

Jeremy Julian:

Yes.

Maria Zhang:

we right now have a focus on Pizza because Wired magazine covered us as, your pizza guy is now ai and it just naturally got a lot of attention in pizza. And then I was challenged and they say Chicago Pizza is American Pizza. And then if you wanna sell Chicago pizza, you have to have the Chicago accent.

Jeremy Julian:

Yes.

Maria Zhang:

and honestly I was like, what is Chicago accent? But you can, I wanna invite you to go out to our website on po FB Food and Bev. Yeah, there's a link there. And then we actually have a synthesized, Chicago accent. and um, and hopefully you'll find a satisfactory.

Jeremy Julian:

it's funny that you say that because I think it's critical. I was talking to somebody at, um, big Chicken, which happens to be owned by Shaquille O'Neal, and they were gonna train the AI to have Shaquille answer the phone, and they were talking about Colonel Sanders answering the phone for Kentucky Fried Chicken. And I think it's, um, it's a, it's remarkable, um, that the tools have gotten so great. Even two years ago, you said, it's 2025 when we're recording this, 20, even in 2023. The AI was not there. It was too slow. It didn't, it, for a real live conversation, it wasn't there. And in just two short years I've been blown away when I play with tools like Poona where I log in and I'm like, okay, let me order a cheeseburger. And it walking me through it even better and giving me more options than. Um, than even, a staff member might. And so, um, one of the other things, Maria, that I'd love your opinion on, and I heard this last week at. Um, at RLC it's really the, this conversation of the human puts their own worldview in front of the guest every time they come at it, versus the owner putting their worldview in front of the guest when you're using technology to communicate. I'd love your thoughts on that. and by that I'm saying, you know what? They've got a worldview that says somebody that has an accent or somebody that's heavy, or somebody that's, has children, they're going to take their own worldview and maybe offer them something that they like or don't like that they think the kids might like. And so versus the owner saying. Everybody should get offered the shake regardless of whether they're, they're here or there, they're there. Everybody should be offered the shake. Everybody should be offered a sample cookie, whatever that might be, because it's consistent and it comes with a brand promise. I'd love your thoughts on how AI and tools like Poona can create that standardized guest experience to get the restaurant to do what they're looking to do.

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Maria Zhang:

Yep. Yep. Um, I love how you described, the situation. On one side, we want consistency, right? we don't want, one staff member talk about the product companies way the other one, and they, it just becomes very chaotic. And so. think step one is a standard, process and some consistency and the brand voice and brand value and so forth. but looking forward, right? I think the standard actually is becoming a hyper personalized, individualized experience, right? And not a universal experience. Um, so that's why, um, on the experience side, it, one is it needs to be two way street. I call the conversational marketing

Jeremy Julian:

Yep.

Maria Zhang:

Versus everybody get 20% off. does conversational marketing work? let me share with you, this is the real story I have blew my mind and AI extensive. React and then I have to tell you, the reception are better than I, expected, right? We have a little video of these user studies I call a surprise and be lights, right? They were just laughing and they were just like, so this, the marketing message, instead of 20% off whatever it becomes, happy Friday or TGI Friday. your plan for the weekend? It's like you care about, and this is message was sent to existing, customers that already have a relationship with the restaurant, right? you would see people responding. say, I got no plans, right? And then of course the AI say. Let's throw a party, let's order some chicken, get some I'll hook you up. And then the other person sounds good. Let's do right. And then the funniest one was this other person said, oh, um, my, my Saturday, my son has soccer. Yeah. And it like, awesome, great. Weather's gonna be not whatever. Just like you're conversing. And then the guy said, how about I order 10 pizza, for the kids for the game? Yeah. And then, and then the agent said, that's great. You get 20% off. They actually running a promotion for 20% off. But I'm ordering temp pizza. can I have 30%? I was like, basic, my customer is haggling

Jeremy Julian:

Haggling with the ai.

Maria Zhang:

did give him the 30%, but can you imagine how happy he would be when he got temp pizza? And he is like sharing, so he's gonna tell oh look, I won. it's gamified. He earned that 30% right?

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. That's a really cool, that's a really cool example.

