PODCAST · business
Restaurant Reset
by Genius For Restaurants
The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works.Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken. We’ll share real stories, practical systems, and proven ways to run a tighter, smarter, more profitable operation.The industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving. Let’s reset.
Episodes
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He Built Online Ordering Before the iPhone | Noah Glass CEO @ OLO
In June 2005, before the iPhone existed, Noah Glass started a company that let people order food by text message. Some of the very first orders came from his mom and his grandmother. Twenty-one years later, Olo powers digital ordering for roughly 850 brands across 90,000 locations, and more than...
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The Owners Who Keep Their Staff Are Growing Faster | Christian Wiens, Loman
A seafood chain's menu looked completely normal online. Then Loman pulled it out of the point of sale and it broke their ingestion tool. Every item had a modifier. Every modifier had a sub-modifier of every other modifier, ten levels deep. Somebody built that on purpose, years ago, and nobody has...
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Why Main Squeeze's CEO Won't Tolerate Mediocrity | Jennifer Dodd
Jennifer Dodd took over Main Squeeze Juice Co in 2024 walking into a brand where franchisee trust had been obliterated. Four months later sales were up 35%, and they held it for over a year without a single base price increase. She walks Andy through how she rebuilt that trust, the demographic...
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A New Logo Won't Save a Failing Chain | Joseph Szala
Joseph Szala has publicly graded three restaurant rebrands. Domino's worked. Long John Silver's worked. Cracker Barrel did not. His read is that the logos had almost nothing to do with any of it. Cracker Barrel sterilized the interiors, lost the rocking chairs and the old man on the sign, then…
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Why Bonchon's CEO Keeps Saying No to Tech Vendors | Suzie Tsai
Suzie Tsai runs one of the fastest-growing Korean fried chicken brands in America, and most days her job is saying no. Bonchon's CEO walks Andy through the filter she runs every decision through, from franchise deals to vendor pitches, and why patience beats urgency almost every time. In this...
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He Changed the Way California Pizza Kitchen Makes Every Single Pizza | Paul Pszybylski
A guest ordered mac and cheese from California Pizza Kitchen, got a container of cheese sauce with no noodles, and posted it to TikTok. Within days it was everywhere. CPK's answer wasn't a statement from corporate it was their head of culinary, mid-photo-shoot and openly annoyed, being handed an...
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How Bite's CEO Turned a Danny Meyer Education Into a 5-Star Kiosk Experience | Brandon Barton
Most of the restaurant industry sells self-ordering kiosks on one number: labor saved. Brandon Barton thinks that's exactly the wrong pitch. As CEO of Bite, whose software runs kiosks for Portillo's, Chopt, Krispy Kreme, Big Chicken, and Arby's inside Love's Travel Stops… he argues that a screen...
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How the "Godfather of Restaurant Tech" Survived Every Platform Shift for 40+ years | Christopher Sebes
Christopher Sebes has already been handed the restaurant industry's lifetime achievement award. Most people take that as a cue to slow down. At 72, he started his third career instead. On this episode of Restaurant Reset, host Andy Grindstaff sits across the mic from the man who hired him a…
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How to Tell If Your Restaurant Loyalty Program Is Secretly Failing | Olga Lopategui
Loyalty used to be a competitive edge for restaurants. Now it's table stakes, and the question executives are asking has flipped from "how do we launch a program" to "how do we prove this thing makes money." The uncomfortable answer, according to loyalty expert Olga Lopategui, is that most of…
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Two Federal Prosecutors Mortgaged Their Homes to Sell Pizza: The Real Story of California Pizza Kitchen with Co-Founder Rick Rosenfield
In 1985, two of the most successful trial lawyers in Los Angeles walked away from the law, mortgaged their homes, and opened a pizza restaurant on the quiet side of Beverly Drive. Their fancy menu bombed almost instantly. The chef they hired from Spago lasted a month. And then a barbecue chicken...
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Why a Bad AI Experience is a Double Failure for Your Restaurant (and How to Change That) | Andy Grindstaff
Everyone in restaurant tech is racing toward AI ordering and automation. The customer data tells a different story. Only 9% of consumers say they'd rather order from an AI voice than a person, and the number one frustration is still the same one it's always been: the order being wrong. In this…
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How to Escape the Restaurant Operator Trap (Before It Bankrupts You) with Mike DeJong
Mike DeJong ran 5 Nothing Bundt Cakes bakeries at the same time. From the outside, it looked like a growing empire. From the inside, he was working more hours, opening more locations, and somehow making less money. He calls it the operator trap, and he's blunt about how it closed on him: he had...
