FULL COMP: The Voice of the Restaurant Industry Revolution

When did you give up on the idea of balance? How many promises have you broken to yourself or to friends and family? It's so damn hard because the needs of our businesses are immediate and constant. The fires we put out on a daily basis are sometimes literally so how can we step away? How do we unplug without shooting our future selves in the foot? Tamara Loehr has an idea and it's pretty compelli...

Without question, one of the foundational elements of our industry's future is food delivery. But, almost two years into the delivery revolution, many of us are still struggling with execution and profitability. But what if there was a roadmap that could guide us toward success? Today we chat with Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland, authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Together, we tac...

If you want to know the truth, without one ounce of sugarcoating, just call Brian Malarkey. The Celebrity Chef  has spent almost two decades betting big on his version of what success looks like. Big venues, high stakes and higher revenues. Post pandemic, where everything is thinking small and capitalizing on a flush economy, he's taking a different path. In today's episode Brian and I chat about...

Do you remember when you first started in this industry? Do you remember the excitement and the optimism. Back then we believed that anything was possible. What if we never lost that? What could we have achieved? Today we talk to Brittney Valles. A restaurateur that carving her own path in this industry and, along the way, showing us what's possible when you pair talent and hard work with a brilli...

What's the best event you've ever been to? What made it special? What do you remember most vividly about the experience? One of my favorites is Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, an event as dynamic as the city it was born in. Today we chat with Eileen Wayner, the CEO of the foundation to talk about what it takes to create an event that is as educational as it is entertaining for the last 20 ye...

How do we communicate with our customers when they're not in our restaurant? Email has been the staple for decades but in a world where everyone is using their smartphone for everything, shouldn't we explore our other options? Today we chat with Mike Yan, founder of Manychat, a chatbot platform that gives us the ability to effortlessly connect with our guest via text, instagram, facebook and much...

I'm sure everyone ascribes to the philosophy of being the change you want to see in the world, but what does that look like in practical application? As hospitality professional, we have a unique opportunity to shape our neighborhoods by influencing what they consume and how they consume it. André Hueston Mack is doing exactly that. Never in my life have I seen someone invest so much of themselves...

You are your restaurant and no one is ever going to know it or be able to run it better than you. But is that a good thing? Today we chat with Michele Hecken, an executive coach who specialized in helping you get out of your own way--eliminating you as the bottleneck to growth and empowering your team to fulfill your dreams. Today we begin the process of offboarding ourselves. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NO...

Who do you look to for inspiration? For me, it's always been Wolfgang Puck and not just because he's a talent chef and restaurateur, but because he's a skilled entrepreneur. Even without a formal business education, the chef has built an international empire. In today's conversation we unpack the critical decisions he made to get it to the top and overcome the obstacles along they way. TIME-STAMPE...

How many hats are you wearing on a daily basis? One? Two? Two hundred? The only way we're going to get better is by getting better at sharing our workload with others. That's where Emily Morgan comes in. Emily is a delegation expert and today she walks us through the mindset and strategies we need to pull this off along with the pitfalls to avoid. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [3:14] Out of the weeds:...

What does the restaurant of the future look like? Well, if we've figured anything out in our time together it's that I could look like many different things. I think Chef Steve Brown has stumbled upon a really intriguing business model. He's evolved the pop up model into a restaurant incubator, creating massive demand and awareness for his brands. In our conversation we unpack what went into conce...

I'm always amazed when someone with absolutely no prior experience in our industry can open a place and dominate the market. Today we chat with Dana Shertz of the RMD Group who did just that. In our conversation he shares how he was able to take the lessons he learned while scaling Calloway Golf and leverage them to create a hospitality empire. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [3:16] Lessons from the spor...

There are a thousand roads that can lead to success in our industry but only one road that leads to profitability. Today we're talking numbers with Anne Gannon, founder of the Largo Group. In our chat today we're going to explore what the formula for success looks like by examining some of her most successful clients and unpacking the tactics, tools and strategies they've used to achieve massive p...

