This is the full, lightly edited transcript of episode 357 of the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast, in which Jeremy Julian talks with Jon Harmeling, Chick-fil-A Owner/Operator in Miami Shores, Florida. For the summary, key quotes, takeaways and the video and audio players, see the episode page: How a Chick-fil-A Operator Uses AI to Lead — Jon Harmeling.
Jon went to West Point at eighteen, served in the U.S. Army including a deployment to Afghanistan, and returned to West Point to teach project management in the Department of Systems Engineering. A colonel from Chick-fil-A was assigned to teach alongside him for two weeks, mentored him for the next year, and is the reason he applied to become an owner/operator. Five years later he opened a restaurant in Miami Shores, Florida, where he now leads 89 team members representing 19 countries.
The argument he makes in this conversation is that operators are using AI almost entirely for success — throughput, admin, efficiency — and almost never for significance. He walks through what that looks like in practice: an onboarding agent, standing instructions to watch the delivery marketplaces and local events, and a leadership development program built from employee bios his team had been collecting for years. The example at the centre of it is a single Slack question that turned a routine overtime flag into a reason to thank someone. He is equally direct about the guardrails — trust but verify, run a parallel process, and stop the automation short of the submit button.
Speaker labels and section timestamps are preserved below.
Jump to a section
- From West Point to a Chick-fil-A in Miami Shores
- Why Serving Hundreds of Guests an Hour Is Harder Than It Looks
- Management Is Transactional, Leadership Is Transformational
- The Line That Split Success From Significance
- Opening the Restaurant, and Losing a Year to Operations
- Where He Started With AI, and What It Watches Now
- The Slack Query That Surfaced an Unrecognized Team Member
- Buying Back Time, and What You Do With It
- Mining 89 Team Members’ Goals in 75 Seconds
- Answering the Skeptics: Trust but Verify
- The Amazon Demo, and Keeping a Human in the Loop
- Building a Real Leadership Development Cadence
- Where to Find Jon, and What to Order
From West Point to a Chick-fil-A in Miami Shores (0:00)
Jeremy Julian (0:01): Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thank you for hanging out. Today, I am already 20 minutes into this initial conversation with our guests. And I’m I’m literally, I feel like we’re gonna we’re gonna go super long, but I’m really, really, really, really excited to introduce our listeners to Jon. Jon reached out about being on the pod after listening to a few episodes and really said, Hey. How can I help make a difference in the world? And so I’m excited for him to share what he’s been building. But Jon, before you jump into kind of what you’ve been building, why don’t you talk a little bit about your background and kind of what you’ve been doing the last few years and why you thought it was important to share with our audience.
Jon Harmeling (0:43): Yeah, cool. happy to hear happy to be here. It’s certainly my pleasure. I appreciate it, Jeremy. Like you said, we’ve been chatting here for a little bit, so we’re excited to get recording here. I think we’re My name’s Jon. I’m originally from South Florida, born and raised, had a chance to join the Army when I was 18. So went off to West Point, was a cadet there for a little bit, and then after graduating there, had a chance to join the U.S. Army. And then we just moved a heck of a lot. So we lived in about 12 or 13 different places. we lived in Germany, went to war in Afghanistan for a little while. just a wonderful journey and experience, just filled with all kinds of leadership lessons. it I loved it. I miss it. I didn’t realize how much I miss it until I retired. but right around the time I retired, I happened to get selected to go back to West Point to be a teacher. I taught in the Department of Systems Engineering and I was teaching a class called project management. And while teaching it, one of my fellow instructors got pulled away for an assignment at the Pentagon. They said, Jon, we need someone to help you out to finish the semester. You can’t teach all these cadets at one time.
Jon Harmeling (1:46): And so they said there’s a gentleman out of Atlanta, Georgia. He’s in the Army Reserve. We can put him on active duty orders. He can come up and teach alongside you for two weeks. that should be a win-win. It’ll be a win for him in his career because he’s in the reserve. We’ll put him on active duty orders. It’ll be good for you. and he’s he’s great people. So he showed up. he’s a colonel at the time I was a captain. So he’s not one, not two, but three pay grades ahead of me. And so, but he’s working for me, even though I’m saluting him every time he shows up to the office. And I just said, Hey sir, what do you do? You know, what’s your full time job back in Atlanta? And he said, I work for Chick-fil-A. And of course I went right into the how much I love your product and your, you know, the restaurant, the experience and everything else. And what was really special though is that colonel, I could never use his first name. He was either Sir or Colonel. but he just took me under his wing and he just invested in me. And I’m not talking about as a soldier, I’m just saying as a human being, as a person. And we stayed in touch for a year. I had a chance to visit him at the
Jon Harmeling (2:44): what we call our support center, which is in Atlanta, Georgia. I was just visiting a mentor, and my goodness, that day just changed my life. And so I left our support center after hearing the corporate purpose, after meeting the people, after seeing behind the curtain a little bit of Chick-fil-A, hearing the conversations, feeling the encouragement. And I applied to be a Chick-fil-A franchise owner, a owner operator. Then I called my wife and told her what I did. I did that a little bit backwards. I apologize. But I was like, I was like, babe, just hear me out. Let me finish my entire thought. There’s something special about this company. and then I’ll kind of just summarize a heck of a lot. But from application to getting selected was about a five-year journey. I will say the pandemic was right in the middle of that, which certainly threw off a lot of Chick-fil-A’s expansion plans in terms of real estate. but we got the nod. We opened up a restaurant in Miami Shores, Florida, just north of Miami, Florida. we’ve been doing that for about two years and two weeks. So married. I mentioned my wife. We met on a website called Facebook, if you’ve ever heard of it. we met, it was the first year it rolled out, roughly two thousand seven. then we have a fifteen-year-old son. So all three of us work in the restaurant right now.
