I have been in this industry since April 4, 1982. I am in my forty-fifth year. Every one of those years was spent in restaurants, across high volume, low volume, and every concept in between.
That is the answer. But the question deserves a harder one, because of why it gets asked at all.
Why This Question Exists #
This industry credentials people who have never operated. There is an entire counsel infrastructure built on certificates, designations, and platform followings, advising operators on decisions its members have never personally carried. So operators learned to ask for credentials as a proxy for competence, and the proxy got gamed.
I am not going to hand you a better proxy. I am going to hand you the work.
What You Can Actually Check #
Every position I hold is published, dated, and searchable. The full framework — every defined term, every Book-and-Fieldbook pair, every argument — sits in the open where anyone can read it before they call me. My positions on delivery economics, franchise structure, pricing, labor, and how counsel gets manufactured in this industry were all published and dated before the outcomes were known. That is a harder standard than a certificate, because it can be wrong in public.
So read it, and disagree with it. A framework you can check and argue with tells you more about whether I can help than any credential I could put after my name.
What I Am Not #
I am not a culinary authority and I have never presented myself as one. I read and design operating architecture. When an engagement needs expertise past mine, I bring it in through a network built over four decades rather than pretending the gap is not there.
Check the work: https://kb.jeffreysummers.com/
