Local restaurant shows how AI can enhance jobs instead of replacing them

By Justin Hinton
January 12, 2026

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — CES may have come and gone, but the discussion surrounding artificial intelligence is sticking around.

Peter Jarich, head of GSMA Intelligence, has his thumb on the pulse of the mobile ecosystem and how AI is transforming connectivity.

When I spoke to him, he offered reassurance to those worried about rapid changes:

“Don’t get scared. It’s probably not coming as quick as you think,” he said. “There’s a big distance between sort of a video that shows something to being productized or being out there in the real world at scale.”

Even with that in mind, a lot of people are worried AI will eventually replace them, especially when it comes to their jobs.

“To your point, there is this feeling of combating it,” Jarich said. “But in many ways, there’s opportunities to figure out how it augments what you do, how it makes you better at what you do, how it makes you more efficient, how it maybe opens up new opportunities.”

He says it’s important to start taking advantage of resources now to learn the ways it can improve your life.

One local company taking advantage is Rachel’s Kitchen.

Three of the four locations owned by Kent Asaki use a voice-ordering system called Ryan, named after the founder’s son, to take orders. It’s powered by the tech company Kea.ai.

“Being able to have Ryan, our digital dining assistant, alleviates some of that stress and workload for our employees, gives our team members the opportunity to better serve our customers,” Asaki said.

Asaki also serves as the chief development officer at the brand level and says they’ve been at it for more than a year.

He says right now, phone orders make up about 5% of business, with about half of those customers using Ryan.

“To be fair, there’s maybe 10-15% of customers who don’t want to use AI for whatever reason, and for those folks, when they’re greeted by Ryan, we can transfer the call. That’s very easily done. For the other 85-90% of the folks, they’re just giving thumbs up,” Asaki said.

As for where it’s going in the future, he says beyond phone orders.

He’d like it used on any device where you can access the internet.

“Just keeping pace is probably the biggest challenge to making sure everything is keeping up with the times,” said Asaki.

It’s a constant balancing act to provide a great customer experience where the business and its employees can benefit from ever-evolving technology.

Ryan is available to customers at the Trails, Centennial Hills and the District locations of Rachel’s Kitchen.