The Cutting Onions Podcast

Today we welcome Justin Lindsey to The Cutting Onions Podcast. Justin has been a Chick-fil-A Owner/Operator for nearly 14 years. He is currently the Owner/Operator of Chick-fil-A Kendall located in Miami, Florida. Chick-fil-A Kendall is one of the Top 5 busiest restaurants in the entire Chick-fil-A chain, out of nearly 3,000 total restaurants. Justin employs a staff of over 160 team members &...

We are so proud to bring you this episode of The Cutting Onions Podcast where we interview Subway Franchisee and Entrepreneur, Kristen Chandler. This was an incredibly inspiring conversation that we are sure you will enjoy. Kristen gave us a masterclass in what it means to display grit in the face of adversity. We appreciated Kristen's tenacity and the opportunities that she has created for he...

David DeSantis is a well-known name in the pizza industry. With 27 years of experience in the restaurant business, he has created six successful brands and owned 17 restaurants. However, his latest venture sets him apart from others in the industry: the creation of a cutting-edge supplier relationship management platform. David’s passion for the restaurant business started at a young age. He grew...

On today's episode of The Cutting Onions Podcast, Myles and I have a great conversation regarding an article that we read on LinkedIn from Emma Codd, who is the Global Chief Diversity Officer at the Deloitte. In this article, Emma unpacks some incredible information and data around the mental health of Gen Z and Millennial workers, and how we as leaders can help remove the stigma around mental...

Welcome to The Cutting Onions Podcast, Episode 82 which features Joseph Szala in a compelling conversation to talk about all things digital, loyalty, and how to create an amazing guest experience. Joseph serves as Vice President of Digital Experience for Rapturous, a wing of 3 Owl. His hospitality-first approach and unyielding passion for creating remarkable digital restaurant experiences has posi...

Today we chat with Daniella Sardi from about AI Voice Technology. Daniella Sardi is the Head of Enterprise, Restaurants at SoundHound, specializing in strategic territory development and fostering collaborative teams. She brings extensive experience as a successful sales leader across multiple verticals and has a track record of building winning cultures, which as you know is so important to us at...

In this week's episode we talk about the new California law, AB 1228 which raises the minimum wage to $20.00 as of April 1, 2024 at all fast food restaurants with 60 units or more in their portfolio. We take a look at both sides of this issue and try and gauge the impact this new law will have on restaurant companies in California and talk about what this could mean for the industry overall if...

On this week's episode of The Cutting Onions Podcast and on the heels of the Restaurant Franchising Innovation Summit held in Kansas City by Fast Casual, we talk about Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. We highlight some of what we learned this week about the future of AI and Robotics, and discuss what we already see in the restaurant experience with existing brands like McDonald’s and new...

Welcome to The Cutting Onions Podcast, Episode 78! In today's conversation Myles and Bobby talk about ramping up in the hospitality and retail business and all the things that need to be in place for that to happen successfully. We also talk about team communication, scheduling, deployment, and how to take a fresh look at our businesses. We also dive into some leadership lessons from the late,...

On today's episode of The Cutting Onions Podcast, Myles and I continue the conversation we started last week around what it looks like to enter into a situation that is at best a struggle, and at worst broken, in the restaurant industry. We get super granular in this episode building on the ideas we shared in Part One of this conversation in last week's episode. We talk about some importan...

Welcome to The Cutting Onions Podcast, Episode 76! In this episode Myles and I start a conversation about what it looks like as a leader to enter into a situation where you might have a restaurant, district, market, area, region, or company that has significant challenges. Where you do you start? What do you do? How do you do it? What does it look like to starting doing what needs to be done and p...

a seasoned and strategic human resources executive with 25 years of experience in leading HR teams and functions across diverse industries and sectors, including Fortune 500 companies. As a Chief Human Resources Officer, Michael oversees all aspects of human capital management, aligning HR policies and practices with the organization's vision, mission, and values. His background includes roles...