Jeremy Julian (3:59): I love it. and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thank you for your service to, you know, on behalf of the listeners. And I appreciate you serving our great country. that all being said, Jon, you part of what I was so geeked about is it is really you’ve you learned a lot about human management and kind of human behaviors, I guess, both through the service and at Chick-fil-A. Talk to me a little bit about kind of kind of where you’re at and why technology you want to, I guess, build something that you can enhance that. Within what you’re doing. Cause you know what? Chick-fil-A’s, you know, and you and I talked about this before I hit the record button. They’re so busy. They do change a lot of lives. Everybody I’ve ever talked to, my wife I actually happen to happen to have work for In-N-Out, very similar story, similar brand that just takes care of their people and does a really good job. But I think in general, I think you were managing a tension and you thought, how do I help, how do I help manage that tension that says, How do we serve our guests the way that we need to? But how do I also serve my people? So I’d love
Jeremy Julian (4:56): for you to talk through kind of a little bit of that journey as you’ve been going through it. Cause it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s not as easy as everybody thinks it is. They’re serving tons of food, serving tons of guests, you know, high really, really high AEVs, but also there’s lots of struggles, you know, to do what you really feel like you need to do.
Why Serving Hundreds of Guests an Hour Is Harder Than It Looks (4:59)
Jon Harmeling (5:13): Yeah, appreciate the question. It is hard. I’ll I’ll I’ll be honest. I think I underappreciated how challenging it is. So blessed and fortunate to join a franchise where part of our challenge is being so busy. Like I’ll I’ll never take that for granted. so blessed for that. It’s it’s really hard. And that’s also if I am allowed to say that’s coming from someone who is the operations officer in Afghanistan where bullets are flying and it’s I mean You know, it’s it’s as serious, the stakes are as high as they get. And so I’m just saying in terms of difficulty, it can be extremely difficult to serve hundreds of people per hour. So every machine needs to be maintained and working. We need to have all the products there in the inventory. We need to have the team members not just physically there, but also trained up. We also have the have to have the culture of teamwork. We have to have this culture of just hustle. And that’s all essentially in the backside, right? In the kitchen, in the back of house. And then what about the front of house? Some similar things, but also.
Jon Harmeling (6:11): the interaction you have with the guest is how do you move fast but still show the guest dignity and honor and respect when they walk in. And you and I talked about one of our favorite videos we’ve seen, we use it for Chick-fil-A for training, but for your viewers, if you could imagine a really cool video of a guest walking up to your register and they look very nice. They’re well put together. They have a nice smile on their face and there’s a subtitle that talks about the difficulty they’re going through in their personal lives. And you’d have no idea. When they just walk up to the register. But it’s a reminder that we might be the first and only people that smile at this person today or this week. We don’t know. And we’ve had some unbelievable stories come through our dining room of folks that are just struggling and they just found this sense of peace and value and happiness being at the restaurant. And I’d also share with your viewers, I hope people love your food and your speed and cleanliness and those kind of things, but I also hope they feel good while they’re at your restaurant.
Jon Harmeling (7:09): Where if they think about it, like I don’t remember what I ordered and ate last week, but I remember going to that location and that was I felt good. They made me feel good. But to answer your question, it is really difficult. And one of the challenges when you’re so busy sometimes is you forget to focus on the leadership side of things and not the management side all the time. And if it’s all right, I’d love to break that down. I use those terms very very intentionally. So management, task focus, leadership, people focus, management. is transactional, right? Getting stuff done. And then leadership is transformational and helping people. Management might ask the question, like, how much did we accomplish? Whereas leadership will ask the question, you know, who did we bring along? Who is better because they interacted with us? And so with management, I think we spend so much time in the restaurant business focus on operations and getting stuff done that if you’re not careful, you’ve been standing.
Management Is Transactional, Leadership Is Transformational (7:30)
Jon Harmeling (8:06): three feet away from a fellow team member, a fellow teammate who is really struggling. They’re having a really tough time in their life. They’re not sure at what college maybe they’re trying to go to. They’re still struggling with their immigration paperwork. So I have eighty-nine people on my team representing nineteen different countries. The American dream is quite literally on waffle fries as we record this. And I don’t know about you and your viewers. I spent zero minutes trying to be an American citizen. I mean, I take that for granted. I hope I don’t take it for granted, but I definitely have for a very long time. And so how do we do this intentional shift from being busy in managers to being focused on people and leaders? And then more specifically, how do we use technology right now to really just shift from success to significance? And that’s been the biggest aha moment for me here in the last couple months. And I’d be happy to dive in to some of those lessons learned.