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Hire For Your Weaknesses: How Troy Hooper Scaled Pepper Lunch to 570 Locations
Troy Hooper's career looks impossible to explain: culinary school at 17, licensed yacht captain, 15 years fixing broken restaurant businesses, and now scaling Pepper Lunch from 5 North American locations to a planned 1,200 by 2030. What holds it together is one conviction he's carried through all...
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The Former NYPD Cop Who Built a $26 Million Steakhouse in Dallas | Joseph Palladino
Joseph Palladino spent 22 years as a beat cop in the Bronx before a line-of-duty injury rerouted his life into restaurants. What he brought with him (accountability systems, data-driven performance tracking, and a cop's instinct for what kills an operation) became the engine behind Nick & Sam's...
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Why Restaurants Keep Choosing the Wrong Tech (with Andy Grindstaff)
Andy Grindstaff has spent his career at the intersection of restaurants and technology. He worked at restaurants long before he helped build the tech that runs them at Genius. In this solo Q&A episode, he answers your questions directly. The DMs. The emails. The real stuff people have been asking...
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Why Your Worst Guest Experience Is Your Biggest Revenue Opportunity with Zack Oates @ Ovation
Zack Oates is the founder and CEO of Ovation, the guest experience platform used by thousands of restaurant locations across the country to collect feedback, recover unhappy guests, and build the kind of loyalty that actually shows up in revenue. Before all of that, he went on a thousand dates,...
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The Software Engineer Who Built a Michelin-Starred Restaurant Empire (By Letting Chefs Be Themselves)
Roni Mazumdar is a software engineer from RPI who was working at Johnson & Johnson in 2011 when his father, a former fruit cart vendor and retired NYPD traffic cop, was getting close to retirement. Roni didn't want his dad to feel irrelevant. So he found a listing on Craigslist and they opened a...
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How Andrew Smith Built a $750M Restaurant Investment Platform by Doing the Opposite of Every PE Firm
Andrew K. Smith is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Savory Fund, one of the most active restaurant investment platforms in the country. 13 brands. Owned, operated and scaled up to 575 restaurants in 29 states. Over $3 billion in cumulative sales. 40,000+ jobs created. But the story of how…
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The Rick Rubin of Restaurants: How to Build a Restaurant Empire by Making Chefs the Stars with Kevin Boehm
Kevin Boehm co-founded Boka Restaurant Group in 2002 with a single restaurant in Chicago. Today, Boka operates 30+ restaurants across Chicago, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn, serves 2.5 million guests a year, and generates more than $250 million in annual revenue. Boka restaurant has held a Michelin...
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John Tesar: The Chef Bourdain Called a Genius, Dallas Called Its Most Hated, and Michelin Called a Star
John Tesar's career is the kind of arc that sounds made up. Anthony Bourdain called him "the single most talented cook I ever worked with." He later wrote Tesar into Kitchen Confidential as Jimmy Sear,— a character defined by equal parts chaos and brilliance. In 2011, D Magazine put "The Most…
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From One Steakhouse to 13 Restaurants and a $75M Empire: Benjamin Berg on Ego, Debt, and Giving Up Control
What does it actually take to build a restaurant empire from a single steakhouse without a famous name, without outside investors, and without ever letting your team see you doubt the destination? Benjamin Berg has the answer. And the war stories to prove it. Berg is the founder of Berg…
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How to Build a Restaurant Brand Before You Sign a Lease with Sarah Gavigan @ Otaku Ramen
What does it actually look like to build a cult restaurant brand in a boomtown city and then have the guts to pull back before it kills you? Sarah Gavigan didn't set out to open Nashville's first ramen shop. She moved back to Tennessee after two decades in LA film and music production, couldn't...
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The Chef Who Almost Became a Pharmacist: Ben Diaz on Building a Brand Before the Brick-and-Mortar
Ben Diaz didn't set out to become a chef. He thought he was going to be a pharmacist, until he followed a girlfriend to the California School of Culinary Arts and cooking took over. He never looked back. What followed was two decades of building in the most demanding kitchens in Southern...
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The Michelin-Rated Chef Who Won Top Chef and Walked Away from Fame: Nick Elmi's Story
Nick Elmi won Top Chef Season 11 in New Orleans. Most winners parlay that into a media career, a fast-casual empire, or a product line. Nick went back to Philadelphia and opened a 22-seat restaurant called Laurel. For 12 years, he cooked in that kitchen. He earned a James Beard nomination for…
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Why Having Shaquille O'Neal as Your Business Partner Is Both a Superpower and a Curse with Josh Halpern @ Big Chicken
What does it actually take to go from 2 locations to 50 (with hundreds more in the pipeline) without VC money and without losing your mind? Josh Halpern, Chief Business Officer of Crave Worthy Brands and the architect behind Big Chicken's explosive growth, sits down with Andy Grindstaff to pull...
