Why AI Matters for Restaurants: A Q&A with Industry Expert Jordan Silverman

Jordan Silverman’s journey into entrepreneurship didn’t start with spreadsheets and strategy decks. It started with failure.

As a college student, Jordan launched his first business—only to watch it collapse due to poor cash flow management. He had outsourced bookkeeping, assumed the numbers were being reviewed, and learned the hard way that nobody was steering the financial ship.

That failure stuck with him.

Determined not to repeat the mistake, Jordan spent the next decade focused on business efficiency. He led go-to-market teams across multiple SaaS companies, honing a passion for tools that truly solve operational pain points.

Eventually, that passion led him to MarketMan, an inventory platform for restaurants. Over seven years, he helped scale the company to serve over 10,000 restaurants worldwide. But what stuck with him most wasn't the success—it was the pattern. Time and again, restaurants shut their doors not because they didn’t make money, but because they couldn’t keep it. Profitability remained elusive.

So Jordan built Profit Assist, an AI-powered tool to help restaurants understand and act on their financial data. Within a year, his solution helped fewer than 200 restaurants save over $2 million—making a real impact on their bottom line.

At SpotOn, Jordan is expanding Profit Assist's reach, aiming to help thousands of restaurants improve their financial literacy and increase profitability through AI.

In this candid conversation, he shares what he's learned, how AI can be a game-changer for restaurants, and where it’s headed in the future.

Q&A with Jordan Silverman: Why AI is the profit partner every restaurateur needs

What attracted you to the restaurant industry?

I’ve always seen myself as hard-working, driven, and a dreamer—and restaurant owners are exactly the same. They’re driven by passion and work tirelessly to bring their vision to life. I love that spirit and want to play a small part in helping them succeed.

What were your biggest takeaways during your time at MarketMan?

First, restaurant owners love what they do. Spending time with their team, making guests happy, and delivering incredible hospitality drives them every day. But they don’t necessarily love spending time in the numbers. Disparate software solutions require restaurant operators to sit at a computer and crunch data for hours. That’s not why they got into this business.

Second, most think they have a revenue problem. But really, it’s a profit problem. And profitability is hard when costs keep rising.

Finally, restaurants are drowning in data. They don’t need more dashboards. What they need is someone—or something—to tell them what matters and what to do next.

When did you know you were onto a good idea that could add real value to restaurants?

I kept coming back to this one question restaurant owners couldn’t answer: “How am I doing financially—and how can I improve?”

I started by interviewing 25 small business owners. I wanted to validate the problem before building anything. After two months of workshopping, we landed on a solution that early users—including bookkeepers and CFOs—told us was exactly what they needed: a tool that not only showed data but actually interpreted it.

You saved me $2,000 by catching something I never would have noticed!

When one of our first customers said, “You saved me $2,000 by catching something I never would have noticed,” I knew we were on to something.

How have you seen the perception of AI change since you got started?

When we started building in late 2023, AI was still new—and many restaurateurs were hesitant to give access to their books. But that changed fast. In my experience, most restaurants are now excited about AI when it drives financial clarity and action. 

Where can AI have the biggest impact in restaurants today?

AI should empower restaurateurs to do more with less, not bury them under more work. There are two key areas right now where AI is delivering on that promise:

1. Data analysis. AI can quickly review data and serve up actionable insights to operators. SpotOn Profit Assist does that by specifically analyzing data from your restaurant P&L, but then there are various other areas where you can put AI to work, whether you're worried about operating hours, vendor pricing, or menu performance. Another great example is what we’re doing with the new “Picked for You” feature in SpotOn Order. It’s a very practical example of how AI can provide customized menu recommendations to online ordering customers, helping to drive larger ticket sizes. 
2. Marketing. In my experience, restaurant operators either want to be hands-on with marketing or want someone else to handle it. In both cases, AI can help save you a ton of time and improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. For the hands-on folks, there are tools like ChatGPT and Canva that can help you develop outreach strategies, draft newsletters, write subject lines and CTAs, and even help design high quality print marketing pieces. On the automation side, tools like SpotOn Marketing Assist automatically create email and social media campaigns based on guest data and business goals to drive reservations, online orders, or in-store visits during slow days. Set it and forget it.

If a tool is working, what should the outcome look like?

Hospitality is about human interaction. AI should not replace human connection. If AI is being used correctly, it should enable restaurant owners and teams to spend more time with guests and less time on tedious back-office tasks.

Good AI should:

• Be invisible to the guest
• Be insanely easy to use
• Offer proactive, actionable insights

What’s your advice for restaurants evaluating AI tools?

Start with one simple question: What’s your top priority? Is it profitability? Revenue growth? Guest experience?

From there, look for tools that directly support that goal. In an ideal world, AI should be built into your current workflow and you shouldn’t need to learn a new technology. For instance, if profitability is your focus, Profit Assist helps analyze your P&L using your current accounting software. But if your challenge is getting customers in the door, something like SpotOn’s Marketing Assist syncs with the SpotOn restaurant POS to generate email lists from the restaurant's online ordering, loyalty, and reservation system customers.

Don't chase every shiny object. Talk to your peers. Ask what works. Ask your existing providers what integrates well. Simplicity and focus are your friends.

What's the role of restaurant tech providers when it comes to AI?

I won't pretend to speak for other tech companies, but my mission here at SpotOn? Help every restaurant answer the question: How do I make more money? Then actually do it.