Pokeworks puts a homegrown AI agent to work

In the great debate over whether restaurants should build or buy their technology, Pokeworks has always leaned heavily toward build.

That tends to happen when two of your co-founders earned advanced degrees in computer science, worked for companies like Intel and Lockheed Martin, and launched a startup during the dot-com boom.

“We had a leg up because we were always kind-of ahead of the curve on technology,” said Michael Chen, co-founder and president of the 86-unit fast-casual brand.

Building technology in house

Chen’s first company, the supply chain-focused ImportLA, built its own website, online marketing, and other technology back in the early 2000s. Chen and his seven co-founders have applied the same playbook at Pokeworks, which opened its first location in 2015 in New York City.

So when OpenAI rocked the tech world with the launch of ChatGPT about four years ago, the chain was all over it.

“When AI came onto the scene, it was just a natural fit for us to utilize it,” said Wen Wei, Pokeworks’ co-founder, CFO, and head of AI.

The company started small, implementing ChatGPT at its Irvine, California, headquarters in 2023. Staff could use it to answer questions and create presentations and other content.

By the beginning of last year, though, Pokeworks brass realized that AI had become more than a PowerPoint assistant. AI-powered coding tools like Replit and Cursor were changing how software was developed, while AI agents promised to not only answer questions but carry out tasks on their own.

Implementing ai solutions

Pokeworks spent 2025 laying the groundwork to support this next wave of AI, starting by consolidating data from its various tech systems into a central database. Then, at the beginning of this year, after what Wei described as another “step change” in AI’s capabilities, they began developing agents that could use that data to automate different tasks.

For instance, in the past, if Pokeworks’ finance team wanted to create a report, they’d first need to download data from multiple sources and then use Excel to organize and analyze it. Later, ChatGPT would help streamline some of that work.

But with an AI agent, all the team has to do is ask for a report. And the questions can be more complex. They can ask why sales went up or down, for example, or whether restaurants are using labor efficiently based on sales.

“They no longer need to go gather all this information … to consolidate into one report,” Wei said. “The agent is able to consolidate all of those data sources, and intelligent enough to build a report for them.”

Pokeworks calls its agent Pokebot. It is one part of a larger AI layer, the Pokeworks Operating System, that has transformed how the company operates.

For one thing, Pokebot now handles many tasks that were previously done by humans, such as accounting. But rather than let those workers go, Pokeworks reassigned them to other roles, including checking Pokebot’s work.

At the same time, the AI is doing enough that Pokeworks does not plan to hire more employees at its headquarters anytime soon, even as it looks to open more restaurants.

“Our goal is to maintain headcount with our future growth,” Wei said. “I don't think we would need to hire anybody else.”

Rolling out pokebot

Pokebot is not limited to Pokeworks’ headquarters. Employees at company-owned stores are also tapping into it to help run their restaurants using a dedicated smartphone app. It helps them plan their day, creating a list of tasks that need to be accomplished, organized from most to least important.

“It gets rid of a lot of the judgment that needs to happen,” Wei said.

Pokeworks’ franchisees are not yet using Pokebot directly, but they are getting AI-based intel from corporate about ways to improve their business.

The pivot to AI is showing up on Pokeworks’ bottom line. Though they declined to provide specific figures, the co-founders said the company is saving percentage points on food and labor costs through automated sourcing and labor forecasting. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) are on the rise, and same-store sales remain positive year over year.

Pokeworks’ homegrown AI has also lowered technology costs by allowing the chain to consolidate other pieces of software or drop them altogether.

“Besides very, very specialized software, like accounting or POS, things that we can't replace ourselves, we're gonna integrate it and do it ourselves,” Chen said.

Of course, the AI operating system has its own costs. AI requires tokens to run, and while the big labs are currently subsidizing token costs, that won’t always be the case. Still, Wei said that these costs would remain a small percentage of Pokeworks’ sales.

Pokeworks’ transition to a more AI-driven business model hasn’t always been easy at the home office, which currently employs about 40 people, including the co-founders. One of the biggest challenges, Chen said, was reassuring staff that Pokebot was not going to take their jobs.

“I told everybody at the company, ‘Your job is safe,’” he said. “‘What we're gonna do is we're gonna supercharge you. AI will supercharge our company.’”

Specifically, he said, it will allow Pokeworks to do more with less, boosting what employees could earn from the company’s profit-sharing program. Chen said this has helped encourage employees to embrace the technology.

“They're like, ‘You know what? I am going to learn it, because I'm gonna help the company do better, with less people, and everyone ends up getting rewarded for that,’” he said.