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From Cashier to CEO: Carin Stutz on Building a 40-Year Restaurant Career (And Why We're Failing the Next Generation)
Carin Stutz started working at McDonald's in high school to help pay for college. She never left the restaurant industry. Over the next four decades, she climbed from hourly employee to the C-suite… serving as COO of Red Robin, President of McAlister's Deli, CEO of Cosi and Native Foods, and...
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The Boring Work That Will Save Your Restaurant’s Future with Carl Orsbourn
Before “AI” became the buzzword on every restaurant tech panel, Carl Orsbourn was already leading the digital transformation of foodservice. The co-author of Delivering the Digital Restaurant and The Path to Digital Maturity, Carl has been on both sides of the industry: running 1,000 ampm...
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Culture Is Your Restaurant’s Secret Sauce with Marissa Andrada (Chipotle, Starbucks, Red Bull)
Before she was known as The People Doctor, Marissa Andrada spent three decades leading people and culture at some of the world’s biggest brands: Chipotle, Starbucks, Red Bull, Kate Spade, and GameStop. Her career has touched over a million frontline employees, and she’s made one thing clear: you...
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Hard Truths Every Restaurant Owner Needs to Hear: A Q&A for Restaurant Leaders
What happens when restaurant owners finally get honest about what’s breaking their business? In this special Q&A solo episode, Andy answers the toughest questions he’s received from operators… the ones that don’t have easy answers, but every leader needs to hear. He covers the hard truths about...
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Why Simplicity Beats Customization in Restaurant Technology, with Tony Roy @ Popmenu
Tony Roy was leading international operations for a global tech giant when he made a bold decision: leave it all behind to build tools for single-location restaurants. Today, as the Co-founder and COO of Popmenu, Tony’s helped more than 10,000 independent operators grow smarter, simplify their...
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Why the Future of AI in Restaurants Starts at the Drive-Thru, with Jason Riggs
When most people think of innovation in restaurants, they picture shiny new POS systems or loyalty apps. Jason Riggs wants you to look somewhere else: the edge of the operation. The headsets, timers, and drive-thru systems that quietly run the business. As the former GM of Hardware at PAR...
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The Chef Who Left Fine Dining to Reinvent Vending Machines
Nathan Downs went from cooking in Michelin-starred restaurants to building a technology company that’s rethinking how the world eats. As CEO and cofounder of FoodSpot, Nathan is leading the charge in smart vending: a growing industry that’s making fresh, high-quality food available 24/7 in...
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How Starbucks’ Digital Strategy Changed Every Restaurant Forever, with Adam Brotman
When Adam Brotman joined Starbucks, the company didn’t even have free Wi-Fi. A few years later, he helped architect one of the most powerful digital ecosystems in restaurant history: the Starbucks app, Rewards program, and Mobile Order & Pay system that changed how every brand thinks about…
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How Jackson Kalb Turned Failure Into a Restaurant Empire
Most operators try to scale their restaurants by tightening systems or adding tech and somewhere along the way, they lose the soul that made guests fall in love in the first place. Chef Jackson Kalb never made that trade. From being fired at 26 and sleeping in his childhood bedroom to now running...
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How to Make Menu Innovation Actually Work (and Pay Off), with Mike Gieseman
How do you bring a legacy restaurant brand back to life? Not with buzzwords. Not with gimmicks. But by giving people food they actually crave (and making sure your team can execute it flawlessly). Chef Mike Gieseman has spent two decades building craveable, profitable menu items for brands like...
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Why Most Restaurants Bleed Talent (And Nick Sarillo Doesn’t)
Under 25% turnover isn’t luck. It’s a proven system. Nick Sarillo (Nick’s Pizza & Pub) breaks down how a carpenter’s mindset turned two suburban Chicago units into high‑throughput, low‑churn operations: a purpose the team actually uses on shift, training that certifies to a 1–5 standard (not...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works.Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken. We’ll share real stories, practical systems, and proven ways to run a tighter, smarter, more profitable operation.The industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving. Let’s reset.
HOSTED BY
Genius For Restaurants
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Restaurant Reset have?
Restaurant Reset currently has 36 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Restaurant Reset about?
The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works.Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken. We’ll share real...
How often does Restaurant Reset release new episodes?
Restaurant Reset has 36 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Restaurant Reset?
You can listen to Restaurant Reset on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Restaurant Reset?
Restaurant Reset is created and hosted by Genius For Restaurants.
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