Chili’s CIO Rebuilt the Tech Foundation. Now AI Beckons at Brinker

Chris Caldwell didn’t arrive at Brinker International with grand pronouncements about artificial intelligence. He started with Wi-Fi.

When the chief information officer joined the operator of Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy in February 2024, he confronted a restaurant floor where technology too often created friction instead of easing it. Up to 70% of employee feedback centered on tech problems that slowed work and frustrated staff. Outages plagued the network. Back-office computers lagged. Ordering tools demanded too many steps.

Two years later the picture has changed. Brinker has swapped out networking gear across 1,200 Chili’s locations, replaced every Wi-Fi access point, added cellular backups and run fiber to some parking lots. New laptops sit on managers’ desks. Some 23,000 iPads with better battery life circulate in restaurants. Kitchen touchscreens now display only the tickets that matter at each station. Stable infrastructure came first.

“Before we jump into AI use cases, we have to make sure a lot of the core technology is working well,” Caldwell told Fortune. “You can’t do AI without a solid network infrastructure in all your restaurants.”

The payoff shows in results. Chili’s posted its 20th consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth in the fiscal third quarter ended March 2026, with comparable sales up 4.0% for the period, according to Brinker’s earnings release. Two-year comps reached 43% in the second quarter. Average unit volumes climbed from $3.1 million in fiscal 2022 to $4.5 million in fiscal 2025. Guest wait-and-pay metrics improved markedly. The brand gained share in a value-conscious market while many casual-dining peers struggled.

But the foundation work consumed time. Caldwell, who previously spent nine years as CIO at KFC and reunited at Brinker with CEO Kevin Hochman, another Yum! Brands veteran, first tackled the network. Comcast remained the provider. Technicians installed fresh equipment and cellular failover. In places they literally tore up pavement for fiber. “Over the last two years, we would basically just rip the guts out of every bit of the network infrastructure, and now we’re in a stable spot,” Caldwell said in the Fortune profile.

Managers’ complaints about sluggish back-office machines followed. Caldwell recorded a video of the painful slowness and showed it to leadership. No budget debate ensued. New laptops arrived at every location. The company refreshed 9,000 kitchen displays. A new iPad interface now in test at a dozen sites aims to cut clicks in half for order entry. Even Caldwell struggled at first with the prior handheld devices. “Truthfully, I’ll admit, when someone handed me one of these handhelds when I started, I couldn’t even take an order,” he admitted.

These upgrades supported menu moves and value offers that drove traffic. Updated chicken sandwiches launched in April 2026 sold 161% more than prior versions. Skillet quesos and nachos delivered 20% higher sales than earlier iterations. The 3 For Me value platform kept checks accessible. Remodels at select units produced sales lifts that managers described as feeling like an entirely new restaurant, Restaurant Dive reported in January 2026.

Yet technology’s role runs deeper than hardware. Brinker feeds terabytes of data daily into analytics systems from more than 1,600 restaurants across 31 countries and U.S. territories. Customer surveys, sales records, employee metrics, delivery logs, weather, even geolocation flow in. Older platforms created latency that left reports arriving too late for action. “Our reports were coming too late, the time it took to bring data from the restaurants to corporate took too long. We had latency that was detrimental to how they needed to operate,” Mark Abramson, architect manager for enterprise data, analytics and reporting at Brinker, explained on the Teradata customer page.

The company migrated to Teradata Vantage on AWS. The platform handles complex multi-join queries without slowdowns, scales compute independently of storage, and mixes structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. Abramson noted the difference. “We realized Teradata’s hybrid multi-cloud data analytics platform in Teradata Vantage provides the flexibility and scalability,” he said. “Teradata performed. We see the scalability. The flexibility. And run the complex workloads that other cloud-only vendors are challenged to do.”

Those capabilities power forecasting for order readiness times, menu profitability analysis, guest experience tracking and commodity cost modeling. Insights reach operators faster. Resources once spent chasing reports now target strategic questions. “It all goes back to data and the insights derived from that data. Data must be the center of your business if you want to be successful,” Abramson added.

