# Todd Vahlsing

Todd Vahlsing writes about restaurant technology adoption, enterprise sales, and account management in franchise systems, drawing on experience on both the restaurant-operator and technology sides.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/todd-vahlsing/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-vahlsing
- LinkedIn followers: 3,076
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, sales, enterprise-sales
- Based on 12 dated posts, latest 2026-09-25

## Summary

Todd Vahlsing is most useful for restaurant technology vendors needing thought leadership on adoption, enterprise sales, and franchise account management.

- Best for: Restaurant technology companies seeking thought leadership or advisory on adoption and enterprise sales strategy.
- Not for: Consumer foot traffic or franchisee recruitment campaigns measured by reach, clicks, and conversions.
- Check first: Ask about scope, deliverables, disclosure, fees, audience demographics, and any commercial relationship.

### Takeaways

- Technology succeeds when it fits real restaurant operations, not when its demo looks impressive.
- Past scheduling tools, software updates, and lab-tested hardware can falter during a dinner rush.
- Enterprise sales can take years, and corporate approval is only the beginning.

## Main ideas

- **Technology has to work in the restaurant, not just in a demo**: Vahlsing argues that new tools can look promising until they meet real workflows, imperfect data, and busy shifts. Technology can amplify strong operations, but make weak ones more costly. The question isn’t whether to embrace technology, but whether a tool solves an actual operating problem and can be adopted reliably.
- **The operator’s numbers and daily constraints decide whether technology sticks**: A vendor’s projected return isn’t enough. Vahlsing says adoption depends on measurable impact in live operations, with assumptions that hold up against the restaurant’s actual data and routines. Tools that add complexity or undermine speed, simplicity, and consistency are unlikely to last.
- **Enterprise diligence can create a new risk when technology changes quickly**: Vahlsing sees long buying processes as understandable: operations, IT, finance, and franchisees each have legitimate risks to manage. But lengthy reviews, implementation, and rollout can leave a company adopting technology that has changed during evaluation. Corporate approval also doesn’t guarantee franchisee adoption.
- **Approval gets a vendor considered; execution earns expansion**: When approved vendors offer similar products, trust comes from how they handle consequential moments. Vahlsing prioritizes communication, ownership, escalation, and staying with a problem over relying on approval status or feature lists.
- **Franchise account management is stewardship across an ecosystem**: Vahlsing argues that a large restaurant brand isn’t a single customer: corporate leaders, field consultants, franchise owners, suppliers, and restaurant operators all shape whether a partnership works. Account leaders need to understand and support that system, not just close a deal.

## Work to read

- [Technology is not the strategy. It is the amplifier](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/todd-vahlsing_ive-been-thinking-about-the-ai-hype-cycle-activity-7471184539625672704-Ox2i)
- [The real test for restaurant tech is ROI in a live operation](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/todd-vahlsing_restauranttech-bridgepointops-activity-7445824952970166272-_l9k)
- [Why enterprise restaurant technology adoption can lag the technology itself](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/todd-vahlsing_one-of-the-things-ive-been-thinking-about-activity-7468651065052176384-m-Ge)
- [Being an approved vendor is the starting line](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/todd-vahlsing_sales-customerexperience-franchising-activity-7434227283969658880-Jjfe)
- [When two approved vendors look identical, trust decides](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/todd-vahlsing_accountmanagement-restauranttech-leadership-activity-7439658533912125440-P69g)

## Brand relationships

- **BridgePointOps** (mention)

## Partnerships

Todd Vahlsing's posts explain how restaurant technology vendors earn expansion inside franchise systems, but document no paid engagements, media kit, rate card or sponsor policy. Some posts use a recurring hashtag, which is not evidence of a commercial relationship. Ask directly about scope, deliverables, disclosure and fees. Their emphasis on early communication, owning problems and staying engaged until a rollout works can help shape a brief, but does not describe an available format.

## Alternatives

- Patrick Winters: Choose Patrick Winters when the engagement needs a platform-strategy or investor view of restaurant technology. The posts treat Yum! Brands' BYTE platform as a unified AI ecosystem spanning loyalty, digital ordering, operations, labor, inventory, and data across more than 60,000 restaurants. They also track institutional capital moving into restaurant platforms through Roark Capital, Blackstone, KKR, and Mubadala. This angle works if the vendor wants to argue that scale, unified data, and centralized AI infrastructure are becoming competitive requirements, or speak to brand strategists and investors rather than operators and sales teams.
- Daran Adair: Choose Daran Adair when the vendor's audience is prospective franchisees or franchise-investment decision makers, or when the message needs the perspective of someone choosing a franchise rather than a technology partner. The posts coach buyers to assess repeat customer behavior, taste, and consistency before judging a concept's excitement. They warn that brand familiarity is not franchise research, pointing to store-level economics, operating demands, franchisor support, and existing franchisee performance. That supports due-diligence content for a franchise-development audience.
- Tom Crowther: Choose Tom Crowther when the engagement centers on the franchisor's own technology-governance question: who owns the overall picture as the network grows. The posts describe how a franchise system can double in size and gradually outgrow its approach to technology management without any single system failing. Crowther argues that networks may keep external suppliers but still need one clear role to set standards, decide where franchisees get choice, and judge which systems still fit where the business is heading. That suits thought leadership aimed at franchisor executives, board members, or a leadership team weighing a technology operating model.

---
AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/