What is Chutzpah? I think Guy Kawasaki described it best as “calling up tech support to report a bug on pirated software”. In a word, chutzpah is audacity, and I really want to explore how being skillfully audacious can transform a restaurant and a restaurateur into something more. In this episode, we’re talking to Mason Harris, who wrote the book on audacity and how it can be systematized and wea...

When I think about Mark Birnbaum, I think about the word cool. This dude has 50,000 followers on instagram, his trendy restaurants have lines out the door nightly and celebrity investors dump boat loads of cash into everything he creates. But, at his core, he's a restaurateur, just like you and me. And his path to success was formulaic and well thought out. In today's episode Mark shares the formu...

To call Paul Pruitt a restaurant consultant fails to describe who he is and his contributions to our industry. Paul is a hospitality futurist who, in the 10 years I've known him, has predicted every major evolution that our industry has faced. Today Paul and I chat about the present and the future of our industry and how holistic hospitality could be the solution to all that ails us. TIME-STAMPED...

Today, Olo is a billion-dollar company with a captivated audience of restaurateurs excited about the future of restaurant tech. But the story of Olo and its founder, Noah Glass, is far from an overnight success. Noah has spent the last 16 years evangelizing the merits of restaurant tech to an industry unwilling to change. But he never lost hope and he never gave up. And I can only imagine that a m...

Over 100,000 restaurants were lost in the pandemic and there's so much we can learn from that. But there are also organizations that thrived during the pandemic. What did they do differently? What did they see that so many didn't? Today we chat with Joth Ricci of Dutch Bros who saw opportunity in tragedy and used the pandemic as a catalyst to build the coffee shop of tomorrow, today. TIME-STAMPED...

In episode 149 of FULL COMP, Josh talks to celebrity chef Tim Hollingsworth of Odium in Los Angeles about the lessons he learned during Covid as well as the evolution of his own restaurant as he incorporates fresh lessons into a fresh start.  Join us as Tim explains what he's discovered about the impact of creating buy-in among staff, building great teams, and creating lasting and memorable experi...

Here's what we're tackling in Season 6 of FULL COMP! ________________________________ CLICK HERE to Chat with Josh Free Download: 5 Steps to Achieve a 15% Net Profit We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out the FULL COMP media universe by visiting: FULL COMP Restaurant Marketing School The Playbook Industry Town Halls

In this quick recap we highlight some of our favorite moments from Season 5 of FULL COMP. ________________________________ CLICK HERE to Chat with Josh Free Download: 5 Steps to Achieve a 15% Net Profit We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out the FULL COMP media universe by visiting: FULL COMP Restaurant Marketing School The Playbook Industry Town Halls

"It'll all your fault." You hear those words internally every single day. I think we all do. We run at such a quick pace that there's rarely time to celebrate the wins as we run from problem to problem. But there's good news on the other side of that coin. David Scott Peters believes that in owning our role as owners and operators we can become the solution to every problem we face and today he la...

I was raised in this industry.  For over a decade, I ran my restaurants the way I was taught to run other people's restaurants. I led my teams the way others had led me. And I never questioned it. Until one day I did...and a whole new world opened up before my eyes. But what if you never got that education?  Andrew Dana is an incredibly successful restaurateur sitting on over half a dozen location...

Rome wasn't build in a day, it also wan't build by one guy.  Today we chat with Miles Canares who's built one of Los Angeles' signature food events, breaking through the noise in an incredibly competitive environment. How did he do it? Through hard work and a central focus on building relationships that bring value to both parties. Today we talk about what he's built, how he's built it and the way...

Are we getting screwed by our food vendors? Do you know where your food comes from? Food Fraud is real and, for many of us, we've been paying a premium rate for lower quality goods for far too long. That's where Sarela and Simpli come in. They're working to expose the greed and inefficiencies in our supply chain. Today we talk about the true path your food takes to get to your restaurant and why i...