The missed call isn’t your problem. The overwhelmed human is your problem. There’s a category of AI tool being sold to restaurant operators right now that promises to solve missed calls. Answer the phone 24/7. Never miss a reservation request. Capture every order. The pitch is built around a real number — calls go unanswered […]
Not a technology. Not a data strategy. Not a luxury hotel concept. A human framework for the independent restaurant operator who wants to understand why their best servers are different from their good ones. Here is the distinction. Unobtrusive Service meets the Guest’s technical needs and stops there. The table is clean. The water is […]
Your Guest has already decided. Not after the food arrived. Not after the check. Before the server said a word. The emotional read landed the moment they walked in — the room, the energy, the feel of the place — and the verdict started forming before you had any say in it. That is not […]
A few weeks ago a colleague posted about hiring four cooks at $20 an hour. Three ghosted. One quit after fifteen minutes because it was too difficult. The post blew up. The comment section turned into a debate about systemic hiring failures, interview process audits, and automation solutions designed to remove friction from the kitchen […]
Four consecutive quarters of same-store sales declines. The most recent at negative 8.7%. A 22-year streak of comp growth — gone. Same quarter: 97 new locations opened. System-wide sales up 5.9%. That’s Wingstop in Q1 2026. And those two facts, held side by side, tell you everything you need to know about how the franchise […]
In 1999, researchers at Harvard ran an experiment that changed how we understand human attention. They asked volunteers to watch a video of people passing a basketball and count the passes. While the ball was moving, someone in a full gorilla suit walked directly through the frame, stopped in the middle, beat their chest, and […]
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 I heard the industry beat the drum that more tech was going […]
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 and software vendors whose only real experience in a restaurant is that they occasionally […]
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 you find is a stack of bets — five of them — […]
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 invisibility. And the intelligent web just made that problem significantly more urgent. Brian Solis […]
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 experience you didn’t ask for. The tableside tablet that wants to take your order, […]
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 been having a different version of this conversation for 44 years. I just called […]
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 consultant and they’ll see a process problem. Show it to an HR specialist […]
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 them through credit bids totaling nearly $955 million. Two more — Hot Dog on a […]
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 at night. It is real. It matters. And it tells you almost nothing about […]