Jeremy Julian (9:03): Yeah, no, and I wanna I wanna dig into that, Jon. and any of the listeners that are watching on video, they’ll they’ll see some bookshelves behind Jon. And any longtime listeners, you know, and much of it leadership books. I threw out a book that, hey, have you read this book before we hit record? He’s like, let me pull it off the shelf here. So very much in alignment with me, and any of the longtime listeners know that I’m also a big reader and read constantly to try and grow myself so that I can pour back into you guys as listeners as well as to my team, my family, and such. And so Before we jump straight into technology, I guess, Jon, why? Who cares? Who cares why you want to be a leader versus a manager? Who cares that you want to lead a life of significance? You just need the waffle fries done. And I guess I’d love for you to unpack a little bit of your two year journey and why you think it’s so important to do that extra effort. Because it’s easier just to tell them drop the waffle fries, count the count the baskets or whatever it is, it’s easier to manage than it is to lead. Leading is fuzzy.
Jeremy Julian (10:01): Management is tactical. There’s numbers. It’s it’s very easy to manage that. Whereas it’s not necessarily always as tangible when you’re talking about leadership. But I’d love for you to talk through that journey of what have you seen not just in life change, but why do you why do you even spend the time and effort? Because I know that you and I are aligned on this, and I’d love for our listeners to hear a little bit of this because I know that there’s somebody listening that is not stepping into some of these things that maybe will after the after your answer.
The Line That Split Success From Significance (10:30)
Jon Harmeling (10:30): That’s awesome. Appreciate the question. I’m gonna do my best to answer it without crying to be honest, because I know where I’m going with this. I like I mentioned, I was in the military for a very long time. I did retire early, had some health issues. Fortunately, physically we’re okay now and stuff, but it was scary there for a little bit. And so I retired and I moved back home to South Florida. Specifically, we pulled up into Broward County where we’re at on March 5th of 2020. And if you remember what happened roughly on March sixth of twenty twenty. just a wild pandemic just sweeped the nation of the world. so a lot of things just shut down. So just I was pursuing Chick-fil-A at the time. I just retired from the Army, but the opportunity with Chick-fil-A was getting delayed. I was thinking a month or two, it ended up turning into a couple years. Just no new real estate opportunities, which means no new operators need to be selected. And so it’s just kind of in this limbo in between the army and Chick-fil-A. What am I doing with my
Jon Harmeling (11:28): And so I got a work from home job. It was great on paper, was very blessed and fortunate, but I just didn’t have any life, no passion, no juice. If I did really well at my job, I was gonna help a bank make a lot of money. It’s nothing wrong with it. Like please don’t mishear me. Like very thankful, but I was like, man, when I was in the army, everything I did, I felt like I was serving a higher calling. I was serving the nation, right? I even mopping the floors in the barracks. I don’t know why, but I’m still serving my nation somehow. You just feel that sense of purpose. And so, anyways, during this time, I went to an event. It’s called LifeSurge. So it’s for myself and I think for you, Jeremy, you know, our faith is a big part of our lives. And LifeSurge takes faith and business and kind of brings it together. They had a number of different keynote speakers that came up. in this case, Tim Tebow, if that name sounds familiar, won the Heisman Trophy for college football, had some success in the NFL as well. Very passionate about his faith, making a huge difference in the world. And so Tim gets on stage, and I’m sitting there and I have my dad right next to me.
Jon Harmeling (12:27): And of the thousands of people in the audience, Tim looks right at me and he said, The greatest tragedy in one’s life is to be successful at things that don’t matter. And so maybe you, maybe your viewers just maybe shifted in their seat a little bit because that was a little bit uncomfortable to hear that. and I’ll I’ll say it again. I mean, the greatest tragedy in one’s life is to be successful at things that don’t matter. And so for me and my story, I was riding home with dad in the car and I was just like, Pops, man, I just I’m chasing success, not significance. I gotta make some changes. And so we talked and I was like, How about I how about I leave my job and you and I’ll start a non profit, a ministry, a business, like let’s do something that just gets the juices flowing again. He said, Great, man, I’m all in. So on Friday I quit my job. My dad died on Saturday and just overnight didn’t wake up from his sleep. And unfortunately we had already lost mom from cancer previously, so he just passed away in his sleep and
Jon Harmeling (13:26): man, just went from bad to like horrific. I’m not proud of just that season of life. I mean, it’s a dark season, like depression can be debilitating physically, mentally. drinking more than you probably should. Health, who cares about how I mean, just it’s it’s a spiral in a in a bad way. And I’m not proud to say that, but I’m sure there’s some of your viewers out there that are like, I’ve been in that season too. And so Fast forward a little bit. again, some more ups and downs. It’d be a long story. I’ll have to put in a book sometime. but we got the call from Chick-fil-A and they said, Jon, good news. We’re gonna open a restaurant in South Florida. It’s in a city called Miami Shores. We think you’d be a good fit for it. and was just so blessed and fortunate to do it. And I’m telling you, we hit the ground running. We jumped in the deep end. And from the minute we opened our doors, and I’m not using that as a cliche, as we opened our doors at 6 30 a.m., there was literally a line out the door. And
Opening the Restaurant, and Losing a Year to Operations (14:25)
Jon Harmeling (14:25): We have all brand new team and staff trying to figure this thing out. And again, I don’t want to minimize how blessed we are to be busy, but it has been really challenging. And that’s where I think for the first year of just being open, I was so focused on just operations. And of course, yes, there’s moments for you know leadership and helping people and those kind of things, but I wasn’t really intentional about it. I kind of just let it happen naturally. And that’s where I think what you and I were talking about. Just before we start a recording, is how can we use technology? In this case, I think AI is an incredible tool to nudge you and I and the other leaders listening and say, hey, you have an opportunity to be a leader here. Right? Let’s get something booked on your calendar. Let’s check it out. You remember that person last week sent you a text and said they can’t make it to work because they have to go to the hospital? Do you remember your response? Your response was, my goodness, I have to replace that person because we have a big catering coming up. Your response was like,
Jon Harmeling (15:24): Your response was not like, did you check on them? Are they okay? Like, do they need help? Do they need a ride? Right. And so that’s where I think AI has been phenomenal to help managers get stuff done, be more productive, be more efficient. I just don’t think enough of us are using AI for leadership and using AI for significance. And that’s just been the aha moment here for the last couple of months.
