Kimmie Dunlay on Restaurant Tech Trends: Facilities Intelligence and the Future of Hood Cleaning

Kimmie Dunlay, Sr. Director of Food Service at Kept Companies, joined host Justin Foster on the Restaurant Tech Trends podcast — a show that interviews restaurant industry leaders about how technology is changing multi-unit operations.

What she covers

Kimmie came up through restaurant operations, and she's never lost the belief that what happens behind the line matters as much as what happens on it. In the episode she covers:

• Why self-performed service is the key to national consistency for multi-unit brands.
• How automation brings real technology to the long-antiquated world of hood cleaning — and can actually lower insurance premiums.
• The shift from reactive to preventive maintenance, and why facilities teams have to stop being seen as a cost center.
• What "facilities intelligence" really means, and the operational data most brands don't have access to today.
• The vision for using AI to turn hundreds of before-and-after job photos into instant answers on whether the work got done.

It's a fast-paced, candid conversation — and yes, it ends with a rapid-fire round. Give it a listen below.