Digital Hospitality

7shifts CEO Jordan Boesch faced every peer's nightmare in the spring of 2020 when he had to relieve dozens of beloved team members of their duties. Everybody wants the dollar signs and status associated with being a CEO. But nobody wants to be a chief executive officer when it’s time to furlough 40 employees. “We had to tell the company that we had to lay off 40 people,” remembers Jordan Boesch on...

On the surface, Ryan Grilz and Danielle Grilz fit the bill of a Power Couple to a T. However, the term ‘power couple’ generally denotes a romantic union magnified by the individual's combined influence and earnings. The young and attractive husband and wife duo of Ry & D (Ryan and Danielle) naturally project the textbook image of the picture perfect partnership with pull, making the most of mo...

Kyle Inserra is both a commercial real estate advisor and a media mogul. To become the latter, he had to risk the former. “Everyone's coming from this fear mindset that you're giving away too much,” Kyle Inserra explained about sharing information on the Digital Hospitality podcast. “They don't want to say anything. "The ability to connect with folks digitally and give out information has been a h...

Dilip Rao isn't supposed to be here. Serving as CEO of Sharebite, the accomplished immigrant from a small village in India beat the odds not just for his ascent but also despite his blue collar upbringing. Dilip Rao is our guest on the Digital Hospitality podcast, where he talked about using business and technology to undertake the burden of social good. Watch on YouTube or listen on your favorite...

There's a lot of ways to find your business online. Sometimes it feels like there's too many digital doorways, right? Our Digital Hospitality Podcast guest, Marqii CEO Avi Goren, wants to help businesses be everywhere at once online. He co-founded the hospitality technology company to help create digital operational efficiencies for restaurateurs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPWgPDx1FF8 Managi...

America, Meat Dave! Dave Williamson is a man of many titles. Both a pitmaster and a podcaster, the personality known for his eclectic Meat Dave podcast is well seasoned when it comes to taking the heat and getting grilled. That is because our Digital Hospitality podcast guest Dave Williamson is also a traveling standup comedian. Dave Williamson is performing comedy at BBQ restaurants across the US...

While Jim Trotter is too humble to call himself great, his resume proves he truly is that. From reading Sports Illustrated as a kid to writing for Sports Illustrated as an adult, Jim Trotter’s ascent as a journalist mirrors the lessons he learned as a young athlete. “I always say, great players don't want to be great,” starts Jim Trotter (NFL Media) on his return to the Digital Hospitality podcast...

John Royce Lynch, CEO of PCMA Private Client Lending, is not just a serial entrepreneur, but a case study for success. But how do you become a serial entrepreneur? Is it by birth, by circumstance or by hunger? “I come from very humble beginnings,” admits our guest John Royce Lynch on this episode of the Digital Hospitality podcast recorded from his office in Orange County. “I think life is as a pr...

The Restaurant Coach Donald Burns wants to be a little voice in the back of your brain to remind you: "you can do it" — if you try. Donald Burns (@therealrestaurantcoach) wants to help your restaurant not suck. The restaurant industry veteran,

Mike Bausch has a Pizza Empire State of Mind. To build an empire it takes an Empire State of Mind. Our Digital Hospitality podcast guest Mike Bausch is a Tulsa, OK restaurateur, world pizza champion, author, and thought-leader in the hospitality and pizza industries. He has spent more than 15 years building his pizza empire into much more than a multi-unit pizzeria chain. Like all good leaders, Mi...

Sit in on a 2021 business coaching call with Cali BBQ Media Founder Shawn Walchef and his mentor David Meltzer. *** On this special episode of the Digital Hospitality podcast, the mentor/mentee talk shop about season 1 of David Meltzer’s competition reality show, 2 Minute Drill and our $5,000,001 Cali BBQ Media pitch on episode 8. Making the television show was a memorable learning experience for...

The first time marketing maven David "Rev" Ciancio married a couple was on stage at a GWAR concert, the iconic heavy metal band known for their outrageously obscene stage show. "As part of the finale, I pronounced them "Scum and Maggot," they then took the bride and the groom and fed them to the meat grinder underneath the drummer and then fed me to it," recounted Rev Ciancio, a branding and marke...

