Host Tal Clark, CEO of Instant Financial, interviews Marcus Wasdin, founder of the Wasdin Company, about restaurant transformation and AI adoption. Wasdin recounts entering restaurants through Church’s Chicken, serving as the Atlanta Hawks’ first CIO during a $200M arena renovation that led to top NBA guest experience ratings, and later running a restaurant tech business line before moving into advisory work. They discuss how AI is driving a surge of restaurant tech solutions and potentially creating “AI fatigue,” as operators want outcomes while investors want more AI operations. Key operator challenges remain food and labor costs, talent attraction/retention, and driving traffic amid rising check averages. Wasdin explains the AI adoption cycle in restaurants today, citing costly drive-through voice AI and mixed in-restaurant adoption of natural-language analytics tools.

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast

00:37 Meet Marcus Wasdin

02:08 Career Origins in Restaurants

03:01 Atlanta Hawks Tech Turnaround

03:54 Three Lenses on Hospitality

06:20 AI Boom and Tool Fragmentation

09:58 Operator Pain Points Today

12:03 Why POS and HCM Changes Win

16:48 AI Reality Check and Use Cases

21:26 Part Two Tease and Wrap

Instant Financial: instant.co

Connect with Tal Clark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tal-clark-a60776b/

Connect with Marcus Wasdin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuswasdin/

References:

• The Wasdin Company: www.wasdincompany.com
• The Atlanta Hawks: https://www.nba.com/hawks/
• Par Technology: https://partech.com/
• Inspire Brands: https://inspirebrands.com/
• Church's Chicken: https://www.churchs.com/our-story
• Underserved Report: https://www.instant.co/2026-restaurant-study/
• Center for Generational Kinetics: https://genhq.com/