The Simmer

In this pre-recorded summer special, Kristen and Brandon ask Fred to predict the future. Lucky for us, he's good at it. In this episode, we talk about the current state of casual dining (tl;dr: Chili's is killing it), all those restaurant bankruptcies, and the importance of making an emotional connection with diners. 

We're deep in an (unintentional) point of sale system theme at The Simmer. This week, Toast's chief marketer Kelly Esten joins us to talk enterprise restaurants, artificial intelligence, and maybe accidentally perpetuate a rumor that Brandon really wants to be true.

Brandon got stuck on a plane, so Kristen flies solo in this interview with Square's top marketer, Lindsey Irivine. In this episode, we talk about big marketing initiatives and activations, and how Square sees itself as both a restaurant and consumer brand. Plus, Lindsey shares details of Square's new San Francisco corner store, a consumer and small business play all in one. 

Fiserv recently unveiled a new point of sale system designed to serve “upper market restaurants,” or restaurants that do more than $1 million in processing volume annually, according to Fiserv head of restaurants, Krystle Mobayeni. Krystle, also the co-founder and CEO of BentoBox, a restaurant technology company acquired by Fiserv in 2021, joins The Simmer to talk reservations, point of sale systems, and what Fiserv's brand new POS, dubbed Clover Hospitality, offers restaurants. 

It's our first emergency podcast! On Tuesday, the biggest day for the restaurant technology business in years, a string of major announcements had our heads spinning. But one piece of news stands out: DoorDash plans to acquire reservations and customer relationship management service SevenRooms for $1.2 billion. What does it mean? Listen as Brandon and Kristen work it out in real time.

Is the POS dying? What even is a modern point of sale? Can it shed its old image and become what it always wanted to be: the true hub of modern restaurant operations? Niko Papademetriou runs sales and business development at Qu, a point of sale system that's thinking through what the true future for restaurants looks like. In this episode, we talk POS (a lot); restaurant work, and the tools operators can access now that were just a dream a decade ago.

Tammy Billings has worked in marketing and biz dev for decades and has plenty of experience with restaurant technology. In this far-ranging conversation, we talk about the past, present, and future of the industry. Plus: Want to get Kristen fired up? Talk about ethics in podcasting.

Suzie Tsai spent over a decade at restaurant powerhouse Brinker International, leading programs that included Chili's white-hot beverage business, before landing the top role at Bonchon. In this episode, Suzie explains how a concept that launched (and then failed) in South Korea has found its footing in the US, growing over two decades. But this growth isn't without challenges; Bonchon's restaurants range from seated full service to kiosk-friendly fast casual, leading to tough choices about how to implement new technology.

Kernel made a splash when it opened its first New York City restaurant in early 2024. The then-vegan restaurant's star employee was a robotic arm tasked with moving food in and out of the oven, assisting human workers by handling much of the heavy lifting. But the robot, along with Kernel's name and one-time signature green paint in stores, have been retired. Instead, Kernel Foods is working on a new sandwich concept: Counter Service. Chief operating officer Tom Cortese, also a co-founder of hit fitness platform Peloton, still has an eye on how tech will take this burgeoning restaurant brand to new heights. 

This episode starts with a lawsuit and an upset: Uber sues DoorDash in San Francisco, and New York Magazine declares all the cool restaurants are on OpenTable now. The drama! (Kind of.) Then, Michael Osanloo, president and CEO of Portillo's — now a fast-growing, publicly traded restaurant company — joins the Simmer to talk marketing, loyalty, third-party delivery, and Chicago street food.

We're back on the restaurant loyalty beat this week with Abhinav Kapur, who's led Bikky for nearly a decade. In this episode, we talk about developing loyal diners, email (and text!) marketing, and “tendies” from a new KFC spinoff, whatever those are. 

Finally, Resy CEO Pablo Rivero joins The Simmer, completing our trifecta of interviews with leaders of the country's largest reservations providers. In his role as SVP of global dining, he also oversees Tock, the reservations and ticketing platform Amex acquired last year for $400 million. It was a smart acquisition: American Express cardholders spent a staggering $100 billion (!!!) on dining in 2023. In this episode, we discuss artificial intelligence, bots, exclusivity, and the future of the reservations business.

Zach Goldstein is optimistic about the year ahead for restaurants. As founder and CEO of Thanx, a leading guest engagement platform for restaurants, Zach is known for his honest and sometimes provocative takes on the future of the industry. In this episode, we tackle hot topics in restaurant loyalty including personalization, advertising, guest retention, and AI. 