Jeremy Julian (15:46): I love it. So d why don’t we dig in? Tell me a little bit more about what you’ve been building, Jon, because I love the story. I love the fact that you’re ultimately not using AI to go create cat memes to go throw out on Facebook, as you teased earlier, which some people are. You’re not using it for, you know, malice. You’re looking at it and saying, How can I use this force multiplier? And I think all too often, if you’re like, I’m using AI, it’s replacing all these jobs. That’s kind of the headlines that are out there. And I love that you’re you’re going a different route. So Talk to me a little bit about what you’ve been building the last few months ’cause I think it’s pretty exciting.
Jon Harmeling (16:20): Yeah, I’ll tell you kind of where we started. So, you know, first off, we could take a step back. AI, the buzzword, hot topic. I get all that. You’re not too late if you’re hearing this and you’re like, I missed it. You’re you’re so early. You might be in the first inning. and just to think about it, today AI is never going to be worse than it is today. Like that’s kind of a wild thought to think of. So when I initially started using it, you know, started using AI as almost a chat bot, a glorified Google search, give me some information. Then we can analyze some different things, some different reports. Of course, we want to be sensitive with you know the information we provide. And then it just really pro provided some different insight and some thoughts. And then I stumbled across not just Claude, but Claude, the Chrome, Google Chrome browser extension. It’s like, wait a second, AI can do stuff for me. I can tell it to do it’s it doesn’t just give you information. You could tell it to do stuff. That’s cool. And then I stumbled across Claude Cowork and I realize there’s a lot of different and great tools, but for me that has been
Where He Started With AI, and What It Watches Now (16:40)
Jon Harmeling (17:19): My go to is Claude Cowork. And so I give it information and just ask it questions and then also instruct it to go and do things. So for example, keep an eye on our DoorDash and Uber Eats profile. I’m sure there’s other restaurant owners that are out there. Have you ever actually gone into the weeds of the reviews of your restaurant on Uber Eats and DoorDash? Grubhub, Postmates. I did it. I’m gonna be honest. have you ever reviewed the Google reviews that are and the things that are being said, good or bad, about your business? I didn’t spend a lot of time there. And so you can instruct AI, you can create these agents to go out and do, you know, pull some of this information for you and give you more insight, you know, into your business. can you scan local events that are happening near me? I as we record this, there was a very, very large global soccer tournament that might have happened here recently, that probably would have been nice to, you know, potentially reach out and do some catering, you know, type opportunities for watch parties or otherwise. That’d be really cool to instruct AI to go and look for those events that are happening near us and maybe just say, hey, heads up, this thing’s happening. I don’t know if they have a food vendor yet. And so anyways, there’s so many incredible opportunities I think to use AI for your business. And I’m sure a lot of your viewers
Jon Harmeling (18:40): If they’re listening to podcasts, they’re trying to grow, they’re trying to develop. I would be very surprised if there’s someone listening now who hasn’t just messed around with AI in some capacity. Now, here’s where I think it gets different. I think that’s us using AI for success. And what I’m proposing is using AI for significance. Let me give you an example, Jeremy. this morning, right? I mean, this is as fresh as it gets from the field. this isn’t in academic or theory or classroom. This morning I instructed Claude. we use Slack as our main communication tool. I know there’s a lot of wonderful ones out there. That’s the one we choose to use. And I just said, Hey Claude, here’s access to my profile on Slack. who is an unrecognized person right now on our team? I have no idea what it’s gonna come back with. And it came back with one of our great team members, [team member]. she’s she’s here in our country from Haiti, just a great team member.
