AI Hype Hits a New Low: Jersey Mike's IPO Documents

The sandwich chain's IPO documents reveal a staggering number of AI mentions, sparking concerns about the industry's obsession with AI.

It's no secret that investors are hungry for AI-related opportunities these days. But when a sandwich shop like Jersey Mike's mentions AI 22 times in its IPO documents, you know the hype has reached new heights. As Julie Bort notes, this is not a company selling AI software, but rather a business that operates on submarine sandwiches.

'Surely a sandwich shop would have no need to mention AI in its S-1,' Bort writes. 'But lo and behold! The term artificial intelligence and its acronym 'AI' were mentioned 22 times.'"

"The AI mentions are not limited to just the company's main business. Jersey Mike's also found a way to mention AI in its investor-risk warnings, without explaining what it's using AI for that could be dangerous to investors."

"- In all fairness, as a company that operates franchisees, Jersey Mike's does rely on software (mentioned 52 times) and data (112 mentions), as all businesses do. Its AI risk warning was boilerplate copy, perhaps even necessary, as such disasters have already happened to other food businesses, like the half-baked AI inventory tool that Starbucks rolled out, which couldn't count and was recently scrapped."

"- Still, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the risk of an AI disaster for a company that produces real-life sandwiches, not AI slop, is about the same as, say, a franchise shop getting hit by lightning. That actually happened, by the way, to a shop in Texas in 2021. Yet weather was only mentioned five times in the S-1. And lightning? Not once.