Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore

Lisa Schultz is a Partner at Zingerman's Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, MI. Lisa started working in restaurants throughout high school and returned to them after college. She worked as a server in a high end seafood restaurant in Ann Arbor before landing a job as a server at Zingerman's Roadhouse in 2004 in her mid-20s. After five years there she became a manager in 2009 and is now a Partner. Zingerman's...

Ron Macklin is the CVO of Macklin Connection , which focuses on professional development and connection, and he is the author of Everyone is Afraid: A Fable of Fear, Friendship, and Flourishing , as well as the host of The Story in Your Head podcast. In this episode, Ron will present the 7 steps to becoming a better connector. Today's sponsors: DashTrack : Dashtrack is an award-winning restaurant...

Jon Schlegel is the Founder of Snooze A.M. Eatery and Attimo Wine . Jon Schlegel started in restaurants at the age of 14 and later went on to earn a business degree in hospitality from University of Denver. He worked for the best operators in fine dining until he got the idea for Snooze A.M. Eatery in 2001 and wrote up his business plan. He didn't secure funding and open his first Snooze location...

Sean Neves, David Chon, and Scott Gardner are Partners at Water Witch , Bar Nohm, and Remora, all in Salt Lake City, UT. Sean and Scott started working together in 2012 and a plan to open a bar soon began to form. In 2016, they opened Water Witch, located next door to Nohm, owned and operated by David Chon. They all decided to join forces and become partners in both businesses and opened up Bar No...

John Platt is the Co-Owner and Chef at Midway Mercantile in Midway, Utah. John started cooking as a child but grew up to be a principle at a boarding school. While holding that job, he began cooking for students in dorms, and found he really enjoyed it. In his late 30s, he switched careers and started working at his favorite restaurant in Seattle as a waiter and bartender. He soon became manager a...

Erika Esparza and Carly Young are the Co-CEOs of Yogurt Mill . Erika's parents met in 1978 and 6 years later, in 1984, they opened their first Yogurt Mill location in the Modesto, CA area.  They then opened their second location in 1989, with a third following in 1993. In 2004, location 4 appeared. In 2009, Erika officially joined the family business. Since then, the company has opened a commissar...

Carmen Toledo is the Front of House Operations Manager and 1 of 4 Co-Owners of Toledo's Mexican Restaurant in Fresno, CA. Carmen's father, Sam Toledo, immigrated to the US in the 1970s from Mexico. He started working in restaurants and eventually helped open a Mexican restaurant that he helped quickly scale to 3 locations. When he was denied equity in that business, he left to open his own restaur...

Meredith Sandland is the CEO of Empower Delivery and the co-author of 2 books, Delivering The Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap To The Future Of Food , and Delivering The Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity , both co-authored with Carl Osbourne. Prior to co-authoring those books, Meredith spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After Building 1,...

Angelo Sosa is Chef/Owner of Kembara and Tia Carmen. Angelo Sosa fell in love with food and cooking at the age of 9 when he would visit his aunt "tia" Carmen's house with his large family in Connecticut. Angelo started to be intentional about becoming a chef at age 18. He went to culinary school and worked for many famed chefs until his first ownership venture in NYC in 2012. He eventually left th...

Susan Abbott is the CEO and Founder of  Know My Menu . Know My Menu is a brand new tool developed by Susan with a "Mission: To provide an easy-to-use tool for restaurants to manage their menus while providing transparency to their patrons," and a "Vision: More people dining with confidence and ease knowing their menu choices, where the food comes from and ways their choices can support their lifes...

Nick Sakagami is the author of "Sushi Master: An Expert Guide to Sourcing, Making, and Enjoying Sushi at Home" and the Owner of NNPR, INC. His company, NNPR, INC. is a seafood importer/exporter, marketer, branding consultant, and wholesaler. He mostly focuses on aquaculture and seafood businesses trying to move their food overseas, from the North America to Asia and back, as well as to and from Eu...

Chadwick Corcoran is the Owner of Two Doughs Pizza Co. in Los Angeles, CA. Chadwick was raised in the restaurant industry through his mother's two restaurants that she owned while he was growing up. He got into real estate after he graduated college and did primarily that from 2009-2014. He then began cooking pizzas catering with no brick and mortar around 2015. He hit the road and did catering ev...

Jessica and Davin Waite are the Co-Owners and Co-Founders of Wrench and Rodent and The Plot in Los Angeles, CA. Davin was previously on the show for episode 679 when The Plot was just being built, back in 2019.  In the mid-'90s after being hired at Ichiban in Santa Barbara, CA, Davin Waite made the decision to drop out of college and chase his new-found passion; food. After a few years of being me...

