What happens when you mix ice cream and cinnamon rolls? We’re about to find out. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast Deeper Dive features Jim Holthouser, CEO of the Atlanta-based brand operator Focus Brands, which operates Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzski’s, Jamba and Moe’s. He discusses the status of these brands and the company’s plans for them. He talks about the future of development in and out of the mall. And he talks about the potential for ...
Mar 29, 2023•29 min
How important is tipping to a restaurant employee? In this week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive, Associate Editor Reyna Estrada joins me to discuss tipping. Estrada is a former restaurant worker herself, having spent years as a server at Steak n Shake (before it went limited service) and then as a Panera Bread employee. She relied on tips the entire time. We discuss the practice and she discusses how much it meant to get those tips, both at the full-service restaurant ...
Mar 21, 2023•26 min
What is the future of third-party delivery? How about virtual brands or ghost kitchens? In this week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive, Senior Editor Joe Guszkowski joins me to talk about the state of some of the biggest trends during the pandemic. We talk about delivery. Some data is suggesting that third-party delivery demand is growing. But other data suggests the opposite. We try to get at the real story. We also talk about virtual brands and what the future of those...
Mar 15, 2023•29 min
Who is going to buy Subway? In case you haven’t heard, the fast-food sandwich chain is on the market. In this week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive, I speak with John Gordon, a restaurant consultant out of San Diego, to discuss the chain. Subway has hired JP Morgan to help find a buyer. Reports suggest a host of large private equity firms, including Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital, are looking at it, with a price tag of $8 billion or more. John and I discuss that sale an...
Mar 08, 2023•29 min
What is the future of Bojangles? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Jose Armario, the CEO of the 800-unit chicken chain. Armario took over the chain after it was sold in 2018 to Durational Capital Management, and he takes time to discuss how the chain did last year. He also discusses the brand’s future, including plans to expand well beyond its Southeastern roots. And he reveals some interesting information about the company’s menu as it looks to expand...
Mar 01, 2023•32 min
What is the future of restaurant automation? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Matt Newberg, the founder of the media platform Hngry. Hngry is a subscription media platform that examines how technology is reshaping our food system through trends like ghost kitchens, microfulfillment, fungi-based proteins, personalized nutrition and other things. We talk about the state of technology and automation and how all this technology will influence customer ser...
Feb 22, 2023•29 min
Why are chocolate milkshakes so important to Cameron Mitchell? This week's episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Mitchell, founder of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants and one of the country's most successful restaurant creators. Mitchell's company operates 64 restaurants in 20 brands, including the fine dining brand Ocean Prime. He talks about his reasons for starting a restaurant company and why culture was so important to him from day one. We talk about a range of other...
Feb 15, 2023•31 min
The plant-based meat trend is dead. Or maybe it isn’t. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast “A Deeper Dive” is about plant-based meat, and specifically, why fake meat hasn’t quite taken off at fast-food restaurants the way many predicted three years ago. Nancy Kruse, RB’s menu trends columnist, joins me on the podcast to discuss the topic. While products like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat burgers were all the rage in 2019, sales of both appear to have slowed considerably—bot...
Feb 08, 2023•32 min
What happens when you combine chicken wings and sandwiches? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features David Bloom, chief operating and development officer for Capriotti’s, a Las Vegas chain of sandwich shops. Capriotti’s acquired Wing Zone in 2021. Capriotti’s operates 175 locations. Wing Zone now operates 61. Bloom talks about that combination and what the company saw in Wing Zone and how it has integrated that chain into its system. He also discusses both ch...
Feb 01, 2023•29 min
How are younger consumers reacting to inflation? This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive features Lori Rakoczy, associate principal with Restaurant Business sister company Technomic and one of the co-authors of the blog Technomic’s Take. And we’re talking about inflation. Specifically, we’re talking about how younger consumers are dealing with high prices. Menu prices have taken off over the past year-plus—they were up 8.5% year over year in December. Rakoczy wrote recently that younger Gen Z consu...