The Slack Query That Surfaced an Unrecognized Team Member (19:09)
Jon Harmeling (19:39): And here’s here’s the crazy thing. Her name came up last week saying, uh-oh, she actually worked a double shift that was not scheduled. She’s we’re we’re flagging her because she might go into overtime, which is something we want to manage, right? I think most restaurant owners want to pay attention to overtime. so flag her, she might be heading into overtime. That’s what happened last week with AI focused on success. Do you know what happened this week? It said, hey, Jon, [team member] actually volunteered to take the shift for two other employees so that they can go home and be with their families who are going through some health issues. AI for Success says, flag this person. This is bad. And then AI from Significance says, Jon, next time you see her, give her a fist bump and say, I see you working hard. Great job. I’m proud of you. Thanks for stepping up when some of our team members weren’t able to make it last week.
Jon Harmeling (20:36): How do you think she’s gonna respond when she hears that? Right? Like, I mean that’s a game changer. And you know it’s funny, we don’t she and I, we don’t even speak the same language. And so
Jeremy Julian (20:44): Yeah. Well, but and even in that circumstance, Jon, then this is where I want our listeners to be. And to your point, if they’re listening to this, there’s a chance that they’ve been playing around, dabbling. But this is an opportunity to where it can surface things that you would not have been able to go read through those Slack channels. You would not have been able to do those things at scale because the AI is now feeding it back to you, saying, here’s somebody that’s out there that’s an opportunity for you. Whereas that might have taken you 90 minutes to scroll through and you just don’t have 90 minutes in your day. Whereas AI can now deliver this back, I guess. And I guess I’d love for you to give us a couple more examples of these things that are ultimately giving you the ability to do what you’ve always wanted to do, but you couldn’t do it at scale. And this is where I get geeked out because it’s like there’s so many things that I want to do to be able to help the business grow. Cause success is also important, but success at the expense of significance can’t happen. And that’s where I love
Jeremy Julian (21:41): your heart that says it’s gotta be significant. We can also be successful. We can also make money. We can also sell lots of chicken, you know, chicken. And we can make this lady’s life better by understanding that she’s pushing herself and potentially even having these alerts that say, these two people are having health challenges. Let me check in on them. Let me check in on them privately through these tools. And so I guess I’d love for you to talk through a little bit of some of those other things that it’s been able to, I guess, surface, whereas historically we’ve not been able to because we’re just busy
Buying Back Time, and What You Do With It (22:12)
Jon Harmeling (22:12): That’s all it well said. I mean you’re you’re dropping you’re dropping some nuggets, Jeremy. I you know, pun in pun intended, right? Nuggets of wisdom there. But that’s that’s exactly right. I mean, yes, we’re business owners or we’re business leaders. Like you have to run a successful business that is profitable. Otherwise you could be the nicest best person in the world and you’re gonna lead your team right into, you know, shutting down your restaurant. That’s I mean, I don’t have that personal experience, but that has to be one of the most challenging experiences you know for some of the restaurant folks that are that are out there and so yes you have to run a good profitable business and I never want to like take away from that right but I think as you buy back your time I what do you do with that time do you find more busy work or do you lead? I didn’t say manage do you lead do you lead people with that extra time you have so for us I built out an automation I have an agent that does all of our onboarding for us. I don’t need to use my time or my
Jon Harmeling (23:10): brain or intellect to see that this person needs a large polo uniform and then go to that website and buy a large polo uniform. Like that, it’s just how can we automate the repeatable tasks in our businesses so that it buys us back time to then do the things that matter? That’s my whole thesis with all of this. And so to answer your question, another example, if I could point at my screen, I have an external monitor right here. I just instructed AI this morning to in this case Claude Cowork to go back through all of our Slack and we also keep something I really encourage folks to do out there. We have baseball cards, is what I call on every one of our employees. It’s got their picture, their name, and it’s got a bio. It’s something that they provided to us. And it’s been really, really cool to just maintain this collection of bios of everybody. But it also has some very personal stuff in there, like one day I hope to be a firefighter.
Mining 89 Team Members’ Goals in 75 Seconds (23:38)
Jon Harmeling (24:06): One day I want to be a neurosurgeon. One day I hope to own my own Chick-fil-A one day. one day I want to join the military, all this kind of stuff. So I instructed AI, I said, go into all the documents that you have access to. Again, we’re not going to use guest information, proprietary stuff, but go into what we do have. And I want you to build out a leadership development program as well as a goal tracking chart, something to that effect. I’d encourage folks using AI. Don’t tell it to Do like how to do things, just give it the end state and kind of sit back. Or give it the end state and say, you ask me questions until you have enough information you need to accomplish the test 90% successfully. And so in this case, and I keep pointing off screen if anyone’s watching this, I have my external monitor right here. And here is all 89 of my team members. This person is getting a bachelor’s degree. They’re actually going to graduate here in a couple months. So that’s interesting. Are they still going to?
