Chili's is up 500% since 2022 betting on basic tech | The Pirate Street Journal

The Pirate Street Journal · Sep 9, 2026 · 34m

HERE'S WHAT WE COVERED IN THIS EPISODE:

1. The best turnaround in casual dining ran on Wi-Fi, not AI.

Brinker International stock is up more than 500 percent since June 2022. Twenty straight quarters of same store sales growth. The CIO told the journal his team is not all in on AI. He bought a two year Wi-Fi overhaul across 1,200 restaurants, 23,000 iPads, and 9,000 kitchen touch screens. He got rid of the robot servers. Census data says under 20 percent of small firms use AI at all, against 37 percent of big ones, and that gap has not moved in five months. That is a leapfrog window. Market…