All right, we are going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Liz DiTrapano. I co-lead the Restaurant Team at ICR, and I am thrilled to be joined by Benny Tadele of NCR Voyix this evening or this afternoon. Let's start with some quick introductions. You've had a long career in this space. Can you introduce yourself to our lovely listeners?
Yeah, I'm Benny Tadele. I'm very excited to be here. I am the President of the Restaurant business at NCR Voyix. You know, for the majority of my life, I've been in technology, a technologist at heart. I work with a lot of customers around the globe to solve real business problems, particularly problems for their end users and end customers. For the majority of my life, I've been working on software that solves payment technologies, whether it's in restaurant or retailers, in the banking space, in the bill payment space. And then over the past two years, I've been at NCR Voyix leading the transformation to bring next generation solutions to market.
Perfect. Well, let's start there. I know there's been a tremendous amount of work being done at NCR Voyix. Before we go into detail, can you give us an overview of where you would describe the company today?
Yeah, so NCR Voyix is. We are the leader in platform powered technology solutions for unified commerce. What does that mean? That means any technology that allows you to transact within the restaurant. Think about point of sale as well as fulfilling the orders. Think about kitchen data analytics, as well as the platform to integrate all the solutions that you see in the market. We provide end-to-end payment capability, so all the user journeys, regardless of the channel, whether it's in your kiosk, inside the restaurant, digital channels, and then ultimately, we wrap all that together with our services capability around the globe. We have more than 8,000 employees that really support restaurants to operate their restaurant, whether it is in service calls for any technology they run, even if it is not NCR technology, as well as the installation and the break fixes that happen.
So for restaurateurs, we view ourselves that we are their one-stop shop whenever they have a problem and a challenge they want to solve. In terms of where we are in the company, the company has been through so many changes. So over the past two years, we've been focused on transforming and to focusing for restaurant and retail. Prior to 2023, beyond Restaurant and Retail, the company also had a Banking and ATM business. We started 145 years ago. Not a lot of companies say. In fact, last year, we just celebrated our 100 years as a publicly traded company. Very few companies can say that.
Excited about that.
Hugely excited about that. Hugely excited about that. So over the past two years, focus on retail and restaurant, a lot of work in really getting closer to the customer, to understanding the need. And then over the past six months, we've been transforming the technology that we're bringing to market, that we unveiled a number of new suite products built on our one platform for both restaurant and retailers.
Fantastic. And I know there's been, as you mentioned, a lot of work done over the last two years. You spun off the NCR Atleos business.
Correct.
You named a new CEO almost a year ago now. Where do you see the company heading now that you have this work behind you? What is the future?
Yeah, so all of the work that we've done, you talked about the spin, you talked about the leadership change. One of the things that we've done is a maniacal focus on execution.
Right.
I think you see a lot of competitors or organizations in the marketplace that have a lot of milestones laid out in the future, a lot of talk about this or that, and the follow through has been minimal in this industry. We're focused on operational discipline and execution.
Yep.
And I call it our say-do ratio is significantly higher. We're doing a lot of what we say. So predictability for our customers, predictability for the market is what we're bringing. With that, we've introduced really a new culture of accountability.
Right.
A new culture that has the restaurant at the center of every single decision we make. Our founder, his name was John Patterson, really a figurehead in the business community, even for today's world. He has a saying that treat every customer like your single most important or your only customer. We actually have it inscribed in our building.
Yes.
And so that customer-centric mentality, we're starting to see that growing offshore. So for example, in Q4, we just announced a new six-year exclusive agreement with Chipotle to adopt the new technology we're bringing to market this year, our next-generation Aloha Next point of sale fused with the edge infrastructure. If you're not familiar, if you're not a technologist, really edge infrastructure is like the operating system of the restaurant. What does that mean? That means even if it is not an NCR technology, it's allowing you as a restaurateur to reduce your hardware footprint, run all the technology, whether it is your firewall, your music technology, your point of sale technology, your kitchen in a centralized way, provides you ease of deployment. It provides you speed of deployment.
It gives you that cloud-based control panel that you can actually look at and manage your restaurants around the globe like your digital channels.
Right.