Andy Hooper is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hart House in Los Angeles. Hart House was co-founded by visionary and actor/comedian Kevin Hart with the purpose of delivering a better-for-you, quick-service, totally-vegan restaurant. Andy got his start in the industry at 15 washing dishes. He went to school for marine biology and decided to switch focus to business instead. After graduating, he worked fo...

Andy Kadin is the Owner of Bub and Grandma's , a bakery, restaurant, and wholesaler in Los Angeles, CA. Bub and Grandma's started in 2015 out of Andy's house. Andy was getting frustrated with his career in advertising, and so in 2016 he opened up the Bub and Grandma's bakery. He built up his wholesale accounts to over 170 and in 2022 the brand opened its first restaurant. Favorite success quote/ma...

Tadeh Ghazalian is the Co-Owner of  Dialog Cafe in West Hollywood, CA. Tadeh was born in Rome, grew up in Ottawa, ON, and moved to Los Angeles at the end of high school in 2006. He got an MA in accounting and became a CPA in corporate America from 2013-2016 when he finally joined his family business, Dialog Cafe, in 2016. Since joining the business full-time, Tadeh has greatly improved operations...

Troy Hooper is the Founder and CEO of Kiwi Restaurant Partners and the CEO of Hot Palette America . With 30 years of hospitality management in luxury and casual dining, Troy brings a breadth of knowledge and diverse experience to KRP. Troy has built new concepts, redesigned and rebranded existing restaurants and hotels, and improved upon well-established venues throughout the U.S. for iconic brand...

John Gakuru is the Brand Marketing Specialist at Coruscent Co., as well as the CEO and Founder. John got his start as a bar tender at the age of 18 in London. He began his bar career at T.G.I. Friday's and moved on to cruise ships. He then worked for LAB in London and soon left to travel the world and establish alcohol brands internationally. Coruscent Co. today is a global drinks and hospitality...

Michael Ungaro is the Co-Owner and CEO of San Pedro Fish Market in LA, and Co-Owner of Kings of Fish . Michael's family started San Pedro Fish Market in the 1950s out of a 200-square-foot space. The business has survived through 3 generations and is today still run by family. The restaurant side of the business arrived in the 1970s in response to the rise of fast food joints. Michael left the fami...

Alex Koons is the Co-Owner of Purgatory Pizza , the Founder of Hot Tongue Pizza , and the host of the Pie 2 Pie Podcast . Alex moved to LA in the early 2000s to become a musician and record producer. After doing that for a few years, he got a job at Purgatory Pizza and went from delivery driver to manager in just a short while. He eventually purchased equity in the business and is Co-Owner today....

Andrew Simmons is the Founder of Pizza Roboto , AskLucille , and Mamma Ramona's Pizzeria , all based in the San Diego area. Mamma Ramona's Pizzeria focuses on modernizing operations and integrating robotics and automation" and has been in business 2020. AskLucille is "AI driven dispatch" for delivery which "empowers drivers with 100% earnings, free gas, and transparent operations" and was founded...

Shawn Walchef is the owner of Cali BBQ , a BBQ restaurant in San Diego, as well as Cali BBQ Media, his production company. The first Cali BBQ restaurant opened in 2008 and the brand has since expanded to include 2 locations in sports stadiums, catering, ghost kitchens, and podcasts, as well as professional video content. Shawn believes in "digital hospitality" which is a conceot we will explore in...

Fred Langley is the CEO of Restaurant Systems Pro . This is Fred's third time on the show, most recently he joined us in May of 2023.  Fred got his first job in the restaurant industry at the age of 12 as a dishwasher. He worked his way up the ranks and became a restaurateur, opening his first restaurant at the age of 27. He opened his second restaurant only 4 years later. Fred joined Restaurant S...

Christin Marvin is a podcast host, author, and creator of Solutions by Christin , a consultancy business she founded in 2022. Christin was a Managing Partner at Bonanno Concepts in Denver from 2007-2012. She served as a Regional Manager at Snooze A.M. Eatery in Denver from 2012-2019. She now serves as a Hospitality Catalyst for her restaurant consultancy business, Solutions by Christin . She is al...

Jordan Hudgens is the Founder and CTO of DashTrack. DashTrack is a restaurant and bar website & app platform. The service has been around for 7 years and in this episode we will discuss all that it has to offer and how/why it was developed.  Favorite success quote/mantra: "Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's impossible." In this episode we will discuss:  SEO Restaurant-specific websi...