Maria Zhang:

But this is marketing, we give promotions, we give discounts of, we incentivize a behavior, but it's so hyper personalized. And then for the individual, the guest feels like This restaurant is taking care of me, right? This, the restaurant knows me and understands me and is taking care of me, and I got this.

Jeremy Julian:

it's,

Maria Zhang:

running a.

Jeremy Julian:

and it's funny that you say that,'cause one of the things that I do often when I go out to eat is if I'm between two menu items, I will ask the service staff member, Hey, I'm thinking about the chicken and the salmon. And I ask them, you see it come outta the kitchen every day, but the AI has the data. How many people are ordering the salmon? How many people are ordering the chicken? How many people are sending the chicken back? How many of these people are sending the salmon back? What is the throughput? What are the star ratings? What happens on Google reviews and Yelp for this salmon versus the chicken? Right now, I do all of that myself before I go out to eat. I was just dining last week in Atlanta at a restaurant, and I asked the server and the server's oh, no. This is the one that everybody gets. at the end of the day it was a good item, but I'm still now left wondering, and I know that AI can start to do that. Whether I'm in chat or I'm in voice or I'm in SMS, it can say, Hey, you normally get, you normally like items that look like this, that feel like this'cause it knows who I am and it knows what the restaurant. Would you like this new special because it's coming out geared towards people like you. Is that kind of where you guys are seeing the future for this, with the suggestive ordering and such? I.

Maria Zhang:

Absolutely. And I think the future is now like it's happening already.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. So how do you guys go about deploying? I mean we're getting I'd love to understand because the large language models, when I'm talking about, who's gonna win the Kentucky Derby or when's the best time to book a flight to go to? To Dallas. All. I don't wanna say that's all kind of general information, and I think with restaurants, because it is so hyper-personalized, it's hard. It's hard to get the data into the tool in a way that you need to. It's gonna continue to learn. But help me understand what the onboarding process looks like. If I'm a restaurant and I wanna start to deploy solution like this.

Maria Zhang:

Yeah. Yeah. It's actually super simple. Um, so we all know how busy, restaurant owners and operators are, so we definitely don't want to create new work, right? Um, so one thing is we did not create a new workflow. We just get into the existing workflow, right? Because right now you either have a staff member and also a lot call. You, you have a human being answering a call. And so now basically that call gets forwarded, just a very simple call forwarding, forwarding to the AI agent. Yeah. And the AI agent would answer, and then whatever the, the human, the employee, staff, or call center do, the AI agent, the agent part is performs tasks. It would do exactly the. and then we'll send, payment going through the, to the end user. so there, this is one thing I like to share with your listeners. Um, let the AI agent process the payment first before you send the ticket to the

Jeremy Julian:

Yes.

Maria Zhang:

Because initially we served, That, that we just say, oh, you can come there. Were just a higher number of nohow. and then we do not want no-shows because it definitely just hurts margin. and this is just human nature. They know it's ai. They feel like they were just messing around the way that they don't feel morally obligated to go pick up the pizza. But if you like, so, so, so now we change the workflow. Validated and then the order goes to the.

Jeremy Julian:

It is not too dissimilar than 20 years ago when they started online ordering. People would go order 20 pizzas or they'd make a phone call and they wouldn't come pick'em up, and then they'd be frustrated'cause they didn't get that.

Maria Zhang:

yeah. But we did see a uptake on the no shows when we first, o of course you want to, print an order, so, so they don't have wait or whatever. But no, just payment first. And then I think all the online orders you have to pay,

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, nowadays you do it.

Maria Zhang:

there's no cash on delivery anymore. You gotta pay.

Jeremy Julian:

huh. Yeah. No, but I'm old enough to remember a day when I could just go online order, it would send through a fax to their store. They'd make my pizza for me, and then I'd pay when I got there. Um, so I love that you guys are coming inline because that's one of the things that a lot of these people, they want to try these types of technologies, but they struggle. Talk to me a little bit, Maria, about guest identification because in an offline commerce world, on my Google, on my Facebook, on my. Microsoft, it knows who I am because I'm logged into my browser or I'm logged into my app or whatever else in restaurants. It's hard to know. And so identifying who that person is, whether I'm a chat bot, two of them, or I'm SMS or I'm calling, all of those are different modalities. And so how do you guys have a database to tie those things all together?