Here's something different: for the first time, Kristen and Brandon aren't hosting a guest on The Simmer. Instead, we're talking trends — good, bad, and ugly — that continue to shape restaurants. In this episode we talk about restaurant tech consolidation, restaurant robotics, and what a new US administration might mean for restaurants and the people who work in them. Thanks for helping to make 2024 a success for The Simmer, see you next year!

Wow Bao started two decades ago as a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Chicago. Since then, it's grown through modern channels like vending machines, deals with airports and sports stadiums, ghost kitchens, and frozen, packaged goods in grocery stores. In this episode, Geoff talks about his tech philosophy (tl;dr: it's good to be first!), Wow Bao's growth over time, and the challenges of selling one brand in lots of places. 

Over the last few weeks, foodborne illnesses have killed several people in the U.S., sickening many others. Outbreaks affected major restaurants and retailers from McDonald's to Whole Foods to Walmart; the offending E. coli bacteria was traced to ingredients including onions, carrots, and broccoli.Christine Schindler founded Pathspot to make restaurants safer, using tech to support health and safety initiatives from hand washing to ingredient labeling. In this episode, we talk about the recent E. coli outbreaks specifically and food safety in America generally, plus how technology helps standardize processes in order to keep us all safe and healthy. Fascinating stuff!

Recipes on the internet have always been bad. They're hard to find and even harder to mange. Many have tried to find a fix, but few have completely flipped the model on its head. Until now! Lisa Grimm is co-founder and CEO of Roux, which she describes as “the home of food culture.” It's a place to find, store, modify, and share recipes while giving credit (and cash) to the original creator. (Join the waitlist at roux.app.) In this episode, we cover Roux's inception and soft launch, plus Brandon and Kristen share restaurant-related news out of the recent presidential election and Wonder's big acquisition of Grubhub. 

Founder and CEO of Table22, Sam Bernstein, has some incredible news. He just closed a Series A funding round of 11 million dollars. In the latest episode, Bernstein talks about how Table22 is helping restaurants generate new revenue streams and innovatively bring their brands to life, fueling its mission to support merchants, restaurants, and shops in operationalizing unique offerings.

Alice Cheng launched Culinary Agents, a hiring platform for hospitality companies, 12 years ago. Since then, it's served 2 million users, including more than 50,000 businesses, offering job listings, industry data, and educational content meant to inform and inspire the next generation of restaurant talent.  On this episode, Alice debuts Culinary Agents' newest endeavor: HospitalityCareerPaths.com, a platform highlighting the professional trajectories of leaders in the industry. (And others, like Kristen.) 

Chef, founder, and industry leader Aaron Noveshen helms San Francisco Bay Area's Starbird, a chicken concept. Starbird debuted eight years ago hoping to “completely disrupt fast food,” per Noveshen. During that time, the brand has grown quickly, embraced most of the industry's tech-forward growth tactics — including ghost kitchens, which he still talks about favorably!  On this episode, Noveshen describes the Starbird's evolution while sharing much of what he's learned leading a fast-moving, forward-thinking restaurant brand born in the country's tech epicenter. (Plus, a major QR code-adjacent gripe from Brandon.)

Robert Sietsema has been reviewing restaurants for over 30 years, and he has some thoughts. Specifically, in this episode, he has thoughts about QR code menus (absolutely not), reservations platforms (fine but he'd rather avoid), and social media ("It's putting me out of business."). Plus, Brandon and Kristen hang out in New York and make the restaurant technology introduction of the year.

Dig, formerly Dig Inn, is an East Coast-based chain selling its plates, sandwiches, sides, and salads at 33 locations. CEO Tracy Kim joined Dig nearly three years ago and spent the past year-and-a-half in the top role. In this episode, we talk business growth, marketing, positioning, and, yes, kiosks for a growing brand with big plans for the future. 

Reservations are having a moment. So when the biggest player in the game makes big changes to its platform, the industry pays attention. Debby Soo assumed the top role at OpenTable in the summer of 2020, when restaurants were reeling from the sudden onset of the pandemic that changed their business forever. In this episode, we talk about the changes Soo and her exec team have made at OpenTable, working to win back the best restaurants in the country (and abroad) and push a decades-old restaurant technology company into the future. 

What happens when you apply a startup-esque growth mindset, scale, and principles to restaurants? For Gregg Majewski, CEO of Craveworthy Brands, it means near immediate results. Majewski describes Craveworthy as a “restaurant platform company,” not a restaurant group, that gives brands tools and systems to scale, fast. It scaled from zero to 200 restaurants, and zero to $200 million in systemwide sales in roughly 18 months. And it's on a buying spree, recently acquiring Hot Chicken Takeover, taim Mediterranean Kitchen, and Sigri Indian BBQ. Craveworthy has 500 restaurants in development and an ambitious goal of becoming a billion-dollar company in the first five years. In this episode, Majewski explains how this approach could change how large restaurant brands thrive.

