Meet the Speaker: Roland Fryer
HT caught up with Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard University and co-founder of Sigma Square. At MURTEC, Fryer is delivering the 2025 Economic Outlook for Restaurants on Tuesday, March 11, from 2:50–3:30 PM.
HT: It’s been a few years since we’ve had an economist on the MURTEC stage, and we’re thrilled to welcome you! With the potential changes that come with a presidential administration shift, we thought this would be the perfect time for you to share your economic insights and forecasts for restaurants – and perhaps the broader hospitality industry – in 2025 and beyond.
What inspired you to become an economist?
Fryer: In college, I took a Principles of Economics course taught by the university’s former president. From my very first class, I was hooked. Professor Amacher held office hours at 7 a.m. twice a week—which I now realize, as a professor myself, was a trick—but to his surprise, I showed up every Monday and Wednesday morning. We debated everything imaginable using basic economic reasoning: welfare policies, integration, car prices, labor demand in restaurants—you name it.
Sitting in Professor Amacher’s office, I learned how incentives drive behavior. To an economist, people don’t commit crimes because they lack morality – they do so because the benefits outweigh the costs. That perspective gave me clarity for the first time in my life. Growing up as a young man facing challenges, I finally saw the world in a way that made sense. Since those early days, I have searched for that same clarity in education reform, policing, health care, or labor dynamics.
HT: What’s your experience with the restaurant and hospitality industry?
Fryer: My mother was a shift manager at McDonald’s, and apparently, I was nearly born there! My own experience in the industry started when I was 14—I even forged my birth certificate to land a job at McDonald’s. That was the first of many frontline jobs I held in restaurants and hospitality, including Pizza Hut, KFC, Albertsons, and Golden Corral.
A couple of summers ago, I revisited those roots by interviewing dozens of store managers about their biggest challenges in hiring and retaining talent. I was shocked to learn that many brands are still using the same ineffective hiring strategies I heard our managers talking about in 1991. High turnover, a shortage of talent for management positions, and the headaches of scheduling were recurring themes. When I was 14, managers would hire anyone who walked in at the right time, only to be surprised when they weren’t high performers. The same pattern still plays out today.
The difference now? Corporate offices recognize the problem and are motivated to solve it.
HT: In your view, what’s the most significant development impacting the economy and the future of restaurants?
Fryer: The rise of machine learning and AI is a game changer for the economy and restaurants alike. These technologies are boosting productivity in ways we couldn’t have imagined five years ago, and reshaping the labor market along the way.
For restaurants, labor costs make up about 30% of gross revenue. Optimizing even 5% of those costs has huge implications. We’ve always known labor efficiency is key, but now we actually have the tools to make smarter hiring decisions, predict which employees will thrive in a specific environment, and build teams that maximize both efficiency and customer experience.
To put that into dollars and cents, take a brand with 350 stores that spends $26/hour on wages and benefits for frontline workers. If this brand optimizes its team to save even 1% of labor hours, this translates into $2.7M of cost savings.
HT: In addition to being a Harvard economist, you co-founded Sigma Squared. What inspired you to start it, and what should MURTEC attendees know about the company?
Fryer: We created Sigma Squared to help companies do exactly what I just described—harness new technologies, combined with solid economic reasoning, to optimize labor. I saw a gap in the market and combined my restaurant industry roots with my passion for economics to build the world’s only end-to-end talent optimization engine. We’re working with some incredible brands to help them win.
HT: You’ll be delivering your 2025 Economic Outlook for Restaurants on Tuesday, March 11, from 2:50–3:30 PM. Can you give us a brief teaser of what attendees can expect? Are there any economic trends you believe restaurants are overlooking but shouldn't?
Fryer: I’ll be sharing how technology, econometrics, and machine learning are redefining labor optimization—and what that looks like in practice. The future is now. Within the next 24 months, brands that don’t adopt these new technologies will be outcompeted by those that do.
This is just one of the dozens of sessions at the 30th anniversary MURTEC, Experience Matters.
Daymond John to deliver MURTEC 2025 keynote, and 15 Game-Changing Start-Ups will compete in Restaurant Technology Network's Start-Up Alley. Qualified restaurant attendees are invited to register for MURTEC at MURTEC.com.