Maria Zhang:

Yeah, we have a very simplistic approach. it's the phone number. We actually don't introduce another id. it's just, it's always the phone number. If this is your phone number, this is you. And I think generally it's socially accepted. And of course, we're compliant. People can opt out of it, and they, if they opt out and they opt out. But if they, choose to Ian, and then they're in the system. name, your orders, your preference, and so forth.

Jeremy Julian:

Love that. Um, real quick, just'cause I'd love your opinion on it, and I've heard this from some different technologists in the spaces, is how do you get the, um, AI from hallucinating, I guess from the perspective of I call the pizza place and now it's offering me, burgers and obviously if I don't serve burgers and I only soap share pizzas, you've gotta be able to put guardrails around these business systems and a B2C if perplexity or Claude gives me the wrong thing. It's just me that looks stupid when I post that online. But in a restaurant environment, in a B2C environment, it's hard. You gotta make sure that you put those protections on. I'd love to help you understand.

Maria Zhang:

Yep. This is a very, challenging problem. And then this is just a little bit of a cautionary tale for buyers, right? definitely, do your due diligence. definitely, test the product, try to put pressure on it. Um, yeah. So, wouldn't say the solution is a hundred percent secure, but, another couple question, to ask is, um, is, one is grounding, right? So anti hall, the antidotes is grounding, right? Grounding basically is, connecting to facts, so you ask is your large language model grounded? And if they say, I, I don't know what you mean. They probably didn't do it. other key, key word is a, red team. So we actually invest a lot in red teaming. so red teaming, this term originally came from, um, publication journalism. Yeah. And then was borrowed or transferred to large language models. Um, um, open, yeah. Has significant investment in red, you mean Basically you try to break it.

Jeremy Julian:

Yes.

Maria Zhang:

come up with all the scenarios that it could break right. To see if it has broken. Yeah. So, so this is also just a lot of investment from a technology perspective, that you have to go through. and then the last one, um, I've seen it happen is jailbreaking, right? so they. Attackers and they try to jailbreak. Yeah. So, um, we definitely have done a lot of these, these tests ourselves, right? To make sure our models are not jailbroken and so on and so forth. And jailbroken. It could be, and I think, just food and beverage order. It could be a target, right? And then these smart hackers and they just mess around and they will post on Reddit and they. your order agent started giving up pizza or you just, it can't be quite dangerous. So I do wanna caution, buyers to do these verification before you commit, because they could have, both very material, um, loss of revenue and. And also reputational.

Jeremy Julian:

Yep.

Maria Zhang:

started curse words or whatever they can. Jail started hallucinating bad.

Jeremy Julian:

thank you for digging into that.'cause I've just heard, and I know that you have to put guardrails, especially in a B2C'cause you can impact a brand's image based on what's going on within the tech. Um, last line of questioning, just'cause I've heard this from time to time, and I'd love just how you guys have dealt with this, is, I don't wanna say those off menu items, but those items that I call the restaurant because they have all the components, but it may not be on their menu. It may be one of those things that I say, Hey, you know what? My kid really wants a hot dog, cutup, and in their mac and cheese from your restaurant. We've got mac and cheese, we've got hot dogs, but they're not a menu item. And so, um, some people I know, for myself, um, we'll call restaurants when we want something off menu because I can't get it. Um, I can't get it on their online me menu. How is AI and or some form of Asian or is it just, hey, you know what? For those corner cases where it's 1% of the items, we just route them straight to a human and the human deals with, those complexities. I'm fine with that answer. I just would love your thoughts on that.

Maria Zhang:

we gave the decision, to the restaurant. So, going back to Asian Academy, right? You can just give the instructions and say, yes, you can take orders like this, or No, you cannot. And then just give, just step by. Step instructions. it's called academy because the AI agent can learn, get trained, and you can also change your mind and redefine it all in a very simple, just web-based ui, just with natural language. You can just give these type of instructions. Um, yeah, so, and then, and then when we integrate with the kitchen, display system, there's also item. The notes section, because.