Jon Harmeling (25:03): work with us? Are they gonna have more time? Are they leaving the restaurant? I’m not sure. They’re moving here pretty soon. They want to join the military. That’s a firefighter. This gentleman wants to be a special agent, right? In the FBI. We just had someone join the FBI last month. let’s see, they’re studying avionics and system tech. We don’t do a lot of avionic stuff at the restaurant. And so I think you kind of see where I’m going. Look at all this data that I just mined in 75 seconds using AI. It’s phenomenal. Now Information without action is useless as leaders. Like that’s neat. They want to accomplish stuff. I hope they do it. No, no, you missed the whole point. That’s where you and I, Jeremy and your viewers, that’s where we have to take this and then try to figure out how can I help my team accomplish these goals. And so that’s the route I’m setting off on. The time I’m not spending on onboarding or offboarding or uniforms or managing whatever it might be. I’m trying to repurpose that same amount of time.
Jon Harmeling (26:02): And do things that actually matter. And so this is just a really exciting time for me personally. This is really cool.
Answering the Skeptics: Trust but Verify (26:10)
Jeremy Julian (26:10): I love it, and I love that you’re digging so deep into it. I guess I’m gonna I’m gonna flip the script a little bit on you and Jon and say you’re gonna get listeners out there that are gonna be sitting there going, but it’s gonna give me the wrong stuff, or it’s just creating more work for me. Or, you know, I mean they’re gonna come up with excuses because I think all too often, and again, if you’re listening to the show, you’re probably one of those people that is already a leader, you’re not a manager, you’re trying to drive to get better, but there’s lots of misnomers out there that aren’t necessarily correct. about where these things are at. I do think the power is in this idea of cowork. You do have to have a paid subscription. You got to pay a little bit money to do it. I’m I’ve been paying for a while. It’s changed my life in a positive way. And part of why Jon and I jam so much before we hit record is just because I’ve I’m building stuff to do exactly what he’s talking about, even within our business and within my family and all of those kind of things. But for those naysayers out that are like, I don’t know how. I don’t understand it.
Jeremy Julian (27:08): It’s giving me the wrong stuff. It’s creating more work. I’m already too busy doing these things. I guess I’d love for you to help quell not just the fears, but why is it why is it not just, I guess, emboldening you to continue to dig into it? But how do you how do you answer those people that are like, nah, I can’t do it or I don’t want to do it or I think it’s, you know, a bunch of hocus pocus or whatever.
Jon Harmeling (27:31): Yeah, no, good great points, very valid concerns that are out there. I it runs the spectrum for sure. but to your point, I think I really encourage folks just to tinker. I don’t know if that’s the right the right word to use. Just mess around with it. And if it’s at a very beginner level, I’m talking about just insert some information or just even put in there, like I’m a restaurant owner. Don’t just say in general, like give it the actual address, right? There’s a good chance it might pull up like here’s all your competitors and this is what they’re doing and that like Whoa, I had no idea that the competitor down the road is about to run a campaign that they’re advertising for right now. That’s really, really good to know. Maybe I’ll take some action on that. So start little, take some action. I love the phrase trust but verify. Put in some info, let it do its thing, read every line. Please do not take every single response as gospel. with a lot of these language models, excuse me, language models, they iterate and they get a little bit better every single time.
Jon Harmeling (28:28): but you also have to coach it and be like, that wasn’t quite right, or you know, whatever the error might be, just kind of nudge it a little bit, almost like a kid riding a bike, right? You’re generally you’re heading down the right, the right path. I’m gonna give you a little nudge here, a little nudge there, and keep you keep you on track there. But trust but verify, and then I strongly encourage you just keep the human in the loop throughout the whole thing. So what I try to do is I have a bit of a stop gap system where it’s like do the analysis. Provide the drafts, do all of the work, and then stop right before you click submit, stop right before you send that message. And it’s also good for a couple different ways, right? For leadership, what I don’t want to do with all the significant stuff we’ve been talking about is for folks to get an automated birthday email that came from Jon who cares so much. And in reality, I had no idea that it was their actual birthday. Right? So like set up a system where you’re in the loop where it’s like, my goodness, thank you for reminding me about that health issue. I do need to follow up.
Jon Harmeling (29:25): And thank you for informing me that they’re not working tomorrow and then I could follow up in person on Wednesday morning. So I think you know what I’m saying is just use the tool as best as you can and get it up to the point where you as the leader take that information and then take action. take action with it. And so and then also just trust, trust but verify. I would not throw your entire business onto AI. What is the what is the most repeatable admin type task that someone has to do it. Not it doesn’t have to be the business owner. It doesn’t have to be someone like someone has to order that uniform shirt, for example. Anyone can do it, just somebody has to do that’s a great opportunity for Claude Cowork to build an agent and be the uniform agent. As soon as a new order comes in saying I wear these polo sizes, the agent takes that, goes to the right website, adds it to the cart, and it’ll probably stop right before you actually click
The Amazon Demo, and Keeping a Human in the Loop (30:22)
Jon Harmeling (30:22): you know, submit and pay. That’s a really good you know, feature that’s in there is it’s gonna stop just short of actually paying for stuff. And Jeremy, here’s a good example I did with one of my friends who had the exact same concerns about, you know, giving access to AI to some, you know, restaurant systems, whatever it might be. I said, fine, let’s let’s do this. Let’s open a Chrome browser, internet browser session. Log into your Amazon.com account, assuming they had one, they did. And I said, now download the Claude Chrome extension browser extension. So this is kind of the mid-tier power level. And I said, watch this. Type in there that you’re going to Miami next week on a vacation and you’re going with your three year old niece and you want to buy a toy to go to the beach with. Send it. And then just watch. Like, actually, like just watch the cursor on your screen as AI goes through. It’ll click in the search bar and it’ll say beach toys for a toddler. It’ll find the highest rated beach toy for a toddler and it’ll add one, two, fifteen to your cart, and then it’ll come back and say, Your cart is ready to go. Please review. It’s like, okay. And so I think those are the baby steps that for viewers and listeners that are not a hundred percent bought into this AI thing, like, how cool is that? And now, like, really just start thinking outside of the box and be like, Well, we’ve always done it this way.
