Automation Beyond the Kitchen: Creating a Financial “Smart Stack” for Above-Store Efficiency

Joseph Cox’s McDonald’s journey began in 2006 as a maintenance person in Chicago. After fully immersing himself in the business, he became a licensed McDonald’s Franchisee in 2007. Joe currently owns fifteen restaurants in the Central Florida Business Unit. During his tenure, Joe has been selected to serve on many Boards, both on the Advisory and Director level, as well as numerous Councils. He served as the North Florida Business Unit President for two years prior to relocating to the Central Florida Business Unit. He currently serves on the Field Alignment Council for the Atlanta Field Office, is a member of the National Pricing Strategic Advisory Group NPSAG, a board member of the Florida Insurance Program Team, leads the Central Florida People Team, serves on the Central Florida By-Law committee, and on the Food/Beverage and Affordability Oversight committees. From 2001 to 2007, Joe was instrumental in founding Rubicon Technology where he rose to the position of Vice President of Operations.

Troy Hooper joined Pepper Lunch as one of the three global business unit CEO’s for the brand, and oversees Pepper Lunch’s parent company in North America, Hot Palette America. Troy brings 30 years of unparalleled experience in hospitality, operations management and executive leadership to this role, which has fueled Pepper Lunch’s infrastructure development, growth efforts, and brand deliverables, creating a fruitful franchise model for the North American market. Throughout his career, Troy has successfully built new concepts, rebranded existing restaurants, and improved well-established venues for iconic brands. Troy’s decades of experience and business acumen brings a breadth of knowledge to the rapidly growing global brand, Pepper Lunch.

MJ Worsham is a career hospitality technologist with a proven history of working across both the brand and vendor sides of the industry. In his current role as the Director of Restaurant Technology for Five Guys – 1,830+ restaurants spanning 24 countries across the world – MJ is responsible for all Point-of-Sale systems (POS), above-store integrations, and store-level ERP system relationships globally in addition to the merchant processing relationship and various pilot projects in North America. MJ also consults internally on domestic and global strategic technology projects across multiple verticals of the business.