Cameron Fiorini, Vice President of Digital & Technology, Foxtail Coffee COLeading Digital Growth with Discipline and Purpose
We’re very intentional about evaluating initiatives through the lens of value versus friction. If something doesn’t clearly improve the guest experience, make life easier for store teams, or meaningfully improve decisionmaking, it’s usually not worth adding. At our scale, even small amounts of complexity multiply quickly, so we’re cautious about tools that don’t integrate cleanly or can’t be standardized across the fleet. The simplest question we ask is whether this actually removes work or just shifts it somewhere else.
Operational empathy is probably the most important principle. Technology has to work for the people using it every day, not just look good on a roadmap. We also prioritize standardization over customization, because consistency is what allows us to move quickly without creating fragility. And finally, we value progress over perfection. In a fast-growing environment, waiting for the perfect solution often slows the business more than it helps.
Turning Customer Data into Scalable Change
Data gives us a shared source of truth across the organization. It helps connect what’s happening digitally with what’s happening in stores, whether that’s understanding guest behavior, evaluating operational changes, or measuring the impact of new initiatives. The most important thing isn’t having more data, but making sure it’s timely, consistent, and accessible so teams at every level can actually use it to make decisions.
“The simplest question we ask is whether this actually removes work or just shifts it somewhere else.”
One of the biggest challenges has been managing the pace of change. Implementing new technology is usually straightforward compared to driving adoption across a large number of locations. That experience has reinforced how critical communication, training, and trust are. If teams don’t understand why a change is happening or don’t believe it will help them, even the best tools will struggle to gain traction.
My advice is to start with the business, not the technology. Spend time in the field, observe real workflows, and listen to the people closest to the work. From there, choose platforms that scale naturally and avoid one-off solutions that solve narrow problems but create long-term complexity. When technology supports how the business actually operates day to day, alignment tends to take care of itself.
