Beyond Data Management Podcast

Can artificial intelligence replace million-dollar restaurant audit programs—and make food safer at the same time?

Recorded at the 2026 WAFDO, CEHA and Rocky Mountain Food Safety Conference Mega Conference in Denver, Cameron Garrison sits down with PathSpot co-founder and CEO Christine Schindler and Chopt Creative Salad Company co-founder Colin McCabe.

Colin shares how he and Tony Shure grew Chopt from one New York City restaurant into a major fast-casual brand—and how an outbreak involving a product Chopt did not even serve still damaged sales because consumers associated the problem with salad generally.

The conversation then moves into the future of restaurant food safety: connected temperature monitoring, handwashing verification, digital labeling, AI-powered spot audits, photographic evidence and real-time coaching.

Christine explains how PathSpot is working to replace fragmented checklists and expensive, infrequent third-party audits with a continuous food-safety operating system. Colin offers the operator’s perspective: new technology only works if it is easy to use, saves labor and gives restaurant teams actionable information.

Chapters
0:00 Opening from the Denver Mega Conference
0:54 Meet Christine Schindler and Colin McCabe
1:07 Building Chopt into a 100-restaurant brand
1:39 How a lettuce outbreak hurt an unrelated brand
3:45 The origins of fast casual
4:24 A restaurant founder obsessed with food safety
4:59 How Colin found PathSpot
6:40 The complete food-safety cockpit
7:37 Overcoming cost and operator mindspace
9:51 PathSpot adoption across the food industry
10:31 AI spot audits and major cost savings
11:09 Photos, standardization, and continuous oversight
12:43 Technology must be easy and save time
13:30 Replacing seven-figure audit programs
14:34 Turning audit time into targeted training
16:27 Restaurant staffing, turnover, and training
17:07 Why Chopt employees stay
18:59 Food safety as a predictor of restaurant performance
20:21 Technology as a recruiting and culture advantage
21:32 Restaurants, health departments, and data sharing
23:09 The next PathSpot innovations
25:13 How AI changes product development
26:18 Closing remarks

They also discuss:

• Why traditional inspections provide only a snapshot
• How photographic evidence reduces disagreement and auditing bias
• The potential to save restaurant brands seven figures in audit and travel costs
• Turning inspection findings into targeted employee training
• Restaurant staffing, retention and food-safety culture
• Why strong food-safety performance can predict overall restaurant performance
• How technology can become a recruiting and retention advantage
• Whether restaurants should share internal safety data with health departments
• Why AI allows technology companies to build requested features much faster

Learn more:

PathSpot: https://pathspot.com
Chopt Creative Salad Company: https://www.choptsalad.com
WAFDO: https://wafdo.wildapricot.org

Beyond Data Management is hosted by Cameron Garrison and powered by HSGovTech.

#FoodSafety #RestaurantTechnology #ArtificialIntelligence #EnvironmentalHealth #PathSpot #Chopt #RestaurantManagement #PublicHealth #FoodService #BeyondDataManagement
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Description
Dr. Ben Ryan joins Cameron at GEHA 2026 on Lake Lanier, about a half hour outside Atlanta. Ryan is a professor at the Frist College of Medicine at Belmont University in Nashville, where he is putting environmental health into a brand-new medical school. He previously helped stand up a master’s of public health and environmental health program at Baylor, and he is in his first year as NEHA Region 7 representative (Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida).

They get into why first-year med students light up over toxicology and food safety, why an MD running a health department often has almost no environmental health training, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of about 27,000 environmental science and occupational health jobs a year for the next decade. Ryan on the salary gap pulling people out of local government, Tennessee’s tuition package as a retention tool, and why a five-to-ten-year pipeline may be the realistic model.

