ChatGPT helps Tami Taylor and her husband, Ted, run three New Mexico restaurants by keeping up with state health requirements, analyzing menu prices, answering customers, and writing the employee policies their business needs.
They spent years looking for a business they could run during retirement. Ted had already built a pet-grooming franchise from scratch in Texas, an expensive education in payroll, HR and everything else nobody sees behind the counter.
He and Tami eventually bought three existing quick-service restaurants in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe. They also inherited the daily surprises that come with keeping three kitchens open.
A worker calls in sick, and Tami jumps in. An electrical outlet burns out, and Ted fixes it. One afternoon, flickering lights led him outside to discover someone had pried open an electrical box and tried to steal the copper wiring.
The paperwork keeps multiplying, too. When New Mexico required every restaurant to have a written procedure for handling bodily-fluid incidents, Ted asked ChatGPT for help. In about 30 seconds, he had a draft. When customers email with complaints, ChatGPT helps Tami respond.
Then Ted realized employees could post from the kitchen on Instagram or TikTok. Their handbook said nothing about social media, so he used ChatGPT to write a policy protecting both employeesâ rights and the business. A professional HR firm later reviewed the entire handbook and did not change a word of that section.
Pricing decisions became another job Ted could take on with ChatGPT. Ahead of their August price updates, it compared menu categories with local competitors, accounted for third-party delivery markups and annual price increases, and measured value by sandwich weight and drink volume. The analysis helped the couple avoid price increases that would have made some products uncompetitive. Doing the comparison manually would have taken too long to be worthwhile; without ChatGPT, it would have been skipped.
Another problem begins before the restaurants even open. Their franchisor now offers catering as early as 7:30 a.m., even though the stores normally open at 10, and some orders need to be ready within two hours.
Once, Tami saw an order 30 minutes after it arrived. By the time the kitchen got moving, the staff had barely an hour left.
Ted is now building an AI-assisted workflow to watch the catering inbox, flag large, urgent or early-morning orders and text Tami before the clock runs out. It is still a work in progress, but the goal is fewer emergencies before breakfast.
Ted and Tami went looking for a business that would help make retirement possible. ChatGPT is helping them spend less time on the work that follows them home.
