QSR Uncut

Vitality Bowls exec Tara Gilad joins QSR editor Danny Klein to discuss standing out in one of the industry's fastest-growing (and crowded) categories, surviving COVID, and why the future is full of expansion potential for the 10-year-old fast casual.

On a special, bonus episode of QSR Uncut, the entire QSR magazine editorial team breaks down one of our biggest reports of the year: The 40/40 List, which recognizes the country's hottest fast casuals with 40 of fewer locations. Now in its sixth year, the list has become of the industry's most-anticipated features, and the perfect place to find the next big thing in foodservice. Plus, Sh...

A new category has emerged for restaurants, one that promises to challenge everyone from the biggest fast-food chains to the most polished sit-down concepts. And Finney's Crafthouse out of California is the perfect poster child. Executive Brad Finefrock joins the QSR team to chat about the emerging restaurant chain's history, future, and how the category as a whole has changed for good.

Fred Minnick, best-selling author, bourbon curator, and taster, and one of the country’s leading voices on America’s native spirit, joins QSR Editorial Director Danny Klein for a wide-ranging chat that covers everything from restaurant menus to rebottling fraud to tasting 101 for bourbon drinkers. Why is it so hard to find Buffalo Trace? Is it worth it? What’s it really like to write and talk abou...

Restaurants are battling shortages and rocketing prices across the supply chain as 2022 kicks into gear. Avanti CEO Mark Rossi joins the QSR team to talk about best practices and tactics, what's coming next, and how to manage one of the greatest disruptions in recent operating history.

Dr. James Pogue joins the QSR team to share tips and advice for executives and restaurant professionals on how to keep the conversation around unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion, and multigenerational intelligence going.

The owner of Fatburger, Fazoli's, and 15 other restaurant brands, spent nearly a $1 billion on acquisitions in 2021. And it could have been more. From bidding on Del Taco to an inside look at last year's deals, CEO Andy Wiederhorn chats with the QSR team about arguably the biggest storyline of this past year, and what an encore looks like.

The Culinary Edge, visionaries behind fast-growing Starbird Chicken, chat with the QSR team on concept creation, trends, and how to tell fact from fiction when it comes to the next big thing in restaurants. 

CEO Zaid Ayoub is an electrical engineer turned restaurateur. And it shows in the continued evolution of SaJJ Mediterranean, a 15-unit fast casual from the Bay Area ready to hit its stride coming out of COVID. Ayoub joins the QSR team to discuss the concept’s innovative growth and how it hopes to go mainstream.

On a special Thanksgiving week episode of QSR uncut , the team chats with Smashburger president Carl Bachmann for an inside look at what’s made the fast casual thrive over the years and during COVID-19, from menu innovation to technology to store design, and more. Also, what Thanksgiving foods are overrated, and what’s the best way to cook a turkey? Let's dive in.

As restaurants rebound from the pandemic, the opportunity to lean on customer data has never been greater. But how do you listen, and what really matters? Nihal Advani, CEO and founder of QualSights , joins the QSR team to talk about the future of foodservice, and why reviews don't begin and end with Yelp.

QSR editor Danny Klein catches up with industry innovator and change-marker Alex Canter, the CEO of Nextbite, to chat about all things virtual brands, and why COVID ushered in a digital era for restaurants that's just getting started.

A&W CEO Kevin Bazner discusses the biggest crisis facing restaurants today—where to find labor and how to keep employees from leaving.  Also, cheese curds, the brand's famous root beer, and how the 102-year-old chain charted one of the most impressive turnarounds in fast-food history.

OneDine CEO and industry thought leader Rom Krupp joins the QSR magazine team this week to talk all things digital, and how COVID-19 ushered in a decade of innovation in 19 months. From QR codes  to the real dangers of third-party delivery to a rash of IPOs,  we take an unscripted look at the hottest topic in the restaurant industry's evolution today. Plus, Wendy's is roasting McDonald&a...

In this week’s episode of QSR Uncut,  QSR magazine editors Danny Klein and Ben Coley are joined by Joseph Szala, managing director of Vigor and author and marketing expert, to talk about everything from virtual restaurants—are there too many?—to brand relevance, marketing to employees amid a labor shortage, the return of the McRib, Golden Corral, Jersey Mike's, and Portillo's, and whethe...

In the first edition of QSR Uncut, editors Danny Klein and Ben Coley discuss how Chick-fil-A could be the "slowest drive-thru in America," and yet also be the fastest. And Wendy's roasts McDonald's on Twitter yet again. Plus, Chipotle has some wild ideas about how to make ranch dressing.

Everything restaurants have been forced to go through in the last year has been unprecedented. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a crisis like no other for restaurants. There hasn’t been a playbook. But there have been some companies that have been better prepared for crises than others. Just look at Whataburger. This is a company whose restaurants are primarily based in the South, and which has been...

Chicken-finger brand Raising Cane's lost 30 percent of its sales in the weeks following stay-at-home orders last March, but by the end of 2020, it was clearing its original sales expectations by 10 percent. How did it do it? Drive thrus helped a lot, but the company's culture was mostly to thank. That culture is something founder Todd Graves has been working on since he opened the first...

If you were to point to some of the biggest trends in the pre-pandemic foodservice world, health-oriented concepts would have to be in the top five. Especially in the fast-casual category, there was a lot of momentum for salad and bowl concepts that were geared toward that healthy, active lifestyle. When COVID showed up, though, some wondered if the momentum for that category had hit a wall. But t...

The buy-one-give-one model became popular in the last 10–15 years, with businesses like TOMS Shoes and Warby Parker donating a product to those in need for every transaction they made. That’s exactly what Tacos 4 Life is doing with tacos, as founders Austin and Ashton Samuelson committed to donating the funds necessary to purchase one meal to the organization Feed My Starving Children for every ta...

While most quick serves and fast casuals had a huge advantage in quickly recovering from the sales drop of last March, there is a whole subset of fast casuals that, even if they were in tune with digital and off-premises trends, took much longer to recover. Those are the fast casuals in more urban areas or business districts, brands that might have done 80 percent or more of their sales at the lun...

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced restaurants to rethink how they get their food into customers' hands, and technology has allowed them to get really creative with service. That's led to a real opportunity for restaurants of all service models to innovate—which is exactly what McAlister’s Deli is doing. Prior to the pandemic, McAlister's was doing dine-in, carryout, and third-party d...

In the five or six years prior to the pandemic, big-box fast casuals sprung up around the U.S. offering a high-quality experience meant to be enjoyed on-site. These kinds of restaurants were hit particularly hard by COVID-19, as they didn’t have the off-premises mechanisms that helped more traditional fast casuals turn things around last year. Hopdoddy is one of these so-called fast casual 2.0 bra...

If you’re a restaurant industry professional, chances are your path to where you are today has included a lot of hustle, a lot of putting your head down and grinding out the job that needs to get done. You probably didn’t have a clearly articulated career ladder to climb or the attention of someone higher up who took you under their wing and taught you how things were supposed to be done. That’s b...

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an opportunity to take a step back and reflect on life, to reassess what we’re doing and where we're going. That's been very true of restaurant companies, which have taken the opportunity to think more about their operations, their service, their menu, and their plans for the future, and for many, to use that reflection to reimagine their business...