Guest sentiment data multiplies the challenge. Millions of survey responses, online reviews and social mentions arrive each month. General-purpose AI tools fall short in this domain. Brinker turned to Black Box Intelligence’s restaurant-specific AI, trained exclusively on food-service feedback. The system correlates sentiment scores directly with traffic, labor, sales and other financial metrics in one view.

That linkage proved decisive during menu decisions. When social media buzzed about the Triple Dipper, BBI analytics confirmed whether the hype translated into traffic and revenue. The company simplified its menu with greater confidence. “Black Box Intelligence has been a key strategic partner in helping Brinker remain deeply informed about the broader restaurant landscape and strengthen our decision-making in the business,” said Jeremy Linker, SVP of brand finance, in the Black Box Intelligence case study. Meagan Borden, senior director of finance, added that the platform delivers “a consolidated view of competitive benchmarks, workforce stability, turnover trends, and emerging consumer behaviors.”

Chili’s two-year comparable sales growth of 43% and reduction in guest wait-and-pay from 5% to 2.1% reflect the cumulative impact. The brand moved from industry laggard to standout performer without heavy unit expansion. New openings remain on hold until fiscal 2028 as the company focuses on remodels and existing operations.

Now the conversation turns to AI at the restaurant level. Caldwell has rolled out Microsoft Copilot in the corporate office and seen coding assistance gain traction. He eyes demand forecasting, inventory optimization, logistics routing and employee scheduling enhancements through partners such as HotSchedules. A restaurant-specific AI chatbot for operational questions sits on the horizon. “We’re very early on,” he told Fortune. The CIO actively evaluates vendors and weighs build-versus-buy decisions.

But caution shapes every choice. Brinker tested robotics in limited fashion before Hochman arrived and quickly paused those efforts. An AI system for handling phone orders looked promising on paper for labor savings. The guest experience fell short. “If you look at it just in a spreadsheet, it probably makes sense,” Caldwell said. “But we absolutely think about it from a hospitality perspective, and if it’s not a great customer experience, we’re not going to do it.”

That stance echoes broader industry experience. Starbucks abandoned an AI inventory tool. A Pizza Hut franchisee sued Yum! Brands claiming AI scheduling created operational chaos. McDonald’s scrapped one drive-thru AI project only to launch another. Success remains uneven. EHL Insights noted in June 2026 that while chains such as Wendy’s cut drive-thru wait times by 22 seconds with voice AI and Taco John’s saw higher check averages and accuracy across 350 locations, many operators still struggle to move pilots into production.

Survey data underscores the moment. Eight in 10 restaurant executives plan to increase AI spending in the coming year, with improved customer experience the top expected benefit, according to a Deloitte study cited by EHL. The National Restaurant Association found 74% of operators view technology as augmenting rather than replacing labor, particularly for predictive scheduling, forecasting and inventory control.

At Brinker the priority list stays narrow. Any AI application must demonstrably improve food, service or atmosphere. Caldwell rejects solutions that merely trim headcount at the expense of hospitality. He also demands the network, devices and data pipes remain rock solid. Only then does experimentation make sense.

The casual-dining sector faces continued pressure from inflation-weary diners, rising labor costs and shifting delivery economics. Brinker’s recent earnings show resilience at Chili’s offset by softness at Maggiano’s. Fiscal 2026 guidance calls for revenues between $5.78 billion and $5.82 billion with adjusted EPS of $10.60 to $10.85, raised from prior levels. Share repurchases totaling more than $100 million in the third quarter signal confidence.

Caldwell’s team now sits on a modernized foundation. Data flows faster. Networks stay up. Staff spend less time fighting tools. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in restaurants. It is which applications deliver genuine value without compromising the experience that keeps guests returning. Brinker appears prepared to answer that question on its own terms. But only after the basics work flawlessly.

And that measured approach may prove the difference between pilots that fade and systems that endure.