News Briefs

Dreamscape Hospitality is pleased to announce the appointment of Angela Englett as Vice President of Revenue Management. A seasoned hospitality professional with more than two decades of experience, Englett brings a strong track record of driving profitability, optimizing channel mix, and increasing market share across diverse hotel portfolios.

Englett began her hospitality career at the front desk and steadily rose through the ranks, gaining hands-on experience in front office operations, reservations, and revenue strategy. Her journey has shaped a well-rounded leadership style rooted in operational knowledge, strategic vision, and data-informed decision-making.

“Angela joins Dreamscape at a pivotal time, and we’re confident her leadership will drive continued growth and innovation,” shared Adam Patenaude, president of Dreamscape Hospitality. "As we continue to expand into new markets, Angela’s strategic insights and revenue expertise will be crucial in positioning our hotels for long-term success."

Prior to joining Dreamscape, Englett served as Regional Vice President of Revenue Strategy at Aimbridge Hospitality. In her new role, Englett will oversee the company’s revenue management strategy and execution, guiding her team to drive optimal profitability and performance across all segments and distribution channels.

“Dreamscape’s momentum and culture of excellence are what drew me in,”  shared Englett. “I’m looking forward to building on that momentum and helping shape a revenue strategy that’s both agile and impactful."

SpotOn announced the launch of SpotOn Profit Assist, the first AI-powered tool built specifically to help restaurant operators automate profit and loss (P&L) analysis and take greater control of rising costs. With inflation persisting and consumer spending under pressure, independent restaurant operators are being asked to do more with less. SpotOn Profit Assist arrives at a critical moment for restaurants, offering clear, actionable recommendations for operators and accountants to reduce expenses and protect margin — without requiring hours of manual spreadsheet analysis. 

Purpose-built for restaurants, Profit Assist connects with popular accounting platforms like QuickBooks Online, Xero and Restaurant 365 to automatically analyze a restaurant’s P&L, identify spending anomalies, and surface tailored cost-saving opportunities. For multi-unit operators, the tool will benchmark performance across locations. For independents, it will compare financials against similar restaurants, making sure no one’s flying blind.

SpotOn Profit Assist is already saving restaurants an average of 4.3% in total costs — a meaningful lift for operators balancing high food prices, unpredictable labor, and fluctuating demand. With economic uncertainty likely to linger, the ability to make smarter, faster financial decisions can be the difference between staying afloat and thriving.

"It’s like having a financial advisor built into my POS,” said Khara Mangiduyos of Kalei's Kitchenette. “I don’t have to wait until the end of the month—I get real-time insights that help me make smarter decisions every single day."

As part of SpotOn’s commitment to bringing AI across its product ecosystem, Profit Assist helps restaurants:

• Access a full, AI-analyzed P&L by integrating with their accounting software
• Uncover hidden cost-saving opportunities by looking at anomalies month over month and providing clear, specific recommendations
• Take greater control of margins and make confident, data-driven decisions
• Forecast labor and revenue more accurately with predictive insights

“Restaurants are and always have been a tight margin business, so understanding and actively managing costs is an industry wide need,” said Bryan Solar, Chief Product Officer at SpotOn. “Finding the free time to analyze each cost in a mountain of data is a real challenge. Profit Assist pulls together the numbers that matter — not just the dollars coming in, but the dollars going out — and turns them into clear, actionable insights so they can make smarter decisions with confidence.”

Profit Assist follows SpotOn Marketing Assist that creates and sends personalized campaigns based on real-time guest data. With Marketing Assist and Profit Assist, SpotOn is helping restaurants take control of what they can, so they can focus on what matters: serving great food, delivering great hospitality, and building resilient businesses.

Operators can learn more and join the Profit Assist waitlist at spoton.com/profit-assist-waitlist. 

In a deal that is valued around $1 billion, Roark Capital has acquired controlling interest in Dave's Hot Chicken.  

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Dave’s CEO Bill Phelps said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the reported $1 billion valuation for the deal is “pretty close.” The Wall Street Journal is also valuing the deal at $1 billion.

The fast-casual brand, which began in a Los Angeles parking lot in 2017, is on track to surpass 400 restaurants worldwide by the end of the year.

At MURTEC 2025 Experience Matters, Dave’s Hot Chicken CTO Leon Davoyan took the stage to share insights on Effective Automation, sharing how the brand leverages technology to enhance the guest experience and streamline operations across its global footprint. The brand was also recently featured in HT Talks Tech, showcasing its forward-thinking approach to tech-enabled expansion.

Dave’s has earned industry-wide recognition not only for its unit economics and guest satisfaction but also for its sophisticated digital strategy. With nearly six million social media followers and hundreds of millions of user-generated views, the company’s digital-first marketing model continues to be a key growth engine.

“This is one of the great entrepreneurial journeys of our time, and now we begin the next chapter in the story,” said Bill Phelps, Dave’s Hot Chicken’s CEO. “Our entire organization is excited about the fit between Dave’s Hot Chicken and Roark, and we’re looking forward to continuing to blow our guests’ minds and unlocking growth and value for our franchise partners.”

The leadership team—including the brand’s founders—remains in place and focused on the core pillars that fuel Dave’s growth: menu innovation, food quality, brand storytelling, guest-facing tech, automation, and data-informed decision-making.

Roark has other investments in the restaurant space including Inspire Brands and Subway.

North Point Mergers & Acquisitions served as Dave’s exclusive financial advisor.

The new DoorDash Preferred Integrations Program has ranked Qu "Excellent," its highest possible rating.