So, all of this coming to market bundled with new menu solutions, new analytics solutions, new kitchen solutions we're rolling out. So, very exciting 2026. So, where we're heading is really growth for our customers, success for our customers, and solve the real problems that I talked about for their end consumers.
Yep, that makes sense, and when you look at your restaurant partners, I know when they're looking to you and looking to NCR Voyix, I assume they're asking for speed and innovation. Talk to us a bit more in detail on some of the innovation that you've been really leaning into and what you talk about solving problems for your customers. What problems are you focusing on? Are you hearing from?
Yeah, so maybe let me start out about the innovation piece. The mental model that I have for innovation is you have three pillars for any innovation. You start with an idea. Idea is cheap. So a lot of people have ideas. We have been blessed by ideas because of the breadth of the restaurateurs that we work with around the globe.
Right.
We call close to 50% of the top 100 global brands that are customers.
That's incredible.
We work in all of the continents and the regions that you can think of around the world, and this has led us and given us a lot of ideas, a lot of thoughts on how to help restaurateurs, and over the years, so the second pillar beyond idea is you have to decide and invest, have the right expertise. Investment is not just dollars because if you don't have the right expertise, it means nothing.
Right.
And again, we've been blessed with expertise that has come through a lot of blood and sweat in this market. We have a lot of people that have been around in the industry working with our customers. So a very wide bench of people that understand what our customers are looking for. And ultimately, it's time, which is what everybody is struggling with. And over the past year, one of the things that have helped us accelerate and shrink years into months, into weeks and days is we have been leveraging AI capabilities for internal enablements. So our teams and expertise going hand in hand with AI to accelerate the development of solutions and bringing it to market. And the other thing when you think about innovation is you talk about speed and friction. From a speed perspective, restaurants are saying, "I want this now.
Right.
Not only that, I want to be able to try and test things without necessarily committing sometimes because I don't know if it's going to work or not. Flexibility with speed is critical. You have to have a few things to make that a reality. One is the architecture itself has to be nimble. We talk about the microservices architecture platform, which sounds like a lot of jargon of the industry. But if I describe it in very simple terms, you have your iPhone. That is your point of sale as an example. Phones used to be that, just phones, and it's the whole thing.
Right.
With the iPhone model, now you have applications that you can install and install. Just because an app is not working doesn't mean that your phone doesn't work. So that kind of architecture, which is modular, you can swap and you can easily insert and integrate is key. We view ourselves because we're providing this technology backbone to brands, this quarterback platform for our customers to try out new things, to adapt to the shifting market is key. So that's another one, just technology and the architecture. And then the last thing is in terms of what are we seeing our customers looking? A lot of people, in fact, today, a lot of the conversation has been, what is 2026 going to look like?
Right.
How is it different to 2025? I think there is a lot of an end into 2026. You see a continuation of this pressure on the bottom line of restaurants.
Right.
So one good thing is the inflation of food cost is cooling down, which is great. But you still, the challenge is the consumer sentiment is pretty low.
Right.
So the value being driven by speed and price is overly played out. There's still your bottom line pressure because with unemployment being low, wages are high, talent is difficult to find. So there's a lot of this pressure on restaurants. How do I respond and innovate to this market?
Right.
The only way that you're going to address is by ensuring that you have the right partner that have the right technology and innovation to provide efficiency in your operation.
Right.
Like how can I have autonomous decisioning made into how I allocate staff? How do I have cross-sell and upsell capabilities for high margin items on the menu? Or how do I identify these high-cost menu items and then shift them to the low-cost effective channels?
Right.
So I think innovating around that in margin and profit protection areas is going to be a key demand, which is exactly aligned to where we're investing.
Yeah. You mentioned AI. How are you seeing the industry use AI? You mentioned how NCR Voyix is using it. What requests are you getting from restaurant operators? Where are they prioritizing AI?
You cannot have any technology conversation these days without talking about AI. And someone recently asked me if restaurants are using AI. And I think that's a bit of a ridiculous question because every restaurant today uses AI. I think the question is how quickly are they transferring or transitioning from using simplistic AI to what we're calling agentic AI? You see a lot of restaurants today, they are using generative AI for marketing, for communication. And then maybe a little bit more advanced ones are using generative AI for example, staff enablement and training, internal enablement, where Gen AI is now a part of the team.
