Dive Brief:
- Wendy’s promoted Matt Spessard to serve as its new CIO, the company said in a Monday announcement. Spessard served as SVP and Global CTO for the restaurant chain since August 2022. He first joined Wendy’s in 2020 as VP of restaurant technology.
- In his new role, Spessard will have a seat on the executive board and report to President and CEO Kirk Tanner, the company said. The board of directors named Tanner CEO in January. He previously served as CEO of North American Beverages at PepsiCo.
- The move comes as Wendy’s prepares to pour $35 million into mobile app and digital menu technologies and ramp up generative AI adoption. The company partnered with Google Cloud to pilot a Vertex AI-powered drive-thru window chatbot called Wendy’s FreshAI last year.
Dive Insight:
Wendy’s joins other fast food chains banking on generative AI to improve restaurant efficiency and enhance the customer experience.
Burger behemoth McDonald’s tapped Google Cloud to upgrade edge-compute analytics and develop AI solutions in December, and Domino’s plans to launch generative AI solutions developed with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service in March.
In his previous role, Spessard led the FreshAI pilot program, embedding the chatbot in four Ohio restaurants last year. Spessard also played a key role in architecting Wendy’s System, a technology-infused restaurant design standard launched in August, the company said.
As part of its technology makeover, the fast food chain plans to use AI to enable menu changes and fuel the development of dynamic pricing capabilities in 2025, Tanner said earlier this month, during a Q4 2023 earnings call.
Expanding FreshAI to the mobile app and in-restaurant kiosks is also under consideration, Spessard said in a December blog post.
Spessard succeeds CIO Kevin Vasconi, who came to Wendy’s in 2020 from Domino’s. At the pizza chain, Vasconi had served as EVP and CIO and other leadership roles since joining the company in 2012.
