The co-founders of xtraCHEF have launched Tandem, a new AI platform built specifically for restaurant operators, with seed financing closed and the platform already active across 100 locations through a pilot program. Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel, who previously built xtraCHEF before its acquisition by Toast, are joined by acclaimed chef and restaurateur Michael Schulson—founder of Schulson Collective—as a Founding Partner.
The Problem They're Solving
Restaurants today navigate a fragmented technology ecosystem that spans point-of-sale, labor scheduling, accounting, inventory, purchasing, reservations, delivery, and marketing platforms. Despite this degree of digitization, operators and their teams still spend substantial time manually shuttling information between systems, analyzing data, spotting problems, and completing repetitive administrative tasks. Tandem's founders argue that conventional software has reached a ceiling—and that AI agents represent a genuine architectural shift, not an incremental improvement.
Rather than adding another standalone application or dashboard to the operator's workload, Tandem builds AI agents designed to work across the systems restaurants already have in place. Those agents are intended to analyze information, flag what needs attention, automate repetitive workflows, and take action across the business. The company describes Tandem as a "multiplayer workspace" in which human staff and AI agents operate side by side—a framing that positions it closer to a collaborative operating layer than a traditional SaaS tool.
Operator Expertise Built In
Schulson's role as Founding Partner is central to Tandem's go-to-market thesis. His involvement gives the company direct, ongoing input from an operator who runs multiple concepts at scale—a deliberate choice by a founding team that watched restaurant technology fail operators when it was designed without 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. "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?"
Schwartz, serving as CEO, echoed that operator-first orientation: "Restaurants don't need another system to log into or another dashboard to manage. 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."
Patel, who leads technology and product as Co-Founder and CPO/CTO, frames the shift in terms of what AI can now do that traditional software cannot. "We're moving beyond software that simply stores data or presents information," he said. "AI gives us the ability to build systems that can understand context, reason across multiple sources of information and help execute work."
What Operators Can Expect
Tandem's roadmap targets nearly every operational domain—finance, accounting, labor, purchasing, inventory, marketing, guest engagement, and day-to-day management. The company's strategy is to introduce agents around specific, high-value workflows first and then connect those capabilities across the broader restaurant organization over time.
Critically, the platform is being built with integrations across the existing restaurant technology ecosystem, meaning operators would not need to rip and replace their current stack to deploy Tandem's agents. Seed capital will fund engineering and product team expansion, deeper integrations, and accelerated rollouts with restaurant groups.
The launch arrives as restaurant technology investment continues to mature and operators increasingly scrutinize the return on their software spending. For the hospitality industry, the question is no longer whether AI will enter daily operations but whether the tools being built can deliver practical, measurable relief from the administrative burden that strains teams at every level. Tandem's pilot footprint of 100 locations—and a growing waitlist—suggests early operator demand is real. Broader food and beverage industry analysis has consistently identified labor efficiency and operational automation as top priorities for multi-unit operators heading into the latter half of the decade.
The company is operated under parent entity AI Labz Inc.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