Jeremy Julian:

This is what they're looking for. I love that we have a lot of people that just say, I mean I've heard a lot of people online ordering, text ordering, all these different system voice ordering systems. They're like, no. We're just gonna keep guardrails on and we're not gonna let the guest get what they want. Which is not as hospitable as you said. And so, um, just'cause you brought up another thought as you were explaining that, um. Help me understand how the language model continues to learn inside of the restaurant, because I think what they have today, if they deploy today, is gonna be very different than what they have a year from now, because it's gonna continue to get better. Help our listeners understand how that all works and you ensure that you're continuing to drive that and that the guests are continuing to get even a better experience now than they would six months from now or a year from now. It's gonna continue to get better. I'd love your thoughts on that and how the system continues to do that.

Maria Zhang:

So I think our product, we took a somewhat unique approach, right? I'm not gonna quote all the reinforcement this in, like all this, computer scientific terms, but what we did, the solution right, really is very much, similar to real life, right? So that's why we have this agent academy, right? We don't assume this agent just. Know we have supervisors, right? And then so ares this employee bad being supervised. Um. the, basically the, the more feedback you give to the agent will be better unless you think the agent's doing perfect already.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah.

Maria Zhang:

that. We don't assume that. And we have this, this very easy, UI for the restaurant staff to, to correct the bad behaviors, tell him what to do. And then, the other side, it's also tremend.

Jeremy Julian:

Yes.

Maria Zhang:

So in general, even using chat, chat TP very recently, right? They've been working at this for years. Very recently improved a major improvement in memory improvement. If it's hard for, jet TBD is very hard for us as a small company, but we really invest in that because think about how can you get better. You have to remember. If you don't remember, like I can tell you chat GB 3.5, didn't remember nothing, remember much. the new one is much better. But you have to make the agent, remember each and every guest, right? That's how you perfect that experience.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah.

Maria Zhang:

it's, we're not perfect, but we definitely recognize how important, and how challenging this is. And is our approach. Yeah.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. Maria, I could talk all day, but, why don't you give our listeners, I, it fascinates me. I'm blown away. I continue, I watch YouTube videos every day almost about how, these large language models can make my life and our customer's lives better. So I love that you guys are investing in really. Those end users that are having to take the phone calls and having to figure out all of this, they've got so many things on their plate. And so I love that you guys are investing in a solution to really help make their lives better. And so if people wanna learn more, if they wanna, you already threw it out, Poona ai.ai, slash food and beverage or whatever, but is that really where they learn more? Do they do, should they connect with you? Is there anything specific you would direct them to, to have them, have them get educated about these things and stay up to date?

Maria Zhang:

absolutely. Come visit our website and then also just con connect me on LinkedIn. and I'm also going to the National Restaurant Show. just drop me a note. I am a experienced, a computer science computer engineer, but A passionate and amateur chef, and definitely a foodie. I've really love. This the intersection of my professional life and personal passion. So I love talk to restaurateurs. I find all of you very fascinating.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that.

Maria Zhang:

just love to just have a chat, just, linking website or see at the, um, next, next restaurant show.

Jeremy Julian:

So what is your go-to item for, a party. You have a dinner party at your house tonight. What are you making? What's your go-to foodie item that you're making at the house?

Maria Zhang:

Um, it, it depends if I wanna be, like a hands-on, everybody involved, I love to host a dumpling party. party.

Jeremy Julian:

Okay.

Maria Zhang:

make the dough and roll the skin and make the feelings and different flavors and have everybody make the dumplings, It's very crafty. so that's, that's, um. Um, let's all roll up our sleeves and work together.

Jeremy Julian:

That sounds amazing. I haven't gotta figure out how to do a dumpling party.

Maria Zhang:

But, but if it's just quick and easy, of course love to order some delicious pizza and throw some salad. Everybody loves that. Yeah. So, like I said, I'm a mature so

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. Maria, I said it earlier. I ca I am blown away with how the speed of technology, and quite frankly, even the last five years in my life, the technology and the advancement has accelerated so greatly and it's ultimately when done right, it's gonna make restaurants and consumers' life so much easier. So thank you guys for doing that. To our listeners guys, you guys have got lots of choices, so thank you guys for hanging out. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe to the show on your favorite listener and make it a great day.

Maria Zhang:

Thank you so.

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