As delivery continues to play a larger role in the restaurant landscape, this program evaluates technology partners based on real-world system performance, error rates and integration depth. Qu emerged as the only POS to achieve exceptional scores across the board, delivering a 99.8% order success rate — more than 3x better than the industry average — with no need for middleware or manual workarounds. For restaurants, that means fewer headaches and more fulfilled orders, ultimately improving profitability through more sales and revenue growth. 

Qu injects orders directly from third-party marketplaces into the POS and KDS, enabling a seamless, automated order flow with significantly lower failure rates, real-time updates, centralized control and dynamic pricing across all delivery platforms. More importantly, merchants can update menus and pricing for all order channels from Qu's unified menu management platform and gain full visibility into performance, without the integration chaos.

"For too long, restaurant operators have had to sacrifice either speed or stability. We built Qu on the belief that they shouldn't have to choose," said Amir Hudda, CEO of Qu. "This recognition from DoorDash validates our mission to simplify the complex and bring harmony to restaurant operations. The results speak for themselves."

Restaurants using Qu's direct DSP integrations have already seen the difference. One national fast-casual brand, Hot Head Burritos, increased its third-party delivery volume and cut its order failure rate to just 0.15%, saving thousands in lost transactions each month.

"Qu's DoorDash integration has helped us reduce failed orders to well below industry standards, eliminating operational headaches we once faced," said Peter Wiley, Hot Head Burritos' Director of Marketing and IT. "Being the only partner ranked with an excellent performance level is a well-deserved recognition of their commitment to reliability and efficiency. Qu has been a game-changer for our team and a big win for our guests."

To see the full list of DoorDash Preferred Integration Partners, visit: merchants.doordash.com/en-us/preferred-integrations. 

Radisson Hotel Group is extending its hospitality tech stack to include one of the most underleveraged experiences in hotel ecommerce: restaurant booking. This week, Radisson announced the launch of a new online platform that allows guests and local diners to browse and reserve tables across its global portfolio of 1,900 restaurants—directly on RadissonHotels.com.

The tool supports searches by city, cuisine, and concept, and integrates rich content like menus and photography, offering a seamless, end-to-end digital dining journey. It also uses geolocation and personalized recommendations based on stay details—bringing Radisson’s digital transformation closer to full-service guest engagement, from room to table.

While the functionality is framed as a convenience for food lovers and local explorers, it’s also a strategic move: Radisson is positioning its F&B venues as standalone destinations in the eyes of consumers—and discoverable entities in the online travel and dining ecosystem.

Why It Matters:
 

1. It bridges the “last digital mile” in hotel dining.

Historically, hotel restaurants have lagged behind in online visibility, often buried within hotel websites or dependent on third-party platforms. This move brings restaurant booking into Radisson’s owned digital ecosystem—giving the brand more control over conversion, data, and customer experience.

2. It aligns with industrywide digital transformation trends.

From Marriott’s revamped Bonvoy dining experience to Accor’s push into F&B as a standalone vertical, major hotel groups are investing in better tech to elevate their culinary brands. Radisson’s approach—fully integrated, mobile-responsive, with geo-personalization—puts it in line with this growing trend of hotels treating restaurants as both guest amenities and local businesses.

3. It’s a content-forward ecommerce model.

By combining functionality with storytelling—like the “Taste of Heritage” culinary series—Radisson is merging marketing and booking tools. This model mimics the success of platforms like Resy or TheFork, but within the hotel’s own digital walls. It shows that content-rich UX can drive transactions, especially when built around emotion (local food culture) and convenience (real-time booking).

4. It prepares Radisson for AI and intent-based discovery.

A searchable, structured database of global restaurants with menus, photos, and bookability positions Radisson well for future integrations with GenAI platforms and voice search, where context-rich, hyper-local content will increasingly shape travel decision-making.

As generative AI platforms become mainstream tools for travel discovery, hotels are under pressure to adapt their digital strategies for new types of search behavior. Lodging Interactive, a long-standing digital marketing firm in hospitality, is meeting this shift with a new solution: Commingle AI Signals, an enhancement to its existing Commingle Guest Review Response Service.

The new service turns guest review responses into a discovery tool by incorporating strategically written “AI signals”—phrases and context that align with how travelers ask questions in generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience). Unlike traditional SEO that targets static website content, Commingle AI Signals takes a more dynamic and conversational approach, injecting fresh, brand-aligned content into publicly visible review platforms.

Key features include:

• Daily human-written, hotel-approved responses posted across major review platforms.
• Language optimized to improve a hotel’s relevance in intent-based, generative AI searches.
• Enhanced discoverability in platforms like ChatGPT, Google SGE AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
• A proactive alternative for branded hotels that may be limited by rigid corporate web templates.

What makes it unique:
Commingle AI Signals tackles a blind spot in many hotels’ digital marketing strategies: the impact of guest review content on emerging AI-driven search behaviors. While most SEO tools focus on websites and meta content, this solution uses review responses—a frequently updated, guest-visible content stream—as a search engine optimization vector. It’s a novel use of "earned content" to influence discoverability.

Why tech leaders should care:
This service offers a low-lift way for properties—especially branded or independently managed hotels with limited control over website infrastructure—to influence how they appear in GenAI search results. For tech leaders concerned with future-proofing digital visibility and maximizing ROI on reputation management, Commingle AI Signals turns routine operations (responding to reviews) into a strategic marketing asset.

Trend tie-in:
With Google and other platforms emphasizing conversational search and AI-generated summaries, the nature of content that gets surfaced is changing. Hotels need to adapt to a world where discovery starts not with “Hotels in Chicago” but “What’s a romantic hotel with great customer service near the riverwalk?” Commingle AI Signals helps properties become part of the answers to those kinds of prompts.