Press kit
ROB — Restaurant Owner Buddy
An operating companion for independent restaurant owners, built by one of them.
Updated September 2026 · Atlanta, Georgia · founder@restaurantownerbuddy.com
The film
48 seconds. Cleared for editorial use.
1920×1080, H.264, 48 seconds. Contact us for a broadcast master or a version without music.
The story, in brief
Gilbert Yeremian started in restaurants in 1989 — hotel food and beverage first, then restaurant management — and has owned his own places in Atlanta since 2000, now in his 27th year. Gilbert’s Mediterranean, Balance, HOBNOB Neighborhood Tavern, 10th & Piedmont, Casa Almenara. ROB is the tool he spent that whole career wishing existed, and finally built himself.
The problems ROB addresses are the ones that never appear on a menu: a pricing mistake nobody catches for months, a menu idea that dies in a notebook because there is never time to cost it out, a margin that quietly disappears with no clear explanation. Yeremian is not a software engineer by background — he is an operator who got tired enough of those problems to build the answer.
ROB watches the numbers an owner does not have time to watch, and turns an idea into a costed, actionable plan in minutes rather than months. It is built for independent operators, by one of them, at a moment when independents are under more cost pressure than at any point in recent memory.
The restaurants behind it
ROB is not a founder’s guess at what operators need. Yeremian has opened and run these Atlanta rooms himself, and is in his 27th year of ownership.
| Opened | Concept | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Brookwood Grill | Manager — his entry into the Atlanta restaurant scene |
| 2000 | Gilbert's Mediterranean | Opened with his brother Sean as an international gourmet market; grew into a full-service restaurant known to regulars as Gilbert's, or simply G's |
| 2003 | Balance | Nutritionally balanced, eclectic cuisine |
| 2010 | HOBNOB Neighborhood Tavern | An Atlanta neighborhood favorite |
| 2012 | 10th & Piedmont | Midtown |
| 2023 | Casa Almenara | His most recent opening |
Yeremian was born in Turkey and trained in hotel management at Bilkent University, continued his studies in Brussels, and took a degree in business and finance at Mercer University in 1999 — the finance half of the background that shows up in what ROB pays attention to.
Fast facts
- Product
- ROB (Restaurant Owner Buddy), an operating companion for independent restaurant owners
- Founder
- Gilbert Yeremian, in restaurants since 1989, an Atlanta owner since 2000, now in his 27th year
- Headquarters
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Founded
- 24 July 2026
- Funding
- Bootstrapped. No outside capital.
- Pricing
- $75 per month, or $795 per year, for a single location. Multi-location plans for small groups start around $140 per month.
- Trial
- 30-day free trial. A card is collected at signup but nothing is charged until the trial ends, and there is a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first charge.
- Built for
- Independent operators and small groups, not chains
- Interface
- Conversation-first, including voice — deliberately not a dashboard
- Works with
- Toast, Square and Clover, plus Excel, Word and PDF records. No migration and no POS disruption.
The numbers, with sources
Every figure below is attributable. Please cite the original source rather than ROB — these are industry figures, not company claims.
| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 36% | Increase in total expenses for an average restaurant, 2019 to 2026 | National Restaurant Association estimate, reported July 2026 |
| 41% | Increase in average hourly earnings for restaurant employees since pre-pandemic | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited by the National Restaurant Association |
| 35% | Increase in average wholesale food prices since pre-pandemic | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited by the National Restaurant Association |
| 36% | Increase in menu prices, February 2020 to May 2026 | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics |
Utilities, occupancy, supplies and credit-card processing fees have each risen by double digits over the same period. The headline point: menu prices have risen roughly in step with costs — the two 36% figures above are the story. The average restaurant has run hard to stay in the same place, and an owner without good visibility into their own numbers has been absorbing the difference without knowing where.
What ROB does
ROB is organized around the parts of the job an owner actually carries. It is conversational rather than a reporting dashboard, on the view that owners do not need another screen of charts — they need an answer to the question in front of them.
Operations
Costs, pricing, margins, and the numbers that move quietly
Leadership
Staffing, scheduling, and the people side of the room
Networking
Owner-to-owner connection, and pooled anonymized insight
Growth
Turning an idea into a costed plan in minutes, not months
Quality of life
Reducing the load an owner carries alone
The differentiator Yeremian emphasizes
Most tools in this category help an owner look backward at what already happened. The capability Yeremian considers most distinctive is forward-facing: taking a new idea — a lunch program, a second location, a menu overhaul — and producing a real, costed, executable plan in minutes. The planning step stops being the bottleneck, and the owner’s energy goes into execution instead of paperwork.
How ROB differs from other restaurant AI
Reporters will rightly ask how ROB differs from general-purpose AI assistants, or from the AI features inside point-of-sale systems. The short answer: those tools answer questions about restaurants in general, and forget the conversation when it ends. ROB is an operating partner for one specific restaurant. It is set up around that owner’s numbers, menu, vendors and decisions, and it works through problems with them over time, the way an experienced partner who knows the room would. It is not tied to any single POS, and it is built and run by an operator in his 27th year of ownership, not by a software company approaching the industry from outside.
Quotes available for use
These are drawn from Gilbert’s own words and are cleared for publication. He is happy to give fresh quotes on any specific angle — just ask.
“I'm not a software person. I'm a restaurant guy who got frustrated enough to build the thing I wished existed.”
“Thirty-six years of watching good food and hard work get eaten alive by things that never show up on the menu.”
“Most independent owners I know are running on instinct and exhaustion, not data. I built this for them, because I am them.”
What we can provide
- An interview with Gilbert — in person in Atlanta, by phone, or on camera
- A live walkthrough of the product, using real restaurant numbers rather than a canned demo
- An introduction to Zack Kuru of Elyson Hospitality Group, a ROB customer who has agreed to speak with press directly
- Screenshots, logo files, and a founder headshot in print resolution
- Specific operating figures from ownership since 2000 and a restaurant career going back to 1989, for context or fact-checking
- Access to the rooms themselves — several of these restaurants are open in Atlanta and can be visited or filmed
Published so far
Listed honestly, because reporters check. Bylined pieces are Gilbert’s own writing, published by the outlet. Wire syndication is distribution rather than editorial coverage, and is not listed here.
Startup Fortune · 2 September 2026 · Earned editorial
Independent Restaurant Owners Do Not Need Another Dashboard, They Need Continuity
By Amilia Bon. An interview-led piece on why independents lack the operational continuity that chains get from dedicated departments, and how ROB is meant to supply it.
Restaurant Technology News · 4 September 2026 · Bylined
How Independent Restaurant Owners Can Master the Hidden Math That Determines Profitability
By Gilbert Yeremian. On the small, compounding cost increases that decide whether an independent restaurant is profitable — and why most owners have no one watching them.
Media assets
Contact
- Founder
- Gilbert Yeremian
- Website
- restaurantownerbuddy.com
- Based in
- Atlanta, Georgia
Boilerplate
ROB (Restaurant Owner Buddy) is an operating companion for independent restaurant owners, founded in July 2026 by Atlanta restaurateur Gilbert Yeremian, who started in restaurants in 1989 and has owned his own Atlanta rooms since 2000 — among them Gilbert’s Mediterranean, HOBNOB Neighborhood Tavern, 10th & Piedmont and Casa Almenara. ROB helps owners find money they are losing, price and cost with confidence, and turn a new idea into an executable plan in minutes. It works with Toast, Square and Clover as well as existing spreadsheets and documents, and is available at $75 per month or $795 per year for a single location, with a 30-day free trial. More at restaurantownerbuddy.com.