Why I Built ShiftTrained: A Founder's Story
You've opened over 20 restaurant concepts. What made you finally say "I need to build a tech product"?
Honestly? Frustration. Pure, built-up, two-decades-worth of frustration. I've opened everything from fast casual to fine dining. Different cities, different menus, different staff. And the ONE thing that never changed — no matter how much money I spent on restaurant staff training, no matter how many pre-shift meetings I ran — was that my servers could not describe the menu.
I'm not talking about the new hire who's been there a week. I'm talking about servers who've worked the floor for months. A guest asks about the risotto and the answer is "it's like rice, only more fancy." That's a real thing I've heard. More than once.
So what were you doing before ShiftTrained to train your staff?
The same thing every restaurant does. Pre-shift meetings where half the staff is on their phone. Printed study sheets that end up in the trash. Menu tastings that cost a fortune and happen once a quarter. The "shadow a senior server" approach where the senior server has bad habits too. And my personal favorite — hoping they'll just figure it out.
None of it scales. None of it sticks. And none of it gives you actual data on who has real menu knowledge and who's been faking it.
When did the idea for ShiftTrained click?
There wasn't one moment. It was a thousand moments. It was the allergic reaction that almost happened because a server didn't know there were pine nuts in the pesto. It was the Yelp review that said "our server couldn't tell us anything about the wine list." It was watching a $42 entree get sent back because the server described it wrong and the guest expected something different.
But the real click was when AI got good enough to actually read a menu and understand it. I'd been thinking about this problem for years, but the restaurant technology to solve it didn't exist until recently. When I saw what AI could do with a PDF — pull out every ingredient, every allergen, every price, every description — I knew. Upload your menu, AI builds the menu quiz, text it to your team. That's it. That's the whole product.
Why a quiz? Why not just give them a study guide?
Because nobody reads study guides. You know what people DO engage with? Competition. Scores. Leaderboards. Badges. Tell a server "study the menu" and they'll glance at it for 30 seconds. Tell them "take this quiz and your score goes on the leaderboard" and suddenly they're studying on their break.
The quiz format also gives the manager something they've never had before — actual data. Not "I think my team knows the menu." Hard numbers. Maria scored 94%. James scored 61%. Now you know who needs help and exactly what they got wrong. The AI even generates personalized study guides based on their missed questions. That's not a training binder. That's a restaurant training software system that actually works.
You mentioned 20+ concepts. What's your background?
I've been in the restaurant industry my whole career. Every role — dishwasher, line cook, bartender, server, manager, owner. I've opened and operated concepts across multiple markets. I know what it's like to be the owner sweating payroll AND the server fumbling through a wine description. That dual perspective is what shapes everything about ShiftTrained.
When I build a feature, I ask two questions: Would the owner pay for this? Would the server actually use this? If both answers aren't yes, it doesn't ship.
Who is ShiftTrained for?
Any restaurant where the menu matters. If you're selling $8 burgers from a counter, you probably don't need this. But if your menu has descriptions, allergens, wine pairings, seasonal specials, craft cocktails — if a guest can ask "what's in this?" and the answer matters — you need your staff trained on it. That's independent restaurants, small groups, hotel F&B, country clubs, catering companies.
The sweet spot right now is the independent owner or GM running 1-3 locations who doesn't have a corporate training department but knows their server training needs to be sharper.
What's the technology behind it?
The AI reads your menu PDF and generates over a hundred quiz questions automatically. Multiple choice, true/false, covering ingredients, allergens, prices, preparation methods, pairings — everything a server should know. The manager reviews and customizes the questions, creates a quiz, and shares a link. Employees take it on their phone. No app download, no login wall for the quiz-taker. Just tap the link and go.
We built it on modern restaurant technology infrastructure — it's fast, it works on any phone, and it's designed for the restaurant environment. Your server can take a menu quiz on their phone during a break. Five minutes. That's all it takes.
What's the vision? Where does ShiftTrained go from here?
AI menu training through quizzes is step one. The bigger vision is a complete staff training app for restaurant teams. Steps of service training by role — how a host greets, how a server sequences their tables, how a bartender manages their well. We're building toward POS integration so your menu stays synced automatically. And eventually, multi-location management so a restaurant group can see training data across all their spots from one dashboard.
But right now, today, the core product is live and it works. Upload your menu. AI builds the quiz. Train your staff. It's that simple.
Last question — what would you say to a restaurant owner who's on the fence?
Try it. The trial is free and there's no time limit. Upload your menu and look at the questions the AI generates. If you see questions your staff couldn't answer — and you will — you'll know why this exists. Your menu is your product. Your staff is the delivery system. If the delivery system doesn't know the product, you're leaving money on the table every single service.
Have a great day! — Terry
