June 2026

Five levers, five closing gaps, and the model that doesn't depend on either.Most operators don't know they're running an arbitrage.They think they're running a restaurant.But if you strip the floor away and look at what's actually generating the money, what...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people post content about how to do things they've never actually done.I'm not talking about researchers, academics, or analysts. They have a lane and they know it. I'm talking about platform CEOs...

Tech has to support the Guest Experience, not supplant it. Fourteen waves of receipts.Since 1982, my position on technology in our business has been the same.Tech has to support the Guest Experience, not supplant it.That year was the first time...

There is no feeling in this business quite like a full dining room.Tables occupied. Conversations overlapping. The pass moving. The cast in rhythm. The kind of energy that makes you forget, for a few hours, everything that keeps you up...

A bankruptcy court just approved the breakup of Fat Brands across four separate transactions. Eighteen restaurant chains. $1.4 billion in debt. One concept shut down entirely before the sale was even complete. Thirteen brands handed to the lenders who financed...

There's a concept in design called the Rorschach test. Show someone an inkblot and what they see reveals something about how they think, not about what's actually there.The restaurant industry has its own version.Show a struggling restaurant to a systems...

For decades, the AI and leadership conversation has been framed as human vs. machine. Which tasks will AI replace. Which skills will remain relevant. Whether leaders will be optimized out of existence or elevated by the tools available to them.I've...

Walk into any casual full-service chain and count the friction points before you've ordered your first drink.The menu — laminated, multi-page, every surface covered in promotional pricing and limited-time offers. The QR code that sends you to a mobile ordering...

I've been saying for years that the biggest threat to the independent restaurant operator isn't the chain across the street. It isn't food cost. It isn't labor. It isn't even the third-party delivery platform taking 30 points off the top.It's...

The dashboard is green. The numbers are clean. The room is dying anyway.Forty-four years on the stage, and the same argument keeps coming back wearing a new outfit. The revenue-management thinker has the data. The frame the data sits inside...