Build or Buy? Restaurant Leaders Weigh In on Tech Decisions
At the MURTEC Executive Summit, a pivotal topic took center stage as Alistair Levine, Managing Director of Vine Hospitality, Vadim Parizher, VP of Technology at Taco Bell, and Skip Kimpel, President and CEO of the consultancy Magicgate, shared their insights.
“I’m sure many of you have thought about whether to build your own tech stack or component,” said Kimpel. “There’s a cross-section between the two mindsets.”
Vine Hospitality, which operates ten fine-dining restaurants across Northern California, relies heavily on SaaS technology. Levine, who also owns a restaurant back-office company supporting 500 independent operators, shared his perspective: “For us, the tech stack is mainly rented. I don’t look at it as buy; I look at it as rent, because there are very few things you buy with SaaS.”
Parizher, who has led IT at Taco Bell for seven years, spoke to the scale and strategy of tech integration across Taco Bell's 7,500 U.S. locations and 30 countries worldwide. “There’s a bit of a scale difference, but I think we all face the same constraints. We want to grow the business and make sure the unit economics work.” Reflecting on Scott Steinberg’s keynote about the future of restaurant technology, Parizher emphasized the challenge of incorporating new technologies. “I approach these things from an architecture and strategy standpoint: what is the strategy, and then how are we going to put it all together. Sometimes you have to build, and sometimes you have to buy, and we need to be comfortable with both.”
Integrations and RTN’s Data Standard Adoption
The discussion extended beyond POS systems to the entire tech stack, highlighting the complexities of integrating various technologies and data sources. “How do we better integrate and knit all these systems together?” Levine asked. “Ultimately, we have to get all of the data into one data warehouse, so we can drive insights to push the right information at the right time to the right people in operations, because all of the data is ultimately worthless if we aren’t leveraging it.”
Kimpel posed the question of which tech stack components the panelists would choose to buy or build. Levine described the POS as a “transaction engine…with a pipe that pushes orders from wherever customers are to where the food is made.” He stressed that this foundational system, whether it’s a restaurant management system or a POS, must accept, process, and return data reliably.
All three panelists—Levine, Parizher, and Kimpel—called for operators and tech vendors to adopt RTN Data Standards. Parizher shared his approach, explaining that he first evaluates whether a solution is readily available from tech vendors or sister brands. “If not, is it strategic for us to develop? If it is, we can do that. But we also have to consider future integration needs from the start,” he emphasized. During his tenure at Taco Bell, the company has expanded from two service channels to as many as nine, depending on the market. “I have to assume that they’ll continue to multiply. You have to think, ‘Am I building for today? Am I building for tomorrow?’”
Levine, when assessing tech needs, starts by asking, “What problem are we trying to solve? That’s where we always want our thinking to start.” He noted the rise of low-code and no-code solutions in the past four years, which have “completely lowered the barrier of entry to building something.”
This is just a small excerpt from one of the outstanding sessions at the MURTEC Executive Summit, held Oct. 21-23 in San Diego. Stay tuned for more recaps.
