You’re Looking Right at It. You Just Can’t See It.

by Jeffrey Summers|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack

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...

The Conversation About AI and Leadership Is the Same One I’ve Been Having About Road 1 and Road 2 For Decades

by Jeffrey Summers|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack

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...

Every Expert Has a Hammer

by Jeffrey Summers|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...

The Agent Is Already at the Table

by Jeffrey Summers|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack

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 Casual Full-Service Problem Isn’t the Food

by Jeffrey Summers|From The Playbook, Newsletter-Substack

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...

No Fat To Trim

by Jeffrey Summers|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...

A Full Dining Room Is Not a Business Model

by Jeffrey Summers|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...

It’s Egotistical Ignorance.

by Jeffrey Summers|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...

A Mediocre Guest Experience Is the Cement, Not the Platform

by Jeffrey Summers|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...

The Advantage You Already Have and Aren’t Using

by Jeffrey Summers|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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