Listen in behind the scenes to Myles Gift, Jay Timms, and me as we talk about our new project, a Mastermind Group that we are calling "Prior To Service: What Great Restaurateurs Understand About Leadership". This community is being built for three tiers of hospitality leadership, with the first focus being on the heart and soul of any restaurant...the General Manager. We wanted to give y...

In this episode Myles has a great conversation with Pepper Lunch CEO Troy Hooper. Troy began his career in the Caribbean cutting his teeth in hotel restaurants and private clubs. A serial entrepreneur, Troy knows what it takes to succeed in business and has built his career on tried and true principles. He also offers some sage advice to anyone thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. Remember tha...

In this episode we discuss how to enter an organization regardless of the level of leadership you are coming in at, and also some key principles from Great By Choice by Jim Collins, which we think is incredibly underrated. The two ideas we unpack today are the 20-mile march and firing bullets before you fire a cannonball. Enjoy this conversation around some timeless principles!

Known for her charisma, generosity of spirit, and infectious energy, Brooke Janousek is the kind of leader others feel inspired by. She brings this spirit to each and every client she works with through The Grow CMO, a fractional leadership solution for effective marketing growth that she founded in 2022 after two decades as an expert in the marketing industry. As a fractional CMO, Brooke partners...

On today's episode we have an incredible conversation with Corporate Communications Expert Chris Arnold. Chris help shape the stories and communications strategies that build, grow and protect beloved brands in a complex world. Over his career, Chris has led communications in-house for notable and high-profile consumer brands such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, one of the most outspoken and transf...

On today’s episode of The Cutting Onions Podcast we are excited to present our amazing conversation with Stephanie Cramer . Stephanie is an incredible talent strategist who has a passion for scaling culture and an expert in skills-based hiring. For the last 3 months, we have read everything Steph has posted and shared and every single thing has rang so true it is still ringing in our ears. Includi...

In this week's episode, Myles and I take a step back to process our amazing two-part conversation with Jay Timms. Jay shared some incredible information, concepts, and coaching with us over the last two episodes and it was so good that we felt like it deserved a full episode just unpacking the wisdom that Jay shared with us, and what resonated with us the most. We really enjoyed our time with...

On today's episode we dive in for another conversation with Organizational Psychologist Jay Timms on The Cutting Onions Podcast. Last week we got to know Jay and talked about how important self-awareness is as a leader, picking a direction versus a destination, how we leave our fingerprints as leaders. In today's conversation, Myles and I talk with Jay about stepping stones and stumbling b...

Welcome to The Cutting Onions Podcast. Today we feature Part 1 of our conversation with Organizational Psychologist, Employee Engagement Guru, and Hospitalitarian, Jay Timms. In this episode we talk about Jay's journey through university to hospitality to his dream of helping people become more self aware of who they really are and what they should be doing for their life's work. Jay has d...

We recently learned about The Great Game of Business and absolutely believe the principles it teaches, so we thought we would dive deeper into the content here and highly encourage our listeners to do the same. In The Great Game of Business the core principle is to engage your teams with transparency, share your critical metrics, help them keep score and know if they are winning or not, help them...

In this episode we discuss some basic core principles around how we get ready for summer in the hospitality industry and how we engage our teams to own their results. We riff a bit on the amazing book Great Game of Business and we just scratch the surface of this book and the philosophy and we look forward to unpacking more of this content in the weeks to come on The Cutting Onions Podcast. Enjoy!

What does a great interview process look like? In this episode we share some personal stories about our interview experiences and contrast the two extremes...those organizations who handle the interview process beautifully and those that don't. We hope you enjoy this episode and we would love to hear your feedback!

Welcome back to The Cutting Onions Podcast! It's been a minute but we are so excited to be back! On this episode we dive deep into the restaurant industry job search struggles, what we believe the industry could do better, and the importance of staying positive throughout the process. We leave no stone unturned in this conversation and we air it all out, including our own personal struggles in fin...