Perspective

Two turnarounds. Same week. Opposite plays. Cracker Barrel's CEO stepped down after a rebrand-driven strategy erased $100M of market cap in days, cost more than half the stock's value at the low, and left same-store sales negative for two more...

Toast's Q1 2026 restaurant tipping data shows something most operators have never considered about their Guest relationships. The headline number: 19.3% average tip at full-service restaurants. Flat for eight consecutive quarters. Most operators will read that and move on. Here...

William Blair just released their 15th quarterly restaurant engagement survey. Danny Klein at QSR Magazine has the full breakdown here. The headline finding: more than 70 percent of consumers cite "too expensive" as the reason they are eating less often...

Panera Bread announced this week that the Unlimited Sip Club will no longer be unlimited. Starting in August, the program becomes the MyPanera+ Sip Club. Same price, $14.99 a month. Different promise, 30 drinks a month instead of unlimited. They...

Every relationship in a restaurant operation runs on consent that was given at a specific moment. A Guest walked in and decided to trust you with an hour of their evening and money they could have spent somewhere else. A...

Position I read Gartner CIO reports. Not because restaurants are like enterprise IT. Because reading enough cross-domain material reveals the same pattern in every domain. The human and leadership dynamic underneath the domain doesn't change. Only the vocabulary does. That...

I argued with myself about this for a long time. (Still arguing, really.) Not because $299 is a lot of money. It isn’t — not in this industry. You comp a table on a slow Tuesday and absorb more than...

Not a revenue number. A discipline. At every level of the operation — simultaneously. The operator who didn't grow never defined what success actually required. Never built the product the Guest actually needed. Never developed the cast that could deliver...

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....