Episode Timeline:
0:00  Opening and Introduction
0:22  Meet Dr. Ben Ryan
0:55  Bringing Environmental Health into Medical School
2:50  Environmental Health Careers and Workforce Demand
4:26  Recruiting and Retaining Government Professionals
5:24  What a NEHA Regional Representative Does
6:46  Teaching Future Physicians at Belmont
8:54  Why Build a Brand-New Medical School Program?
10:38  From Australia to the United States
11:52  Environmental Health in Australia vs. the U.S.
14:36  Pandemic Response and Geographic Isolation
16:58  Adapting to American Culture
18:06  NEHA Growth and the Next Generation
18:34  AI, Surveillance, and the Human in the Loop
20:12  Turning Data into Faster Public-Health Action
22:03  How Students Should Use AI
23:04  Measuring Environmental Health’s Impact
24:46  Closing Remarks

Also on the table: Australia vs. the U.S. He grew up in Canberra, trained at Griffith in Brisbane, and has been in the States about nine years. Australia is only now opening a CDC and has no National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences equivalent. Dengue, cyclones, and local environmental health officers look familiar. The pandemic timeline did not. Friends back home were still locked down while he was at a Rangers game.

They close on NEHA’s 7,000-plus members, 1,300 at the Kansas City AEC, 150 of them students, and using AI on inspection and surveillance data with a registered environmental health specialist still in the loop. Georgia’s new system lands in November. Same rule as everywhere else: storing the data is not the same as acting on it.

Beyond Data Management is powered by HS GovTech. 

Recorded live at the Lake Lanier Islands Resort for GEHA 2026.
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Chase Boddicker never planned to be a health inspector. He trimmed trees and sprayed pesticides for Grand Junction Parks and Rec. His wife Kyla saw the Mesa County posting and said try it. Three years later he’s on the western slope talking food, air, and why the job is almost never the hammer people think it is.
Recorded live at the CEHA + WAFDO Mega Conference in Lakewood, Colorado.

In this episode:

Iowa cornfields to 1.5 million acres of public land on the western slope
Why “thank God you’re here” is the sentence that makes an inspector pay attention
Cat food in the kitchen — “obviously, to feed the cats” that were the pest-control plan
The operator closed on their very first routine inspection
The mobile unit that kept selling because “the freezer still works”
The guy who called every inspector an expletive… then roasted Chase for temping chicken wrong… then decided Chase was his favorite
Colorado’s certified nose: Nasal Ranger, opacity, burn bans
Advice for day-one inspectors: be curious, drop the acronyms, say “I don’t know”
Yellow gloves on the ready-to-eat line, and why humility in someone else’s kitchen matters
Why asking about the brisket is better enforcement than writing the ticket
“¿Cómo se dice?” and the Mesa County team behind him

Chase’s rule before he writes anything down: what are they trying to do?
Beyond Data Management — powered by HS GovTech.

Chapters
text0:00 Episode Preview
0:32 Opening
0:45 Live from the Colorado Mega Conference
1:26 Meet Chase Boddicker of Mesa County
2:52 From Tree Work to Environmental Health
3:52 A Wife’s Nudge Changes a Career
5:11 AFDO 
6:07 From Iowa to Colorado
7:23 The Relational Side of Inspections
10:38 Cats as Pest Control
12:44 Memorable Inspection Stories
17:32 Air Quality and the Certified Nose
19:15 Advice for New Inspectors
21:13 Curiosity as a Career Advantage
24:17 Seizing Unexpected Opportunities
26:20 Humility and Respect Inside Kitchens
28:07 Education Over Enforcement
29:58 The Team Behind the Inspector
31:26 Closing Thoughts

Guest: Chase Boddicker, Mesa County Public Health, Colorado
AFDO Fresh Take Friday Webinar Series:  https://AFDO.org/fresh-take-Fridays

Recorded at: CEHA and WAFDO Mega Conference, Lakewood, CO
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Danielle Hurst, MPH, is Cook County’s only environmentalist — 87 food services, septic, land use, billing, the whole door. She also emceed every session at GEHA 2026. Recorded as the conference wrapped at Lake Lanier.
She spent 10 years as an X-ray tech, started an undergrad for PA school, and applied for this job when epi didn’t have an opening. She stayed because she does not like sitting in an office.
In this conversation:

