RTN Workgroups

Workgroups are hyper-focused, technical collaborations where technology suppliers work together to develop tangible outcomes such as data standards, frameworks, and best practices. Restaurants provide strategic guidance while tech suppliers deliver expertise.

Participation is flexible — join anytime and contribute as much or as little as you like. Leading or contributing to a workgroup provides visibility as a thought leader in the industry, often leading to speaking opportunities at events like MURTEC.

Frequency: Twice per month
Length: 1 hour

Restaurant Back-of-House Automation

Join the Restaurant Technology Network to revolutionize Back-of-House (BOH) restaurant operations by establishing universal data standards that enable seamless communication and integration across diverse technological systems. As the industry shifts toward automation to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve service quality, the lack of standardized data formats presents a significant challenge to interoperability.

By developing and implementing these standards, we empower restaurants to optimize key operational functions, streamline workflows, enhance communication between kitchen and front-of-house teams, and ensure food quality and service delivery consistency. Our goal is to drive industry-wide innovation, enabling restaurants to fully leverage technology for improved productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

Vendor-To-Vendor Integration Assessment

The future of innovation inside the restaurant industry depends on various technology applications integrating smoothly and sharing data seamlessly. RTN's Open API Framework provides a solid foundation for defining what constitutes an Open API. Although many restaurant technology companies have open APIs, they are sometimes controlled by contractual and/or cost-prohibitive business practices that render an open API ineffective and/or inaccessible - especially to the newest innovative technology companies on the scene.

Solution:

This workgroup will collaborate to develop the following initiatives:

RFP Questions to identify cost-prohibitive business practices and assess the adoption of RTN Standards.
An Education Guide to raise awareness of key industry challenges.
A Self-Certification Program to recognize and promote organizations that implement RTN Standards.

These efforts aim to facilitate the seamless, efficient, and equitable integration of vendor solutions into the industry's broader ecosystem of established market solutions.

Who Should Join this Workgroup?

POS
Loyalty
Back Office
Small Vendor Companies, such as those deploying AI solutions
Partner Managers
Integration Managers
Sales Leadership
Marketing Leadership

Any interested in standards, advancing adoption and enabling integrations!

AI Workforce & Compliance (AIWC)

The AI Workforce & Compliance (AIWC) workgroup confronts one of the most pressing and legally sensitive challenges emerging in restaurant technology: the use of agentic AI systems in workforce scheduling and management — and the discrimination, compliance, and governance risks that come with them.

As AI-driven scheduling tools become more prevalent, the industry faces difficult questions about bias, fairness, liability, and regulatory exposure that most operators are not yet equipped to answer.

This workgroup will bring together HR, Legal, Technology, and AI governance expertise to define what responsible deployment of agentic workforce AI looks like — including how to audit models for discriminatory outputs, how to establish compliance frameworks, and how to manage the handoff between AI recommendations and human decision-making.

The broader goal is to help the industry move fast on AI workforce tools without creating legal, ethical, or reputational risk in the process.

Data Standardization & Governance 2.0 with AI Governance Co-hort

The Data Standardization & Governance 2.0 with AI Governance Co-hort workgroup addresses the foundational layer that every other technology initiative depends on: clean, consistent,secure, and well-governed data.

As the restaurant industry accelerates its adoption of AI tools, the stakes for getting data right have never been higher — and the margin for error has never been smaller. Without a strong data governance foundation, AI investments will underperform, compliance risks will grow, and operators will find themselves unable to scale effectively.

This workgroup builds on prior governance work by layering in the emerging demands of AI governance — addressing policy frameworks, acceptance pathways, and the practical question of how to move quickly and responsibly at the same time. It will help organizations of all sizes understand where to start, how to build milestone-based maturity roadmaps, and how to evolvefrom crawl to walk to run without chasing perfection at the expense of progress.

Call for Speakers!