Jon Harmeling (31:46): Okay, but like just try. And then one last tip, Jeremy, for you and your viewers, something I’ve tried to do. If you can run a parallel process. Do it the original way that you have always done it. Use AI to do it and kind of compare and contrast. If there’s a task that takes less than 30 seconds to get done, you don’t need to build out a whole agent of agents system for it, right? Like just get it done. However, if it’s a repeatable task that happens every day, every week, every month. That might be a great candidate for a task that you use Claude Cowork or whatever tool you want to replace, you know, to do the task for you that buys back your time, then what do you do with that time it bought back? Busy work or go be a leader?
Jeremy Julian (32:32): Yep. No, and I love that where I’ve gone with my team, Jon, is write down everything you do in a week or have Claude go evaluate your calendar and say, where did I spend all my time? I just did this with one of my leaders last week and I said, Go have Claude go back and look at your calendar for the last two weeks, last month. Where did you spend your time? And ask it. This is one of the only technologies that you can ask it to give you answers to questions that you’ve wanted. Go put things in there, like you said. Stuff that you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve always wanted to be that guy that says happy birthday to people or happy anniversary for spending five years working at Chick-fil-A or three years working a Chick-fil-A. I guess you’re only two years old. So, you know, the max they could have been there is two years with your team. But how cool is that they get, you know, that you get alerted and now you can be back to that leader. One other thing that I would remind everybody, every single one of us has a story, like Jon said at the beginning, and our story. Somebody that believed in us, somebody that poured into us.
Jeremy Julian (33:29): Somebody that led us to get to where we need to get to. And by buying back your time and using these tools to accelerate some of the stuff that doesn’t add as much value so that you can add value to somebody’s life and ask them about their visa paperwork and ask them about what their goals and you know, visions are, those are where we change not just the people that we work with, but the world ultimately at the end of the day. And so how do we do more of that? Because there are people in our lives. And to your point, Jon, early in the podcast, you talked about somebody that believed in you and helped you on your journey that you, you know, you they probably don’t even know the impact that they had on you. And I know that each of us as restaurant leaders have had impacts on people that are maybe long gone from the restaurant. But how do you become that person by not standing next to them eight hours a day cooking tenders or cooking nuggets and not even knowing that, you know, mom is sick and is in the hospital and they could use
Jeremy Julian (34:26): Two hours off this afternoon to go take care of her or whatever else.
Building a Real Leadership Development Cadence (34:30)
Jon Harmeling (34:30): Yeah, I love it. So I again trying to use the tool to kind of nudge us in the right direction, not be leaders for us, but nudge us as leaders and be like, hey, Bonehead, you haven’t checked in with this person in over 60 days. What are you doing? And so actually a leadership development plan. That’s something else that we’re building out right now. And so I also want to be cautious that it’s not Jon to 89 people. I don’t think that’s smart leadership, right? It’s Jon to my directors. My directors to my shift leaders, the shift leaders to the trainers and the trainers to the team members. And so how do we use AI to maybe set up these reminders? Or to your point, let’s put something on the calendar. I mean, that’s how you and I are connecting right now, right? What’s your calendar? What’s my calendar? Let’s find a mutual time that works and let’s let’s make it happen. So I have a automation set up right now that’s reaching out to my directors to set up one on one time together. I’ll be honest, this is not something I’m proud to say, but our one on one time and mentorship and those kind of topics, feedback.
Jon Harmeling (35:26): It just kinda happened. It’s just like, hey, you got 10 minutes? Nothing wrong with that. Please don’t get me wrong. But I do think if we could be more intentional, I love that word. This is my that’s my favorite word of the year. It’s just to be more intentional with our time and then set up those one on ones. And I’m not talking about in the restaurant. You, me, all of your viewers probably understand it’s really difficult to have a one-on-one conversation in the middle of a restaurant, especially if it’s busy. Cause you get to sentence number three and there’s an issue with a guest. You get to sentence number four and one of the machines needs your help because it just went down. And so, you know, how do we schedule that time to get out of the restaurant, go have one-on-one, maybe at a coffee shop, and just really get to know each other, you know, as people, figure out what your goals are and feedback and so on, and do all those kind of things. So what I’m trying to say is right now, this morning, I’m using Claude Cowork to build out
Jon Harmeling (36:18): A very intentional leadership development program because right now it’s informal. It’s happening. I’m thankful it’s working, but it’s not as good as it could be. And so I want to set up systems that are going to set up those one-on-one meetings for me and the directors, systems that are going to nudge my directors. Have you already set up a one-on-one with that shift leader and that shift leader and that shift leader? And then also follow-on stuff too. What did you learn? Like, what, like, how can I help you? How can I give you the tools and resources to be the leader that I’m asking you to be?