It's been a busy few weeks in the reservations business. Over the summer, American Express, which already owns Resy, announced a $400 million acquisition of rival booking service Tock. A few weeks later, OpenTable shared its own big news, a deal with Visa to grant cardholders special access to restaurants. In this extra spicy episode, Tock CEO Matt Tucker wastes no time punching up at his biggest competitor. (After the interview was recorded, both OpenTable and Visa declined to comment on the specifics of their partnership or Tucker's comments.) He also goes deep on all things reservations, including the bots and brokers causing headaches for everyone. 

Nancy Luna is a veteran restaurant industry reporter and writer. She's covered restaurants in some capacity for over two decades for outlets including The Orange County Register, Nation's Restaurant News, and Business Insider. Starting as a blogger on MySpace (!!) during her local newspaper days, Nancy has carved out a niche that's served her as a journalist for decades. On this special summer vacation episode of The Simmer, we talk media, PR, conferences and more.

What's the future of full service restaurants? It's easy to get caught up in growth and scale, but in this industry segment, customer experience *really* matters. Chip Wade took the reins at Union Square Hospitality Group from its storied founder, Danny Meyer. In this episode, we talk about how Wade will move USHG into a new era, including HQ+, the company's new training program for business leaders across industries.

In January, Owner.com announced a $33 million Series B round of funding, mainly from existing investors. According to Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton, it's in service of helping mom-and-pop restaurants increase direct online sales. In this episode we talk about how restaurants can find and retain online customers, the evolution of restaurant discovery, and why working within narrow constraints — a particular customer set and limited customization options — is Owner's winning strategy.

It's been almost 19 years since Olo's first customer, its founder's grandmother, placed a restaurant order via text message. In that time, tech has changed — a lot! Still, on average, just one out of every six restaurant orders comes through digital channels. In this episode, Noah Glass, known as one of the earliest restaurant technology operatives, describes this evolution and what he sees coming after nearly two decades leading Olo. Also discussed: endless shrimp, negronis, and Dollaritas. Cheers! Music provided by Heywood Rex.

Since leaving Eleven Madison Park, the New York City fine dining restaurant he led to worldwide renown, nearly five years ago, Will Guidara has evangelized "unreasonable hospitality," or, as he defines it, the art of giving people more than they expect. As a professional speaker, he's managed to apply principles of running a successful and hospitable restaurant to other industries, from lawn care to insurance. In this episode, we tackle some big questions about the future of restaurants, including technology's role in hospitality. Plus, Will shares the ideas behind two of his newest projects, the annual Welcome Conference (returning to New York in September!), and his twice-monthly newsletter, Pre-Meal. Music provided by Heywood Rex.

As Shake Shack's chief financial officer, Katie Fogertey manages the business's financial actions — that's obvious. But she's as much of a tech and operations expert as a financial one, taking a hands-on and holistic view of company when making decisions about its future. In this episode, we talk about "bespoke deployment" — Katie's term (that Kristen loves) for rolling out new processes and technology across the restaurants, new initiatives like drive-thrus and combo meals, and why kiosks are so important to Shake Shack's future. Music provided by Heywood Rex.

Q: Who calls restaurants on the phone? A: Far more people than we expected. Alex Sambvani is co-founder and CEO of Slang, a voice AI company that answers the phone for hundreds of restaurants. Over half of calls to restaurants often go unanswered, meaning diners don't get answers to straightforward questions like, "Can I bring my dog to your patio?" On this edition Alex talks us through the good, bad, and ugly of artificial intelligence, and teases "something big" coming from a new partnership. Music provided by Heywood Rex.

There are restaurant people, there are technology people, and there are people who do both. Joe Unger was once a Subway franchisee, then held leadership roles at Taco Bell and Reef Technology. Now currently COO for Gosh Enterprises, a fast-growing restaurant group, Unger speaks to both sides of the business and how they work together. We talk through restaurant technology's growth from fun experiment to critical business strategy, including all of the bumps along the way. Music provided by Heywood Rex.

Don't call it a ghost kitchen! NYC-based Nimbus empowers the next generation of breakout food brands, providing dedicated kitchen space in hourly, daily, or monthly increments. We talk about what it takes to help food businesses launch, grow, and thrive. Plus, Camilla shares some big news: Nimbus is coming to Chicago! Music provided by Heywood Rex.

We can't help talking about it, surge pricing is everywhere! Join us for an insightful discussion with Savneet Singh about dynamic pricing and customer loyalty models, his company's latest acquisition, and what he really thinks about free coffee at work.  Music provided by Heywood Rex.