FULL COMP: The Voice of the Restaurant Industry Revolution

How's delivery working out for you? Is it a thriving revenue stream or are you still struggling to get attention on those delivery platforms? Are you running a breakeven or, worse yet, losing money on every transaction? Today we chat with PJ Oleksak of Slice because, from where she's sitting, she has access to 2 criticial pieces of data: What delivery customers want and What the busiest restaurant...

In this moment, we're not just rebuilding our businesses, we're rebuilding our industry.  What would you change if you had the chance? For Dina Samson, change comes in the form of increased visibility. She's working to raise the voices of entrepreneurial women within our industry. She's also out front ensuring that the policymakers that directly effect our restaurants understand our priorities and...

Change is hard.  Becoming irrelevant is harder.  Today we chat we Joe Jackman who wrote the book on change.  Joe walks us through what real change can look like in our businesses, creating a blueprint for disruption and innovation within an industry that desperately needs both. You can pick up The Reinventionist Mindset wherever books are sold. ________________________________ CLICK HERE to Chat w...

So many restaurant owners have desperately fought for survival over the last 15 months.  Why? Is it for the money or the glory? Because both have been in short supply... We do this to serve a higher calling, and the best of us light the path forward. Today we chat with Chef Steve Samson & Hans Luttman, partners and operators of Rossoblu in Downtown Los Angeles. Together, they share what it too...

Imagine, if when you started your entrepreneurial journey, you were provided with a plan for guaranteed success. Dennis McKinley did and he shares that plan with us today. Dennis became a franchisee in his early 20's. He took that playbook, improved upon it and today sits as the franchisor of one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in the country. In today's conversation we take a peek inside...

Nick Brune calls himself a chef but I'd call him a culinary entrepreneur. The reason being is that he's as interested in the business of food as he is in cooking it. In today's far reaching conversation we cover the path he took to master the business of hospitality, how he's applied those lessons to build multimillion dollar F&B businesses and how he's sharing those lessons with the world. To...

Have you chosen your customers or have they chosen you? In an effort to achieve profitability many of us refuse to clearly state who is and who is not our target customer. Kevin Tan chose a different path. In having a maniacal focus on his target customer, he's built a platform that's grown to over half a million users in just a couple of years. What's his revolutionary idea? Skipping the line at...

Can we make more money today? Like right now? Are there simple fixes to the problems we've been suffering from as an industry for the last, I don't know, 1000 years. Most of us don't make enough money and today we're talking with Chip Klose, who's trying to fix that. In our conversation, Chip lays out some simple, easy to execute tips and tricks for scaling profitability and our overall online pre...

I'm not crazy. There are definitely people that make an absolute fortune in this industry. They're just few and far between and and many haven't been willing to share their recipe for success. But you can learn a lot from observing the masters at work. And that's the vantage point from which the team over at Restauranttopia views our industry. They're working with the best in the business to creat...

I'm not crazy. There are definitely people that make an absolute fortune in this industry. They're just few and far between and and many haven't been willing to share their recipe for success. But you can learn a lot from observing the masters at work. And that's the vantage point from which the team over at Restauranttopia views our industry. They're working with the best in the business to creat...

The future of restaurant marketing is the current state of marketing in every other industry: data. Marketing is no longer about compelling diners to come to our restaurants, it's about compelling them to give us their contact info so that we can start a conversation. Today's marketing strategy is more about them than it us about us. Leading the charge into this brave new world is Matt Plapp, a se...

There's a new breed of restaurateur and it's pretty exciting to see. A younger generation bringing the best of the past together with a new vision of the future. Today we chat with Chicago power couple Jenner Tomaska and Katria Bravo in the weeks before the opening of their new restaurant. These two cut their teeth in some of the best restaurants in the country and today they're sharing the lesson...

We're still contending with a global pandemic in the midst of a labor crisis and this is another episode on sustainability. Are you shaking your head right now? How disconnecting am I from what's going on in your day to day lives? Today is hard but we still need to prepare for tomorrow and the challenges we'll face then. Gen Z constitutes the largest population on the planet and they're intent on...

