EXCLUSIVE: Just Salad streamlines corporate communications with AI
Just Salad is integrating generative AI into its internal communications and document management solutions.
Chain Store Age recently spoke with Matt Silverman, CTO, Just Salad, about how the fast-casual restaurant chain is implementing the Google Gemini generative AI chatbot within an established Google Workspace platform that includes solutions such as Docs, Gmail and Sheets to enhance corporate communications and operational efficiency.
Founded in 2006 and based in New York City, Just Salad has more than 80 locations and almost 100 restaurant team leaders who are utilizing Google Gemini and Workspace.
What issues was Just Salad having with communications effectiveness and efficiency?
Maintaining efficient and helpful communication is always a challenge, especially with a growing business. To address this challenge, we’ve worked to make collaboration part of our culture and emphasize the value of direct, straightforward, and quick communication.
Why did you decide on generative AI and Google Gemini?
We have had success using Google Workspace tools. When we heard that you could use AI in these tools that our employees already know, we were excited to try it.
As we have been testing Gemini for Workspace in several different scenarios, we see a lot of potential in it to save employees a lot of time. It can summarize long email threads, which saves employees time catching up on context.
The Gemini chat experience has been seamless to adopt since it does not require maintaining new user accounts on a separate platform for AI chat.
What have the results of the initiative been?
The biggest takeaway we’ve seen is that Gemini for Workspace has saved our employees time. This is a big benefit because it means they can reinvest this time in other things.
With Gemini in Gmail, employees can more quickly get through email or alleviate time spent on other mundane tasks, and instead focus on our products, people and all the other things our organization needs.
We have also seen a lot of interest in the Gemini web chat, which has made generative AI accessible to all of our Workspace users, allowing them to start learning how to interact with large language models. This has been an important part of our AI adoption strategy for corporate team members.
What do you see as the role of generative AI in corporate communications in general?
Maintaining efficient communication is always a challenge, especially as an organization grows. I see generative AI as a tool that can help improve communications at scale.
However, to maximize the potential of any tool, people need to know how to use it. My recommendation for business leaders and teams who are considering generative AI or who are just getting started using it is to put it to work on the tasks you repeat every day.
Consider asking generative AI to take notes in meetings, draft email follow-ups, or summarize the contents of your inbox.
Are there any future plans for this project you can discuss?
We want to bring a healthy, affordable, great-tasting product to our customers in a sustainable way. I think AI can help us sustain this mission. Building on how we pioneered a seamless online ordering system and call center app years ago, we’re continuing to invest in our digital infrastructure.
By giving employees access to generative AI across the tools they know and use at work, like Gmail, Google Docs, and more, we’re setting the foundation for better work internally, which will lead to better results for our customers.
We also see huge opportunities for using AI to enhance our customer experience through various predictive and personalization initiatives.
[READ MORE: Home Depot optimizes customer experience, operations with Google Cloud]