What it means to be the only EHS in a 10-county South Georgia district’s smallest county
Mom-and-pop consistency vs. corporate turnover — and restaurants that never came back after COVID
Regulating people you see in the grocery store and whose kids go to school with yours
Why she calls people like Tim Callahan “hidden heroes”
Food trucks, sister agencies, and why Georgia’s Health–Ag relationship is stronger than most states
Rolling into president-elect and running the conference again next year
How she booked the guests before the podcast even unpacked

Live from GEHA 2026, Lake Lanier, Georgia.

Beyond Data Management, powered by HS GovTech.
Chapters

00:00 Wrap-up at Lake Lanier

00:53 She booked Food Truck Matt off an episode

01:00 Emcee of every session

01:16 Cook County — 87 facilities, one environmentalist

02:34 Mom and pop vs. turnover

03:18 COVID, staffing, restaurants that closed

04:05 Neighbors in the grocery store

05:37 Was the conference a success?

07:54 Tim Callahan’s award

08:08 Hidden heroes

09:13 X-ray tech to environmentalist

12:20 President-elect next

13:10 The food truck session

13:49 Health and Ag in the same room

15:14 Find your Danielle

16:38 Tear-down / thanks
Links

AFDO Meaningful Metrics — https://www.afdo.org/training/
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Joseph Addison (Fayette County, Georgia) has placed in the NEHA photo contest three years running. Recorded live at GEHA 2026, he walks Cameron through 12 photos from the field — the funny ones, the filthy ones, and the one he did not put on the report.
In this episode:

-“Biscuitus” and other kitchen personality that isn’t in the code

-A septic repair that got dumped into the neighbor’s yard (2nd place, NEHA general category)

-The pizza-place back room that looked like a lab — and why he pocketed the phone and left

-Dentures in a mixing bowl
A septic tank that floated out of the ground after a pump-out and a downpour

-Bloodshot googly eyes over a prep sink

-A hibachi floor so greasy it looked black — and why that still wasn’t an automatic close

-The difference between “gross” and “will put someone in the ER”

-Joseph’s point the whole hour: this is not a gotcha job. Inspectors are guests in someone else’s house. Call your inspector before the floor turns into sludge.

Beyond Data Management — powered by HS GovTech. Recorded at GEHA 2026, Lake Lanier.  Special thanks to Danielle, Austin and the entire GEHA team for their invitation and hospitality.

Be sure to subscribe for free to AFDO's Quick Take Friday's: https://AFDO.org/fresh-take-fridays

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:23 Live from GEHA + the NEHA photo contest
1:48 Why some departments won’t let inspectors take photos
2:34 Fayette County, Georgia
3:09 Photo 1: World Famous Biscuitus
4:07 Photo 2: Septic repair dumped into the neighbor’s yard
7:11 Photo 3: The pizza-place back room
10:25 Why he didn’t write it up — or call the cops
11:17 The roadside fish box with one prop fillet
12:03 The dentures
21:00 The septic tank that floated out of the ground
21:45 Googly eyes over the prep sink
23:42 Dishwasher grease + the same facility’s floors
26:00 Hibachi grease measured in inches
28:20 Gross vs. what actually shuts you down
30:10 They volunteered to close — then pressure-washed the building
31:15 Recurring segment: Life on the Road with Joseph Addison
32:10 Advice to operators: call your inspector
33:14 Close

This episode captures the unvarnished side of public health work. Cameron walks through an actual inspector actual camera roll, showing the bizarre and challenging scenarios that inspectors encounter daily. It is a raw look at what really happens when you walk into a site and find a pizza place that defies all logic.

Subscribe for weekly public health and safety breakdowns. Let us know in the comments: what is the strangest thing you have ever found on an inspection?

Beyond Data Management, powered by HS GovTech.
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Please remember to like and subscribe - and reach out to us with your stories and show ideas Beyond@hscloudsuite.com