Jeremy Julian (36:49): Yep. No, and encouragement to you and to everybody else. If you do go down this path, have that tool get feedback from you so that it can get better, have it schedule it. Then what did you learn? And now it asks you these questions the next time you go into it. So, Jon, how do people learn more? How do people get connected? I mean, I we’ve talked for 30 plus minutes about what you’ve been doing. I’m blown away. It’s changed my world in a positive way. And I’m only, you know, less than a year into this journey of kind of digging in. my wife and kids are tired of me talking about AI. My wife asked me to go build a vacation agent to go start booking us a vacation. because we haven’t had a vacation because we got four kids and they’re in sports. So we’re constantly taking them off to schools and sport programs and things like that. So our vacations are oftentimes spent at the softball field or the baseball field. So they keep teasing me about those things. But at the end of the day, there’s so much leverage there to make us better humans, better leaders. And so how do people stay connected? How do people learn? Because
Jeremy Julian (37:47): It doesn’t sound like you’re even close to being done. Sounds like you’re here every day, you’re constantly growing. And so how do people get connected to you, Jon, and kinda what you’ve been building?
Where to Find Jon, and What to Order (37:55)
Jon Harmeling (37:55): Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. totally agree with the family, you know, sentiment where I share with my family like AI is gonna like save me so much time and it’s like, then why are you spending so much time on it? And it’s like I know I have to get it set up first and then it’s and then it’s gonna be it’s gonna be so much better. But i f for me I felt like we got to a point where we built out a lot of agentic AI and agents and it really has been optimizing a big piece of the business for me. And by that I mean the manager stuff. you know the number stuff success all of that love it’s awesome very blessed and thankful this is where I’m pivoting and trying to be extremely intentional to use ai for significance and so much has just been a big part of kind of what’s been on my brain recently for a number of different reasons. but if you go to aiforsignificance.com that will redirect you to my website. I do have a website jonharmeling.com. It’s a little bit hard to know how to spell my name if you’re listening to it.
Jon Harmeling (38:54): So I figured aiforsignificance.com will redirect you. And what I plan to do is just basically post field notes. Hey, here’s here’s my experiment. You know, this is what I’m trying. And then this is how it actually shaped up. And then this is the lesson I learned from it. And I hope it becomes, I genuinely hope it becomes a repository for folks that want to use AI for significance. Here’s a list of prompts, here’s a list of things that work. and then just, you know, take it with a grain of salt and see if it applies to your organization.
Jeremy Julian (39:22): Love it. and I asked this of every operator, what’s your go to item at Chick-fil-A and what’s your oddest, you know, mashup that you’ve done? I said it earlier, my wife worked for In-N-Out, you know, and she’s got some weird things that she does at In-N-Out that she does no other burger places. And so what’s your go to order when you go into Chick-fil-A, Jon? For some that maybe are listening, maybe they’re overseas, they’ve never been to a Chick-fil-A, they come to the States and they have a Chick-fil-A. What’s the thing that you say? You got to get this, and then what’s Jon’s kind of Weird amalgamation if you if you do have one before we sign off for today.
Jon Harmeling (39:56): Yeah, for me, our spicy sandwich with pepperjack cheese, no pickles. I’m sure some folks at corporate would be a little frustrated if I said I prefer my sandwiches without pickles. but yeah, spicy sandwich, pepperjack, no pickles. first this is actually interesting. The first time I ever had that combination for a sandwich before I applied to be an operator was meeting my dad for lunch at a local Chick-fil-A when I was home. And I remember he ordered that sandwich and I was like, sure, let’s get two of those. And I was man, this pepperjack cheese really gives it an extra little spice there. but that’s that’s my go-to, for sure. I encourage folks, you ever go to the restaurant, look through our whole menu if you’ve never had our salads or our wraps or mac and cheese. We also have breakfast as well. So grab and go breakfast, fresh made biscuits. Like it’s I know I’m supposed to say these things, but like genuinely give us give us a shot there in terms of breakfast. But
Jeremy Julian (40:41): Your breakfast is some of the best in the country.
Jon Harmeling (40:51): Something my wife tried the other day that was turned out to be really, really good. Mac and cheese with hot sauce mixed into it. So that’s something a little bit a little bit different. But we definitely see some folks that see a trend online and they come into the restaurant and try some different concoction of things. So I’m open to hearing some of your viewers if they have some unique ones, I’d be happy to try it.
Jeremy Julian (41:13): I love it. Jon, thank you for investing. Thank you for investing in our community. Thank you for sharing what you guys have been building. to our listeners, guys. Like I said at the onset, I know you guys have got lots of choices. So thank guys for hanging out. Please go check out AI for significance. connect with Jon, learn a little bit more. If you’re down in Miami Shores, go check out his store and tell him you heard about him on restaurant technology guys podcast. And everybody can get a good chuckle about it. So Jon, thank you again for your time and to our listeners, make it a great day.