When Lunchbox Technologies CEO Nabeel Alamgir wants something to happen, he visualizes it. Before Lunchbox became a multi-million-dollar valued restaurant tech startup, Nabeel worked his way up the rungs of the hospitality ladder. To accomplish his dreams, he manifests his reality with visualizations to see each step. "I'm a visual thinker, a visual person," said the Lunchbox cofounder and chief e...

Watch Sam the Cooking Guy show how to make 5 epic and easy recipes for toast LIVE for the company Toast from his home in San Diego. *** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEEYOUOudmE   Toast Inc CEO Chris Comparato interviewed Sam Zien and Shawn Walchef for this Toast company call in February 2021 about owning and operating restaurants, operating a business during the pandemic, digital marketing...

Nelson Tressler wants to teach you how to create your own luck and become the best version of yourself with resourcefulness and rejecting a victim mindset. *** Got excuses?  Sure, you do. We all do. But how do your excuses stack up to that of entrepreneur and author Nelson Tressler? “My mom became pregnant with me when she was 15 years old,” said Nelson Tressler on the Digital Hospitality podcast....

From Auditor to Editor, and many significant stops in-between, Jim Laube's journey has focused on serving those who serve others: restaurant owners and operators. *** Some of the biggest successes in business come from unlikely career pivots. For Jim Laube, founder and president of RestaurantOwner.com, a winding road of working in restaurants and working with numbers took him from auditor to edito...

Your biggest critics are often your biggest fans. But try telling that to a restaurant owner with a Yelp page. Serving as the founder and CEO of Ovation, Zack Oates is helping rewrite the rules of online reviews by making them easier and more valuable for restaurant owners, operators, and customers alike. Zack Oates Is Ovation Founder And Ceo. He Grew Up In The Restaurant And Retail World. He Went...

Chelsea van Hooven and Choco are here to change the world by helping build a better food system with technology. Chelsea van Hooven is Global Industry Advisor for Choco, a digital ordering tool for restaurants and suppliers of all sizes. The Choco team is looking to digitize the food system so that less food is wasted, and more people are fed. This makes a major mark on global hunger and helps the...

Jason Ganahl is a Maestro of Meat and Marketing.  The GQue BBQ founder's love for barbecue, people, and sports has allowed him to flourish. To do so, he’s had to network not only to thrive but also to survive. Being outside of the major traditional barbecue markets has made Jason Ganahl hustle hard not just in his food service area but also online. Jason Ganahl is our guest on the Digital Hospital...

2021 is here, but the pandemic and the pivots pioneered because of it are still very much at hand. While the restaurant industry has been forced to suffer, adapt and evolve in 2020 more than most, the shift to takeout and delivery has allowed many doors (like at Cali BBQ) to stay open. Still, it hasn’t been easy. Though savvy restaurant owners and operators have been able to master the marketplace...

2020 was full of Lessons and Stories we will always remember.  One is the story of how Sam the Cooking Guy pushed us to start selling BBQ sauce online after his YouTube channel featuring our Jalapeno BBQ Sauce in one of his Sam the Cooking Guy recipes in late 2020. Out of pure love and friendship Sam The Cooking Guy Zien and his son Max Zien integrated our Cali BBQ Sauce into the YouTube recipe fo...

If you're looking for digital content to help tell your businesses story, turn the cell phone camera yourself.  That's what we did when made an Unboxing Video when we first received our new Toast POS system. It was fun to record us opening up our new restaurant technology toys, but the biggest impact came after we published the video online. The response was huge — from our community and the Toast...

We strive to bring you behind the scenes of running a BBQ Media company. We do that by publishing digital content (video, blogs, audio podcasts just like this) that explains the Stories and Lessons surrounding what we do and how we do it. The Digital Hospitality challenge for you is simple: try every day to change your life for the better. Every time the sun comes up or goes down you should feel g...

It's better to be done, then perfect.  When it comes to digital content creation, sometimes you just have to press publish before you think your work is perfect. Speed is important when it comes to publishing online, as is frequency. The more content you can put out online, the more attention you will receive. In the modern era, we're in an attention economy and you should be an attention merchant...

There were many stories and lessons that we at Cali BBQ Media will always remember from 2020, a year when so much changed. We wanted to do something a little bit different for our first five Digital Hospitality podcast episodes of 2021. To celebrate the end of 2020 and to kick off the new year, we will be joined by Stover Harger III, the executive producer of Cali BBQ Media and this Digital Hospit...