I always dreamed of being a successful restaurateur. In those grand visions from my youth, I must have missed rubber apron hanging in front of my 3 piece suit as I washed dishes in the scullery, and yet, there it was. Over the last 20 years of being an owner and operator, I've felt like a prince and, at times, like a prisoner. Snoop Dillard has managed to escape, creating a veritable empire of bus...

Is there anything more foundational to the hospitality industry than booze? Wether it's selling drinks to customers or grabbing drinks with co-workers, the social dynamics of the restaurant industry revolve around booze. Or at least they did... The data is clear: people are drinking less. Today I chat with author Julia Bainbridge about the sobriety movement and what it means for both restaurants a...

What does success look like in the restaurant industry? For Ron Shaich, it meant driving Panera Bread to outperform both Starbucks and Chipotle over the last 20 year, ultimately creating a restaurant concept valued at $7.5 Billion Dollars. How did he do it? The answer was surprisingly simple and today he takes us on the journey from a single unit cookie company to a billion dollar brand. For more...

Idealism is great. We all want to be dream employers offering dream jobs to amazing people who love our restaurant as much as we do. But that's rarely the reality of our situation. Who's fault is that and is there a way to make that vision a reality? Today we chat with Gabriel Cole, a former chef, who's using his values to not only inform the way he does business but also to decide who to do busin...

How many articles have you read about "the restaurant of the future?" It conjures visions of robot cooks and digital menus but no one really talks about how big it is or the steps the proprietor took avoid the massive failure rate we've been saddled with in the past. I think that, more than anything, the restaurant of the future is sustainable and built to last a lifetime. Ed Szymanski and Patrici...

Change is in the air. We've felt it coming for years and we see it happening before our eyes in this moment. Today's buzzwords were the dreams of innovators from decades past. And innovation can be found everywhere. Today we chat with Loren and Lisa Poncia, founders of Stemple Creek Ranch. Stemple Creek is not only famous for their regenerative agricultural practices but they're also the guys supp...

We've all been burned. A bad business plan, a bad business partner, a global pandemic... What happens next is what defines our lives and our careers. Chef Claudette Zepeda built an award winning restaurant only to have it taken away but, rather than seeing that as the end of the story, she began a new chapter, leveraging her talent and experience to create the career of her dreams and a platform t...

Layers. Great storytelling has tons of them. As restaurateurs we create these layers through food, beverage and ambiance to draw our guests into our world. Today we take a trip into Sahra Nguyen's world and learn how the vendors we purchase from can say something about who we are and what we believe. That change can happen one cup of coffee at a time... For more on Nguyen Coffee Supply go to https...

Cameron Herold has built three companies valued at $100M each. His superpower is getting shit done. He's an operator of the highest caliber that is responsible for driving the growth of companies like 1800GotJunk and entrepreneurs like Elon and Kimball Musk. Today we define what operational excellence is, what it looks like in practical application and how we can achieve it in our own restaurants....

April of 2020 was going to be a magical month for my restaurant. We had spent over a year working towards carbon neutrality and that was the month we were finally going to achieve it. Obviously my plans were derailed by the pandemic but, I've never lost sight of the importance of environmental responsibility. What I learned through that process was that it's possible to run a sustainable operation...

Ken Grossman is a craft brewing pioneer. In the late 1970's, he, along with about half a dozen other brewers, started the first craft breweries in the US. Over 40 years later, the other guys are no longer in business and Ken's company is worth over one billion dollars. In our conversation together we talk about what it took to survive in those early days and the critical decisions he made along th...

Go big or go home. Remember those days? It seems a lot of folks have changed their minds. Restaurants with small footprints small menus are popping up everywhere. Well, not in wine country and not with Dustin Valette at the helm. Dustin is leveraging over 50 years of combined industry know-how to create an iconic restaurant that's as ambitious as it's founders. Today we talk about Dustin's vision...