Fish Shop’s Billy Ramirez on Integrating Tech, Following the AI Path, and Trusting Innovation

Next up on QSR’s Conversations series from Chicago is Billy Ramirez, partner and owner of Fish Shop, an award-winning San Diego-based seafood concept. The four-unit brand is gearing up for growth and navigating life on the emerging side of running a restaurant.

Tell us an innovation really making a difference for restaurants these days.

Obviously, tech is the low-hanging fruit. For us, we moved over to Toast. With that, it’s easier to get reports. It was easier to setup. It’s user friendly for the managers if they need to change things around.

That’s been the biggest change for us over the past five years. Now, rolling into loyalty programs. It’s easy to grab all this tech and not use it, though. And we did that with our last loyalty program. We have it. I just don’t think we’ve maximized it. You have to have someone who manages it. That’s the part where you’ve got operators who are trying to take care of the place, but then also trying to manage another moving part on the side.

We’re migrating over to Hang, which is a little bit more dynamic. The AI is involved with it now. Everyone is talking about AI, across the board, in every industry.

That was our biggest adjustment—actually using the tech. Not having the tech, necessarily, but using it.

The integration of tech. You have people who are plugging into Toast, which is a big, heavy hitter. Everybody is using it. But it’s how is all that going to work together? Everyone wants to plug in. But are the numbers right? Are they real? And are they all driving together?

We’re not super skeptical exactly, since we’re staying on top of it, but the AI part, it’s kind of like Google: You Google and the first three things are the word you follow. This is the meaning. It’s translating back over to tech now.

But you know what? Now, we’re just going to follow that AI path and see where it goes. Do we need to dig to the second page of Google with our numbers to make sure it’s correct? You have to keep searching.

Especially for older operators—I wouldn’t say I’m old—but you start shifting technology and the change of mindset for your team to go, OK, you have to trust these things, like scheduling. It’s not on Excel anymore. We just moved over to 7shifts. So, we’re doing that. It’s getting (our team) to trust all of that.

Everyone is talking about it right now. Even in San Diego (where Billly is based). Because of how our menu is built, I don’t think it’s really affected us. You can come in and have a healthy piece of fish and some vegetables and rice. I don’t see it with us. You can roll in and have the salad. You can roll in and have the fish and chips. Doesn’t matter if I’m on GLP-1s or not on them.

But people are talking about it. Every city, every operator. And they’re here to stay. Looking back, remember the health craze when everybody was on Ripped Fuel and that stuff? People were taking that and still going out and eating and drinking.