Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel, who sold the back-office automation system xtraCHEF to Toast in 2021, are back with a new restaurant tech company called Tandem — and it is already running pilots across 100 locations.

Tandem will offer AI agents that operators can assign to a wide range of tasks spanning finance, labor, purchasing, inventory, and marketing, according to a press release. The company has closed a seed financing round and brought in celebrity chef Michael Schulson as a founding partner to add an operator's perspective. Schwartz and Patel spent a few years at Toast following the 2021 acquisition before moving on.

Kayak founders re-enter travel — including dining

Tandem is not the only founder return this month. Steve Hafner and Paul English, who founded the travel booking site Kayak in 2004, have launched Lola, an AI assistant that helps users decide where to go, stay and eat — and then books everything for them.

Consumers can talk to Lola like a chatbot to plan and book trips, including dining. The assistant remembers user preferences and serves personalized recommendations. Lola is free, with paid tiers that unlock better hotel rates, dining access, and other perks. The venture sits inside Booking Holdings, which also owns Kayak and OpenTable — putting the product within reach of a restaurant-reservation network already embedded in the industry.

Crunchtime moves onto the kitchen display screen

Crunchtime is extending its restaurant operations software to the kitchen display screen, integrating Crunchtime Kitchen, Crunchtime Ops Execution, and Crunchtime Inventory tools into kitchen staff's existing workflow. The company describes the result as turning KDS screens into "a unified operational command center."

Beyond showing active orders, the screens will prompt employees when to prep items, and workers will be able to log waste directly on the KDS — a function that automatically updates Crunchtime inventory, tightening the loop between food-waste tracking and stock counts.

The product marks a major integration step for Crunchtime and QSR Automations, the KDS supplier with which it announced a merger last year.

PAR targets the anonymous majority at the counter

POS provider PAR launched Guest360, a product designed to help restaurants identify customers who are not part of a loyalty program. Most restaurant transactions come from non-loyalty members at the counter, drive-thru, or kiosk.

Guest360 lets restaurants create profiles for those anonymous customers using a technology PAR calls Profile Stitching. Restaurants can then market to those customers through an integration between Guest360 and Punchh, PAR's loyalty system. The product builds on PAR's acquisition this year of Bridg, which uses credit card data and other information to profile otherwise anonymous guests.

Guest360 is live now with some Punchh customers and will expand to the rest of the Punchh customer base this year.

Presto and Toast connect voice AI to the drive-thru POS

Presto, the AI voice supplier for drive-thrus, is joining forces with Toast, which launched its own drive-thru POS system in April. Restaurants using both systems will be able to connect them so that orders handled by Presto flow directly into the POS — replacing the manual re-entry or middleware that previously stood between voice AI and the point of sale.

While Presto has primarily focused on large chains like Taco John's and Dairy Queen, the Toast partnership could carry its voice technology into smaller brands. Toast's drive-thru product already integrates with several voice AI providers.

For operators, the common thread across this month's announcements is consolidation: back-office tasks, guest identification, and drive-thru order handling are each collapsing into fewer, more connected systems — and the founders who built the last generation of restaurant tech are betting a new one on AI agents.