From The Playbook

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’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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 is the room the operator cannot see he is standing in. There is a […]

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 fully accept: Knowledge isn’t static. Reality isn’t either. And treating a snapshot as your […]