The Rise of Restaurant AI Data Intelligence Platforms with Eric Lehto of OpSage

Restaurant operators are sitting on more data than ever — and more confused about what to do with it than ever. In this episode of Modern Solutions for Modern Restaurants, Paul Molinari sits down with Eric Lehto, CEO of OpSage by CONVX, to cut through the noise around AI in restaurants and get honest about what it actually takes to make it work.

Eric has spent years inside the data strategy conversations that multi-unit operators rarely share publicly — the ones where a single brand has 10 or 12 disconnected systems, two different POS platforms that don't talk to each other, soft drink flavors that only exist in inventory, and franchisee P&L reports arriving as manual spreadsheets. The data problem, he explains, is bigger and more expensive than most operators realize — and almost impossible to solve with legacy BI tools or general-purpose AI alone.

00:00 AI Promise vs Reality

01:33 Operator Data Chaos Story

06:10 Why Restaurant Data Is Hard

07:50 AI for Cleaning Data

08:28 Restaurant AI Needs Context

11:16 Why POS Cannot Solve It

12:39 Building AI Ready Data

15:22 Security and Zero Trust

20:53 Integration Expectations

24:46 Why Not Just ChatGPT

28:00 Monday Morning With AI

31:28 Ask Your Restaurant Anything

33:28 Final Advice and Wrap Up

Episode links:

OpSage: https://opsage.com
Eric Lehto: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elehto/