DRIDarden Restaurants, Inc.
AI adoption · Q4 2025 earnings call
Consumer DiscretionaryPiloting
5
extracted from this call
3 / 5
operational, no hard numbers
Not disclosed
no breakout in this call
AI was discussed in a single Q&A exchange initiated by an analyst question from Guggenheim Partners. CEO Rick Cardenas described current AI and machine learning applications across restaurant operations (forecasting, scheduling, food ordering) and corporate support center functions (code writing, repetitive task automation, accelerating project delivery). Management was explicit that AI is being used to amplify employees rather than replace them, and that no jobs have been eliminated due to AI. No financial quantification of AI investment or impact was provided.
Adopter
See full leaderboard →27/ 100
51
stage: piloting · max spec: 3
0
no quantified disclosure
35
1 scope
internal_use
5 AI mentions from this call.
Extracted verbatim from the DRI Q4 2025 earnings call transcript. Speaker, section, and specificity tier surfaced for each mention.
- T3Q&A· CEO· Internal useGreg asked about AI at a corporate level. You mentioned having AI-driven forecasts for general managers. Within quick service, a number of companies are talking about assistance for the general manager to help them do their jobs better, even beyond forecasting—labor allocation, food prep, what have you. Does that make sense for casual dining broadly? Does that make sense for Darden Restaurants, Inc.? Is that something you might be on and see as an opportunity?
“Absolutely, John. I did mention forecasting, but it is also about food prep and labor management and other things. I probably did not put it all in there, but it is all part of that. Whatever we can do to make the general manager and the restaurant manager's job easier, to get them out of the office and with our guests and with our team members, is what AI can help do. What I did say is we will not have it to our guests who are actually seeing it in their face, but we are using a lot of that already.”
— Rick Cardenas, DRI earnings call - T3Q&A· CEO· Internal useThis may be a little bit out of left field, but I am curious your thoughts on some of these AI tools that are coming on, how much you are using them at corporate, what that is unlocking for you from an analytics perspective. Any thoughts on what may be changing inside your business with what is going on?
“We are doing things here in the support center to improve on tasks that are repetitive, using AI to start projects faster and get things done faster. We have yet to take any jobs out because of AI. We have 200,000 employees in this company and only about a thousand of them work here. The other 200,000 work in the restaurant, and I would say we are probably not going to lose any team members in the restaurant because of AI.”
— Rick Cardenas, DRI earnings call - T3Q&A· CEO· Internal useThis may be a little bit out of left field, but I am curious your thoughts on some of these AI tools that are coming on, how much you are using them at corporate, what that is unlocking for you from an analytics perspective. Any thoughts on what may be changing inside your business with what is going on?
“We are using AI and machine learning to give our managers a much better forecast of their business so they can schedule better. We are using tools to help them write better schedules. They can order food better. The best thing you can do as a manager is to have a great forecast so you can staff your restaurant right and have the right amount of food.”
— Rick Cardenas, DRI earnings call - T3Q&A· CEO· Internal useThis may be a little bit out of left field, but I am curious your thoughts on some of these AI tools that are coming on, how much you are using them at corporate, what that is unlocking for you from an analytics perspective. Any thoughts on what may be changing inside your business with what is going on?
“We have a great team in IT here, over 200 people strong, and they are using it to write code faster, to get a lot of savings in what they do so that we can have more tools for our teams at a faster pace. Even some things that we have been looking to do for years that we were struggling to get done, AI is getting it done a lot faster.”
— Rick Cardenas, DRI earnings call - T1Q&A· CEO· Internal useThis may be a little bit out of left field, but I am curious your thoughts on some of these AI tools that are coming on, how much you are using them at corporate, what that is unlocking for you from an analytics perspective. Any thoughts on what may be changing inside your business with what is going on?
“the approach for AI for us is about amplifying the expertise of our people, not replacing them. It helps us deliver on exceptional service and that is what we will keep doing.”
— Rick Cardenas, DRI earnings call
What management wouldn’t quantify.
Analyst questions where management declined to share a specific number. The pattern of refusals is often as informative as the disclosures.
- No quantification of AI-related investment (capex or opex) provided.
- No metrics shared on productivity gains, cost savings, or efficiency improvements attributable to AI.
- No disclosure of specific AI vendors, platforms, or technology partners.
- Management did not quantify the number of restaurants or managers currently using AI-driven forecasting/scheduling tools.
- No forward guidance on AI investment or capability roadmap provided.
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