Jan 25, 2023•28 min
What is Killer Burger and where is it going? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features John Dikos, CEO of the 20-unit Killer Burger, along with VP of Financial Planning Adam Sanders. The episode was recorded at the ICR Conference, where we spoke with the two about the burger chain and its overall growth strategy. Killer Burger operates 20 company and franchised locations in the Pacific Northwest and says it is “redefining” the American diner burger for the “mo...
Jan 18, 2023•26 min
How is Cava Group’s integration of Zoe’s Kitchen restaurants going? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Brett Schulman, the CEO of Cava Group, who talks about a wide variety of topics, but particularly his company's integration of Zoe’s Kitchen. Cava acquired Zoe’s in 2018 in one of the more interesting deals of recent vintage. Both were fast-casual Mediterranean chains but Zoe’s was publicly traded at the time. Since then, Cava has been converting Zoe’s...
Jan 11, 2023•26 min
What is the story behind Dave’s Hot Chicken? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features two people behind one of the hottest chains in the country: Bill Phelps, Dave’s CEO, and Arman Oganesyan, one of the company’s cofounders. Dave’s is the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the U.S. right now. The chain, which sells a menu of spicy chicken tenders or sandwiches, was started out of a California parking lot in 2017. It went from seven locations in 2020 to more ...
Jan 05, 2023•26 min
Restaurants are in a stronger financial position now than they were before the pandemic. This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive features Michael Swanson, an agricultural economist and consultant for Wells Fargo. Swanson has been on the podcast before and talks about the current and future state of food costs. Commodity price inflation hammered the industry last year. Those costs have started to ease already and Swanson talks about what to expect come 2023. We also talk about the state of the indus...
Dec 21, 2022•29 min
Is tipping out of hand at fast-food restaurants? This week’s episode of A Deeper Dive I speak features Robert Byrne, director of consumer and industry insights with our sister company Technomic, who talks about convenience, value and tipping. Byrne oversees consumer surveys with Technomic talks extensively about consumers’ views on a host of issues related to restaurants. He discusses why consumers use restaurants, including why convenience is so important to consumers and what they think about ...
Dec 14, 2022•28 min
Why do companies franchise their business? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Gary Occhiogrosso the founder of Franchise Growth Solutions, who talks about the opportunities and challenges involved in franchising. Occhiogrosso has been involved in the business for a long time and we talk about his history, first as a franchisee and later as the founder of a franchise development and sales firm. Franchising remains a popular method for restaurants to expa...
Dec 07, 2022•30 min
Did Starbucks win its labor battle? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features a debate between myself and Peter Romeo, the editor at large of RB, on the success of Starbucks’ pushback against unions. For some time, it seemed that another Starbucks store formed a union every few hours. The push, the most successful effort to unionize a restaurant chain, contributed to massive changes at the Seattle-based coffee giant, particularly in the executive team. That pu...
Dec 01, 2022•31 min
Restaurant automation is coming rapidly. But how much of an impact will it have? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Juan Martinez, principal with the consulting firm Profitality, who talks about the growing use of automation. Martinez is a periodic guest on the podcast and he works with restaurants to improve their overall profitability. Automation has been one area that restaurants have been targeting over the past couple of years as they faced numerou...
Nov 22, 2022•27 min
Can dine-in pizza still work? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features a trio of executives from Mountain Mike’s Pizza: co-CEO and brand owners Chris Britt and Ed St. Geme and COO Jim Metevier. Mountain Mike’s is a California-based chain that operates about 270 locations. Britt and St. Geme bought the chain about six years ago. The trio talk about the history of the brand and its growth since Britt and St. Geme acquired the company. They talk about the impact...
Nov 16, 2022•31 min
What is the future of casual dining? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features John Cywinski, the president of the casual-dining brand Applebee’s, to discuss that very topic. Bar and grill chains like Applebee’s had generally struggled since the Great Recession. And then the pandemic forced them to figure out takeout and delivery, and many of them did. But the pandemic culled supply of dine-in restaurants and those concepts that made it through that era have s...
