I build restaurants, and the AI that runs them.
I'm Can Uzay. I run two kitchens in Reno, Nevada: Bora, a Turkish kitchen and bakery, and Piatto, an Italian pasta counter. I also built Usta, an AI purchasing platform for independent restaurants. I write about what both worlds taught me.
Two kitchens in Reno.
Restaurants are where I come from, and where I still spend my days. Two different tables, one standard: cook it properly, in-house, every time.
Bora
A Turkish table, set in Reno. Bread, simit and lahmacun out of our own oven all day, slow-cooked meats, meze, İskender gyro, and a full Turkish breakfast. Built around the easy joy of a shared table.
Piatto Reno
Italian, kept honest. Fresh noodles and sauces made from scratch, served fast at the counter inside Reno Public Market. It's the kind of plate you'd actually eat in Italy, without the tablecloth.
The problem I lived, turned into software.
Running two kitchens means fighting food cost every single week. Usta is what I built so independent restaurants don't have to fight it alone.
Usta
Independent restaurants forward their supplier invoices. Usta benchmarks prices across every member kitchen and generates purchase orders optimized for the lowest total cost. No hardware, no setup, just lower food costs.
- Forward an invoice. That's the whole onboarding
- See what other kitchens actually pay for the same item
- Purchase orders written for you, optimized across suppliers
- Built by an operator, tested in my own restaurants first
You don't have to be happy.
I wrote a book rooted in Adlerian psychology, about rescuing yourself from the pressure to perform happiness and building a life on courage and contribution instead. Available in English and Turkish.
Published AI research.
As CEO of Battle Born AI, I co-authored a peer-reviewed survey of large language models published in Electronics (MDPI, 2025).
Electronics · MDPI · 2025A Survey of Large Language Models
Evolution, Architectures, Adaptation, Benchmarking, Applications, Challenges, and Societal Implications: a comprehensive review of where LLMs came from, how they work, and where they're taking us.
Read my articles.
Essays at the intersection of my worlds: restaurants and business, AI, and Adlerian psychology. Written for people building a life, not just a career.
Articles
Long-form essays: the restaurant floor, the AI behind it, and the psychology of a good enough life. Delivered to your inbox.
Who is Can Uzay?
I'm a restaurateur first. Two kitchens in Reno, Nevada: Bora, a Turkish kitchen and bakery where we bake bread, simit and lahmacun in-house all day, and Piatto, an Italian pasta counter at Reno Public Market. The teams, the service, the nightly rush: that's the ground truth, and it's where every other idea I have gets stress-tested against reality.
Off the clock, I read and write about Adlerian psychology, enough to have written a book about it, in two languages. The thread through all of it: people don't need to be perfect or happy; they need courage, contribution, and good systems around them.
Good food. Good systems.
A good enough life.
Follow along as I write about building all three.