New Startup Aims to Unify Restaurant Operations with AI Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel, co-founders of the now-Toast-acquired xtraCHEF, have launched Tandem, an AI platform designed to address a persistent pain point for restaurant operators: fragmented technology ecosystems. Acclaimed chef and restaurateur Michael Schulson has joined as Founding Partner, bringing operational expertise to the venture. Tandem has closed initial seed funding and is already working with operators across 100 restaurant locations through its pilot program.
The Problem Tandem Targets Restaurants today juggle point-of-sale, labor, accounting, inventory, purchasing, reservations, delivery, and marketing systems. Operators and their teams spend substantial time manually moving information between platforms, analyzing data, and completing repetitive administrative work. "Restaurants don't need another system to log into or another dashboard to manage," said Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder. "We believe AI gives us the opportunity to build technology that actually works alongside the operator — understanding what's happening across the business, handling repetitive work and helping teams take action."
How Tandem Works Rather than adding another standalone application, Tandem builds AI agents designed to work across systems restaurants already use. These agents analyze information, identify what requires attention, automate repetitive workflows, and take action across the business. The platform also functions as a multiplayer workspace for human employees to communicate with their AI co-workers. Bhavik Patel, Co-Founder and CPO/CTO, leads technology and AI strategy. "The technology available to us today allows us to approach restaurant operations in a fundamentally different way," Patel said. "We're moving beyond software that simply stores data or presents information. AI gives us the ability to build systems that can understand context, reason across multiple sources of information and help execute work."
Building With Operators Schulson's involvement reflects Tandem's core principle: build with restaurant operators, not simply for them. "There is an enormous opportunity for AI in restaurants, but it has to solve the problems operators actually deal with every day," Schulson said. "What excited me about Tandem is the opportunity to build this from the operator's perspective. We're identifying the work that takes time away from our teams and asking a simple question: why can't technology do more of this work for us?" Tandem plans to develop integrations across the restaurant technology ecosystem, allowing its agents to work with existing systems rather than requiring restaurants to replace their current stack. The company will use seed capital to expand engineering and product teams, deepen integrations, and accelerate deployments.
Why It Matters
The restaurant technology space has long been fragmented, forcing operators to become de facto data integrators. A working AI agent layer that operates across existing platforms could materially reduce administrative overhead—a persistent cost center in high-margin foodservice. Schulson's involvement signals that the startup understands operator skepticism and is positioning itself as solving real problems rather than adding complexity.
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Written by FBM Publications Editors
