A Deeper Dive

How will tariffs affect restaurants? This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive features Neal Sherman, the founder of the used equipment company Tagex Brands. President Trump dramatically escalated the tariff rate on imported goods to an average of 27%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. That’s expected to have an impact on restaurants. Most restaurant chains source the bulk of their food from within...

How does Chili’s keep doing this? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business finance podcast A Deeper Dive features George Felix, the chief marketing officer for Chili’s parent company Brinker International. We spoke with Felix at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. We wanted to talk about Chili’s marketing, and how it’s taken advantage of social media to draw attention to the brand. The cha...

How do you teach an old pizza chain new tricks? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features David Karam, the CEO of the pizza chain Sbarro. The pizza chain was founded in 1956 and for years thrived inside mall locations. But the company took on too much debt and filed for bankruptcy twice after the Great Recession.  We wanted to talk with Karam to understand what...

How did restaurants do in 2024? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive is all about the Technomic Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. Kevin Schimpf, senior director of industry research at Restaurant Business sister company Technomic, joins the episode to talk about the ranking.  The restaurant industry did not have a great year in 2024 if you look at the overall numbers...

How will the bankruptcy filings of TGI Fridays and Hooters affect the market for securitizations? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Ed Cerullo, a credit analyst with Octus, to talk about whole business securitizations and the potential impact those bankruptcies can have on the market.  Whole business securitizations use a company’s cash-generating assets...

In this special episode of A Deeper Dive — guest-hosted by Nation’s Restaurant News editor-in-chief and Take-Away host Sam Oches — Sam talks with Joey Cioffi, founder and CEO of The Salad House, a New Jersey based franchise that has grown to 20 locations since it first opened in 2011. Cioffi joined the podcast to share how The Salad House attempts to strike a balance between healthy and indulgent...

What is the strategy for Authentic Restaurant Brands’ newest acquisition? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Alex Macedo, the CEO of the multi-brand operator Authentic Restaurant Brands (ARB).  The company recently acquired the New England polished casual-dining concept Tavern in the Square, its latest in a series of deals for largely regional chains. The...

How has the pandemic affected restaurants? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Lisa Miller, a consumer strategist and the author of "The Business of Joy." The podcast is part of our series on the impact of the COVID pandemic on the restaurant industry five years after it first hit. The pandemic wiped out a huge percentage of sales.  More than hal...

Why are restaurant chains still having challenges in 2025? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Rich Shank, the senior principal with sister company Technomic.  We wanted to talk with Shank because of the uncertain state of the restaurant business so far in 2025. A lot of people thought that things would improve this year after a difficult 2024. But so far...

What’s going on with egg prices? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Ricky Richardson, the CEO of the breakfast-and-lunch franchise Eggs Up Grill.  We wanted to talk to Ricky because he recently posted about a decision his franchisees made in reaction to egg prices. Egg prices have hit record highs this year because of an outbreak of avian influenza, which...

How should we think of the shift in marketing at Starbucks? This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive is about marketing restaurant brands and it features Dawn Kane, the CEO and co-founder of Hot Dish Advertising.  Kane has extensive experience in marketing and was recently named the 2024 Bonny LeVine Award winner by the International Franchise Association, which recognizes women for their contribution...

How do you take a hot restaurant concept national without destroying it? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Chris Schultz, the CEO of Voodoo Doughnut.  The doughnut chain was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2000 by Kenneth Pogson and Tres Shannon. It quickly gained a reputation for off-the-wall doughnuts— we’ll let you check out the website for the names...

How does a restaurant chain come back from bankruptcy? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Jim Greco, the CEO of the recently-emerged-from-bankruptcy Tijuana Flats. Greco is an industry veteran who has engineered turnarounds at Bruegger’s and Sbarro. He recently took over Tijuana Flats, the fast-casual Mexican chain, and is working on that comeback plan. W...

Why are some chains easily outperforming their biggest competitors?  This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Joe Pawlak, the managing principal with RB sister company Technomic, to talk about this topic. Several restaurant chains are easily outperforming top competitors right now. Chili’s is beating Applebee’s. Dutch Bros is outperforming Starbucks and Texas R...

The best time to invest in a restaurant chain may be when the industry is struggling. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Andrew Smith, the cofounder of the private-equity firm Savory Fund.  We have long wanted Smith on the podcast, largely because of Savory’s unique history. Smith has a restaurant operations background as a franchisee of brands like Littl...

What is the right franchising strategy for your restaurant brand? It’s not as simple a question as you may think. And I brought in Sean Thompson, VP of IT with Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, to discuss franchising strategies and what may or may not work for restaurant brands. The number of strategies for franchising a restaurant brand, or any industry for that matter, is as varied as th...

Should restaurants worry about weight-loss drugs? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Leo Feler, chief economist with the data firm Numerator, to talk about the potential impact of GLP-1 drugs on consumers’ food-spending habits. Drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy are increasingly popular. The medications are historically used for Type 2 diabetes but were fou...

Why did restaurants close so many locations last year? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Jim Balis, the operations partner with the private equity and debt financing firm CapitalSpring. We had Balis on the podcast to talk about the closures. A lot of companies closed locations in 2024. Many of them ended up in bankruptcy, such as Red Lobster and TGI Frid...

Traffic and value dominated restaurant news in 2024. Unsurprisingly, then, this episode of the Restaurant Business podcast of A Deeper Dive, which features some of the best content from a year’s worth of podcast episodes, focuses mostly on discussions about that very topic.  The first clip features Technomic’s Robert Byrne, talking about consumer frustration over restaurant prices.  You can find t...

How can you tell if an emerging brand will be a long-term success? It’s not an easy question to answer. A lot of private-equity firms, restaurant executives, real estate companies, consultants, vendors and others all spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try and answer that question. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive does its best to answer that question and f...

Restaurants have been loading their menus with new items lately. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive is all about menu development, and specifically why so many restaurant chains are turning to limited-time offers to get customers in the door. RB Senior Menu Editor Pat Cobe joins me to talk about that this week.  Here’s a statistic: There were nearly 26,000 limited...

It’s impossible to kill a restaurant chain, even when it’s dead. This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive features a discussion on a fascinating phenomenon in the restaurant world lately: Operators bringing formerly dead or dying brands back to life. RB colleagues Lisa Jennings and Joe Guszkowski join me to talk about three such concepts: Steak & Ale, Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes and Ground Ro...

Church’s Texas Chicken has a new recipe that’s its old recipe.  This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Joe Guith, CEO of the chicken chain. He joined us for an exclusive look at the company and its growth plans.  Church’s does have some big growth plans. The company wants to get to $2 billion in system sales by 2028, up from $1.4 billion last year.  We talk a...

What’s the story behind the Hawaiian barbecue trend? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Elisia Flores, the CEO of the 200-plus unit franchise, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.  L&L is rapidly growing and helped pioneer the idea of Hawaiian barbecue, though Flores explains exactly what that is. The chain’s system sales grew more than 10% last year, according...

What is happening with TGI Fridays? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features a discussion on the recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the casual-dining chain TGI Fridays. RB Senior Editor Joe Guszkowski joins me on the podcast to discuss the situation.  TGI Fridays’ filing over the weekend was hardly a surprise, given the chain’s years of decline and its appa...