That is the position of Matt Klug, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Culver's Franchising System. He has been with the brand for 12 years. Culver's runs about 1,070 restaurants in 26 states, nearly all of them owned by franchisees, and Matt puts the team at more than 66,000 people.
I built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations, then sold it. I hosted the speaker interviews at Workstream's On the Clock 2026 in Atlanta, and Matt's episode was recorded with one of the Workstream hosts. It is the one I keep going back to. He was asked the question every operator is thinking about right now, and he gave the opposite answer to the one the industry expects.
Half the industry is moving screens to the front counter. The math is easy to like. A kiosk does not call in sick, and it never asks for a raise.
Culver's looked at kiosks too, and decided against them. The reason is one sentence long, and it is not about cost.
"It may be cheaper, but our primary interest is the guest experience."
Matt Klug
Culver's wants a guest to walk in and be cared for by a person. Matt describes the standard as treating people almost as if they are being "welcomed into your home". You cannot hand that to a screen, so they did not.
He is not saying kiosks fail everywhere. He is saying they are wrong for this brand, which is a narrower point and a more useful one. The decision starts with what the company sells, not with what it spends. Before you price a kiosk, Workstream's look at where automation is really replacing hourly work is a level headed place to start.
This is the part people miss when they hear that a chain turned kiosks down.
A Culver's guest can order ahead on a phone for pickup. A guest sitting at a table can place an order electronically from that table. The ordering technology exists. It is just not the first thing a guest meets at the door.
"We much prefer they be greeted wonderfully when they come in the restaurant."
Matt Klug
Then a person carries the food out to the table, or out to the car. So the machine handles the transaction and the team handles the welcome and the delivery.
That is a design decision, not a rejection of software. The question was never technology or no technology. It was where the machine sits, and who the guest meets first.
Most operators say they care about hospitality. Very few can tell you what their crew is supposed to do about it on a Tuesday at 2pm.
Ask how the standard holds across 1,070 restaurants and Matt's first three words are "Consistency is really key."
He starts from the founders. Culver's opened in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1984, and the care for the guest came from the family who started it. That explains where the standard came from. It does not explain how 1,070 restaurants hold it.
What holds it is that the behavior has a name.
Culver's uses the phrase "touching tables". Leaders, franchisees and team members are expected to walk into the dining room, check on guests and ask if there is anything that would make the visit better. Say "be hospitable" and you have given nobody a task. Say "touch tables" and everyone knows what the next hour looks like.
"We're big believers that human interaction is so important and that smiles are contagious."
Matt Klug
That is the business case in plain words. A guest who is greeted well feels better for the rest of the day. So does the team member who did the greeting. Neither happens in front of a screen.
If the greeting is what you sell, hiring is how you make it. Every hour a manager spends posting jobs, screening replies and filling in onboarding forms is an hour they are not on the floor with guests and crew. Workstream's hiring platform takes that admin off their plate, so they can be choosy about who gets hired. Explore Workstream →
One question came up again and again in these interviews. What do outsiders get wrong about restaurant operators? Matt's answer was the sharpest of the week.
He says the biggest misunderstanding about restaurant operators is that they are not actively working in the restaurant. At Culver's the opposite is required. The candidate they want is someone who will build a restaurant in their own community and become "Mr. or Mrs. Culver's" in that town.
That is a hiring standard, and it is also a business model. The owner they want already knows people in the town, and the restaurant gives those people somewhere to meet. What the brand gets is a place where people gather and celebrate, run by someone the town already knows.
That shows up in the buildings too. He says the company is committed to its dining rooms as much as it is to a great drive through experience, which is not a small statement in 2026. Plenty of brands have quietly decided the dining room is a cost.
His example is Covid, the hardest stretch the industry has been through. Going into it, Culver's did not know what the business would look like. What it got was trust. Guests treated the restaurants as a safe place, and the company treated staying open as something it owed the town.
"We viewed it as a community obligation to really keep our restaurants open and provide people with a great meal that they can enjoy during some very difficult times."
Matt Klug
You do not earn that with a screen at the door.
Ask Matt for his best advice to anyone thinking about running several locations, and he does not name a system or a checklist.
"The best advice I would offer is be humble."
Matt Klug
The story behind the advice explains where it comes from. He came to Culver's without much restaurant experience, just one summer at a competitor when he was young. So he went and trained in a restaurant. There he got shown up by 14 and 15 year olds who, in his words, "could run circles around me".
He is a senior vice president now and he still tells that story first.
You can see the same thing at the company's annual reunion, where several thousand franchisees and leaders come together. Nobody files in quietly. In his words, "We clap people in." The doors open, people hug and shake hands, and the room applauds the people walking through it.
At the first reunion he attended, in Milwaukee, he heard a Harley-Davidson engine inside the auditorium. Lea Culver, one of the co-founders, rode it down the main aisle to the stage and opened the event. He has never forgotten it, and he uses it to describe what the brand is like.
Culver's applauds its own people when they walk in, and it keeps a person at the counter when a guest walks in. That is one decision, not two.
Matt has 1,070 restaurants and a support center behind him. None of the following needs either.
None of this makes Culver's anti technology. They run ordering software, and they run it well. They just refused to put it in the one spot where a person was doing something a machine cannot do.
That is the whole decision, and you can make it this month at two locations as easily as they made it at 1,070.
Because the greeting is the product, which is the call Culver's made across about 1,070 restaurants. Matt Klug says the cost saving is real, but the guest experience comes first. He wants a guest cared for the way they would be if they were welcomed into your home, and the company decided a screen cannot do that job.
Yes, if the technology sits somewhere other than the front counter, which is how Culver's does it. Guests can order ahead on a phone for pickup or order electronically from their table, and a team member carries the food to the table or the car. The machine takes the transaction and the person keeps the welcome.
Name the behavior you expect and train it, which at Culver's means the phrase "touching tables". Leaders and team members are expected to walk the dining room, check on guests and fix anything that would make the visit better. Matt Klug traces the standard back to the founding family in 1984 and says consistency is the key to holding it.
Because the owner being present is what guests are buying, and Matt Klug says the biggest misunderstanding about operators is that they are not in the building. Culver's looks for candidates who will become known figures in their own town rather than run the business from an office. The dining room gets the same attention as the drive through.
Be humble, which is the first thing Matt Klug says after 12 years running people for a 1,070 restaurant brand. He tells the story of being shown up in training by 14 and 15 year olds who could run circles around him. His point is that the people closest to the guest usually know more than the person with the title.
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About the author. Wilson K Lee built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations and sold it. He now runs wilsonklee.com, where he publishes real numbers and playbooks for food and beverage owners, and he hosted the speaker interviews at Workstream's On the Clock 2026.