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Every Expert Has a Hammer
by admin|26 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack
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...
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No Fat To Trim
by admin|26 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack
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...
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A Full Dining Room Is Not a Business Model
by admin|26 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack
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...
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It’s Egotistical Ignorance.
by admin|26 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack
After 44 years in this business, I still ask questions to anyone with a pulse in the operation.Not because I lack confidence in my own judgment. Because I understand something that took me longer than I'd like to admit to...
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A Mediocre Guest Experience Is the Cement, Not the Platform
by admin|26 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack
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...
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The Advantage You Already Have and Aren’t Using
by admin|25 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack, Perspective
The large hospitality companies are in crisis. Turnover is catastrophic. Burnout is systemic. Guest experience is declining. The diagnosis from inside those organizations is familiar — better scheduling software, smarter labor algorithms, more efficient procedures. That diagnosis is wrong. It...
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Speed Is Not The Problem You Think It Is
by admin|24 June 2026|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack, Performance
There is a version of QSR management that treats speed as the primary metric — the holy grail that, if hit, fixes everything else. Faster ticket times. Shorter line times. More cars per hour. The logic sounds right until you...
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