Right.
But maybe two areas that we're seeing significant demand in 2026, I think that's going to continue to grow, is one is on the self-service area.
Yep.
A good example that I give is in the kiosk area where if you ask guests, actually the number says now we have double the percentage of guests looking for kiosk within QSR.
Right.
Those guests are not just looking for kiosks. They're actually buying more. If you look at the ticket values, you see 20%, even 30% incremental value being created through kiosks.
Right.
Why? Because when you have AI suggestive selling through kiosks, the kiosk doesn't forget to cross-sell and upsell and actually leads and navigates the menu system for the consumer. Great. Drive-thru is another one. Voice AI is getting huge adoption. We've seen brands like Wendy's, Bojangles adopting voice AI.
Right.
Now, a year or two ago, there was a lot of question around order accuracy. That's now. We've crossed 95%.
Right.
I was visiting a client in Australia last month, and I saw over 90% order accuracy in their pilot. So huge advancement in the self-service one. And then the other one is in the agentic AI era, which is I don't just need systems that talk.
Right.
I want systems that can actually make autonomous decisions, act on real data.
Right.
Have this cognitive architecture that can make operational decisions. So, help me reroute my orders based on demand to the kitchen that is available in the area.
Right.
Help me reallocate staff without me being involved. Help me adjust my kitchen capacity based on the channel, so all of these things are going to be huge demands that we're seeing from customers in 2026.
And you mentioned obviously AI needs to be informed by the data. What data are you finding? What's surprising you in the data? What data are you mining? What are you pulling? And what are you seeing there?
You know, I talked about all the different areas that we've been blessed as a technology company that has been around for a while, so one is data.
Right.
And I see data in three different distinct buckets. So I see the data bucket of customers.
Right.
Right? So who are my customers? What are their interests? What does their history look like? Because when they come to interact with a brand, having the historical data, having their preferences, having their modifiers means that now as a brand, I would be able to interact and create these memorable experiences, very tailored, hyper-personalized to that person.
Right.
So that's the customer data. And especially when you inject payment data, which is one of our capabilities, I'm able to tie to who you are even before I register you as a loyalty customer. So when you become a loyal customer, then I have this rich set of data that I can link back to understand what you do. The second bucket of data is this operational data. Operational data is in my restaurant, lots of things work in unison together. Sometimes those things break. How do I, for example, anticipate that something is about to break because I've seen it before?
Right.
We have the solution called DCS, a digitally connected service that we look at all the different systems within the restaurant, the IoTs in the restaurant to say that PIN pad is about to break in a couple of days.
Right.
You better change it.
Right.
It doesn't break during peak hours.
Right.
So operational data is really important. And then the third bucket is your business data. So this is all about how does my menu perform? How does my all the way from inventory to recipe to my menu system to our ordering? How do I have a closed-loop system so I continue to run? I continue to anticipate what to stock? How do I staff up and have a predictive model that allows me to pull my staffing levers and all of that? So data is crucial.
Right.
With these three buckets being prioritized, and that's what we work with our clients.
Fantastic. And you mentioned earlier Chipotle, which was announced on earnings for the six-year agreement. Give us a snapshot of who are your customers? What does your customer base look like? Is it all large-scale enterprise? What is the profile?
Yeah, we have a very diversified and very rich client set, which we're very grateful for. We work with the very large brands that are multinational and global and 1000s of franchisees, but we also work with mid-market customers that are up-and-coming, growth-hungry, growth brands, and then we also work with the smaller clients, particularly throughout indirect channel. We have a very large channel dealer model in the United States that works with that customer base, and we're present around the world, like I mentioned, so some of the examples, you talked about Chipotle. The other one that we announced last year as a renewal, Buffalo Wild Wings under Inspire.
Yep.
We were happy to win the new relationship with Marco's Pizza in their international footprint. Ziggi's Coffee is another one that in the coffee space that we've added last year. So rich yet different in table service and QSR is our focus.