Nov 09, 2022•32 min
Does the fast-casual sector exist? In this week’s episode of a Deeper Dive I’m joined by my colleague Lisa Jennings to talk about the blurring of the lines in the restaurant industry—particularly between fast-casual and quick-service restaurants. The fast-casual sector represented a group of higher-end limited-service concepts and until the pandemic largely dominated industry growth over the past two decades. But since the pandemic, a lot more of these chains have added drive-thrus, such as Shak...
Nov 02, 2022•29 min
Amusements have been, quite literally, a game-changer for Cicis. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Jeff Hetsel, the president of the 300-unit pizza buffet chain. Cicis has had a strong performance coming out of the pandemic, with sales up 14.5% last year, according to Technomic. One of the big reasons is video games. The company has been convincing operators to expand their game rooms from the eight games they used to have to much larger rooms with pri...
Oct 26, 2022•29 min
How can restaurants avoid becoming a political football? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Joe Kefauver, the managing partner with public affairs firm Align Public Strategies and cohost of the RB-hosted Working Lunch podcast. Kefauver discusses a variety of topics, including a backlash against corporate ESG strategies. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. Many corporations believe that having a strong ESG framework can create shareholde...
Oct 19, 2022•29 min
How can operators avoid price increases as their own costs increase? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Rich Shank, senior principal with RB sister company Technomic. He discusses the challenging operating environment when it comes to menu pricing. Restaurants have been raising prices aggressively this year as higher prices for food and labor eat into margins. Menu prices are up 8% over the past year. But there are signs that consumers are starting to r...
Oct 12, 2022•26 min
The beverage business is rapidly changing and drive-thru coffee concepts like Scooters Coffee are right in the middle of it. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Joe Thornton, the president of Scooter’s. Scooter’s has quietly been one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in the U.S. System sales and unit count have nearly tripled over the past five years, according to RB sister company Technomic. Thornton talks about that growth and what has been key ...
Oct 05, 2022•28 min
If you haven’t come across a bubble tea concept yet, you will quite soon. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Paul Reynish, who was named global CEO of the bubble tea concept Gong Cha earlier this year. Gong Cha was founded in Taiwan in 1996 and is now based in London. It has quietly been one of the fastest-growing chains in the country. It operates more than 1,600 locations globally. It finished 2021 with nearly 170 locations in the U.S., up 700% over t...
Sep 28, 2022•31 min
How big of a deal is the unionization effort at Starbucks? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features my colleague Peter Romeo, who talks about the ongoing unionization campaign at the coffee giant. More than 200 Starbucks locations have voted to form a union. The company has undertaken a massive effort to stop it. Peter and I discuss that unionization campaign, Starbucks’ response, whether it’s working or not, and whether other restaurant chains should worry a...
Sep 22, 2022•30 min
The nation’s opioid crisis grew much worse during the pandemic. And it has hit restaurants particularly hard. This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Rick Van Warner, a former longtime industry executive and ex-CEO of the Tex-Mex chain Tijuana Flats. He is also on the board at Project Opioid, a Florida-based agency that works with employers on the opioid crisis. Van Warner is also the author of the book On Pills and Needles , where he tells the story of his ...
Sep 13, 2022•32 min
Can fries fix Quiznos? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Mark Lohmann, the president of Rego Restaurant Group, which owns Quiznos as well as its sister chain Taco Del Mar. Quiznos has gone from nearly 4,700 U.S. restaurants in 2006 to just 200 now, plus fewer than 300 internationally, a 90% reduction in total unit count that is unprecedented in restaurant industry history. These days the brand is trying just about everything to stop that decline. That ...
Sep 07, 2022•33 min
How did Smoothie King convince franchisees to go along with a complete menu overhaul? And how did customers react? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Wan Kim, the CEO and owner of the Texas-based Smoothie King brand. Kim was a franchisee of the brand in South Korea before he bought the company and moved to the U.S. Smoothie King has been one of the country’s fastest-growing chains and smoothies are increasingly popular among consumers. The brand’s sales...
Aug 31, 2022•28 min