Fantastic. And I assume from having such a wide breadth of clients globally, you have a really interesting perspective on state of the consumer. And that's always a big topic every year at ICR: what is this year going to look like? How is the consumer behaving? What is your view on the state of the consumer today?
I think I'll start by saying if you look at most of the data, it does sound like 2026 is still going to be sort of the perfect storm of the intersection between unemployment being low, like I talked about, but at the same time, raising prices is not going to be the play because consumers are very, very sensitive to pricing.
Right.
Consumer sentiment on the economy is still pretty low. And the minute that price changes out of the game, then if restaurants are trying to cover their costs through just price without innovation, I think people trading down to cheaper formats and concepts and others. I think we're seeing that. So with that sentiment, I think being focused on innovation, finding efficiency, especially operational efficiency through the right technology adoption, focusing on hyper-personalization back to, again, making sure when the guests come to be served that they are in that state that everybody knows them and understands them, calls them by name, talks about their anniversaries and weddings and their family dynamics. I think that's going to be important because people are going to come back for that value.
And then lastly, as I think about this consumer state that we're in, it is very critical for restaurants to go back to the basics, which is it's not just the place we've been discussing. It's back to hospitality.
Right.
Back actually to what we started this industry, which is making people feel at home and be remembered and recognized and creating value through taste and flavor. I think that's going to be the winning recipe.
Yep. And so given that and sort of where we are in the consumer sentiment now, where do you see the opportunity for growth or differentiation in the industry?
I think growth and differentiation is everything that I just mentioned, which is for restaurants, it is focusing on the basics.
Right.
It is focusing on the customer, which is what we've been focusing on, putting the customer at the center of it. What do they want? Who are they? I would start, who are they? What do they want? And then how can I reach them?
Right.
And then, not only that, how do I feel that they are at home? It's hospitable. It is the place that they come to congregate and break bread. So, focusing on the consumer. And then the second one is, I think it's not just the top line. Focusing on the bottom line, driving efficiency, driving profit protection through either technology adoption, automation, having the right talent. All of those things are going to be important for growth brands.
How about on the restaurant technology side? There's been a lot of fragmentation across the industry. Tons of startups focused on very specific parts of the tech stack. What do you see as your predictions for the state of the restaurant technology industry this year and next few years?
I think over the past several years, you've seen a lot of new entrants in the market, different verticals, different functions coming to market, and especially in the COVID era and in the following years, there has been a lot of rush to adopt technology within the restaurant.
Right.
That has created a few things. I think one is it has created within restaurants sort of a hodgepodge of solutions that's difficult to keep track, to innovate around, to standardize and stabilize. That has been one. The other one is I think it has also created this tiredness, this fatigue for restaurants to manage multiple different vendors to actually bring a solution to market. So because of speed, because of this tiredness of disconnected vendors, I think we're going to see a lot of vendor consolidation.
Okay.
We're going to see brands really gravitating towards who can give me the core capability, who can give me and be the quarterback, so if I want to adopt, it's actually done in a seamless way, standard way that I can easily plug and play and provide me that unified view into my estate.
Fantastic. And we just have a few minutes left. I'll ask a final question, which is for this audience here. What are the main takeaways that you want to the industry? There's a lot of restaurant folks in this room that you want NCR Voyix to stand for this year.
Two or three things. I think the first is, like I shared, not a lot of companies can say that they've been around for 145 years, 100 years of those being publicly traded companies.
Right.
We bring a lot of experience and the ability to support restaurants' business. And at our core, we're a restaurant and retail company. That's one. The second one is with that heritage and being humbled by it, we're actually looking to the future. And as we unveiled at the end of last year, last week, we have brought a lot of new suites of products and innovations around the next generation point of sale, edge, the new kitchen solution, back office, and in menu. So when you think about restaurant technologies, NCR Voyix is that. And then the third one is NCR Voyix is about the customer. It's about standing in your corner. It's about being the one that you call when you have not just a problem statement, but an innovation question.
Right.
We're excited about the coming years.
Fantastic. Well, thank you for joining us, Benny, and thank you all for listening today. Benny will be around this afternoon if you want to catch him in the back.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.