The meez Podcast

Josh Sharkey
  • 5.0 (44)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.

  1. 1d ago

    Revisiting Viral meez Episodes: John Karangis - Executive Chef, VP of Culinary Innovation Shake Shack

    Revisiting Viral meez Episodes — we're bringing back one of the most-listened-to conversations in meez Podcast history. This episode originally aired October 31, 2023. Have you ever wondered who is behind all of the new and exciting flavors at Shake Shack? Meet John Karangis, Executive Chef and VP of Culinary Innovation, leading R&D, menu development, and chef collaborations for the brand.  John's culinary journey kicked off in the nineties at Union Square Cafe, winding through Paris and San Francisco, before settling back in New York City at Gramercy Tavern. A detour into the corporate kitchen of Goldman Sachs honed his skills in delivering top-notch restaurant-style food in unconventional settings. Prior to Shake Shack, John spent seven years at the helm of Danny Meyer's Union Square Events, fine-tuning his ability to execute high-quality food on a large scale. In this episode, join CEO Josh Sharkey and John as they discuss the intricacies of R&D and innovation at Shake Shack. Discover the secrets behind producing restaurant-quality fare on a grand scale, and get a glimpse into John's passion for endurance training. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Follow John Karangis on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-karangis-470379a3/ Follow John on Instagram: @john_Karangis Timestamps 02:11 John's culinary background 06:48 Endurance training 13:12 How endurance training relates to working as a chef 17:41 R&D for Shake Shack 25:07 R&D Customer feedback  29:36 Shake Shake chef collaborations 33:50 When dishes don't make it past testing 42:36 Union Square Events and producing food at a large scale 46:31 How to create high quality food at a large scale 54:36 Working with Delta and seasoning food at high elevation 57:18)Advice on how to start on a fitness journey

  2. Aug 11

    Kenny Warner on How AI Models Really Work, Why Clean Data Wins, and the Future of Restaurant AI

    #144 Josh and Mike sit down with Kenny Warner, VP of Data Science and Engineering at meez, for a conversation that starts with Kenny's unlikely path into tech leaving college after his sophomore year to launch a cause-marketing startup and winds up deep inside the machinery of modern AI. Kenny breaks down what actually happens when a language model reads your data, explaining tokens, embeddings, attention, and inference in plain terms, and why you can't simply point a chatbot at a hundred-million-row database and expect good answers. He and Josh dig into the real difference between building a model and fine-tuning one, why clean and trusted data is the true competitive advantage, and how smaller, purpose-built models can beat the giants at specific jobs. They also get into where this is all heading for restaurants, from turning recipes, costs, and margins into something a system can reason about to the rise of MCP and agentic tooling, with a detour through Nobu, a Miami chef tour, and a few fun facts along the way. It's a rare, jargon-free look under the hood of AI from someone who builds it every day. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Follow Kenny Warner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennywarner/ Visit Blanket: https://www.blanket.app/ Follow Michael on Instagram: @michaeljacober Timestamps 08:04 Kenny's Path From College To Startup Founder 12:01 Raising Capital And Hitting Hard Times 15:01 Building A Model Versus Fine-Tuning One 16:11 What Tokens And Embeddings Really Are 18:45 How Attention Works In Language Models 26:01 Why Clean, Trusted Data Wins 29:05 The Case For Smaller, Purpose-Built Models 41:03 How AI Reads A Hundred Million Rows 43:21 MCP And The Rise Of Agentic Tools 50:01 What All This Means For Restaurants

  3. Aug 4

    From Dishwasher to Restaurant Empire: Cameron Mitchell on Loyalty and Culture

    #143 Josh sits down with Cameron Mitchell, founder and CEO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, to explore the leadership philosophy behind one of the country's most respected independent restaurant groups. Cameron shares the remarkable journey from high school dropout and dishwasher to building more than 100 restaurants, reflecting on the goals he set at 18 years old that ultimately shaped his entire career. Together they discuss why culture always outweighs strategy, the importance of promoting from within, and how creating opportunity not just jobs has helped his company retain leaders for decades.  The conversation dives into Cameron's approach to goal setting, accountability, leadership retreats, and maintaining values through economic downturns, rapid growth, and even the sale of part of his business. He explains why restaurants succeed or fail based on people rather than concepts, why family and work must thrive together, and how his commitment to long-term relationships has become the foundation of both his business and his life. It's an insightful conversation about entrepreneurship, resilience, hospitality, and what it really takes to build a company that lasts. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Visit Cameron Mitchell Restaurants: https://cameronmitchell.com Follow Cameron Mitchell Restaurants on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cmrcolumbus Follow Cameron Mitchell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camsaysyes Learn more about Cameron Mitchell's book Yes Is the Answer. What Is the Question?: https://cameronmitchell.com/book/ Timestamps 03:54 Scaling From One To Ten Restaurants In The Nineties 07:01 From Dishwasher To Restaurateur 14:14 Opening The First Restaurant Against The Odds 18:59 Where The Drive Came From 29:19 Making The Hard Decisions Vision Demands 36:18 Fear Of Failure Versus Fortitude 42:02 Reputation, Trust, And Accountability 49:10 Retreats That Invigorate The Team 55:19 A Sous Chef, A Disney Trip, And Generosity 1:04:38 Selling The Company And Protecting The Culture

  4. Jul 28

    Drew Nieporent on Nobu, Tribeca Grill, and the Art of the Restaurateur

    #142 Josh sits down with Drew Nieporent, one of the most influential restaurateurs in American dining and the man behind Montrachet, Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Corton, and Bâtard. Over four decades he opened 40 restaurants and has partnered with some of the world's best chefs, from David Bouley to Paul Liebrandt to Marcus Glocker. Recorded at Nobu Downtown, the conversation centers around Drew's belief that the restaurateur is the director, and the chef, the wine, the service, and the room are the cast. His new memoir "I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult" traces the whole arc. Drew digs into the complicated relationship between a restaurateur and the chefs he builds alongside, why he refused to name a restaurant after a chef ("if it fails, you can never use your name again"), and what actually keeps a restaurant alive for decades: affordable rent, replicable quality, a comfortable room, and gentle prices. He breaks down naming Nobu over Matsuhisa, pruning the menu to a core that has barely changed in 32 years, and how a teenage job at McDonald's led to the Daily Burger at Madison Square Garden, 2,000 a game. There are detours through Danny Meyer, Keith McNally, Robert De Niro, and Muhammad Ali, and it closes on the hard truth of his own metaphor: they can make a movie about your life, but the director never gets to walk up and take the award Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Follow Myriad Restaurant Group in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myriad-restaurant-group/ Visit Myriad Restaurant Group: https://www.myriadrestaurantgroup.com Follow Drew on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drewnieporent Timestamps 02:49 The Kitchen In The Window 06:49 The Restaurateur As Director 07:54 Growing Up In 1960s New York 12:52 Danny Meyer And The Rise Of Shake Shack 14:51 Losing Chefs: Boulud, Liebrandt, And Corton 24:30 What Makes A Restaurant Last 39:15 Signature Dishes And Naming Nobu 43:28 The Daily Burger At Madison Square Garden 51:56 Coppola, De Niro, And A Life Around Film 57:44 What He's Most Proud Of

  5. Jul 21

    Maddy Shannon on 'the Anticipate and deliver' approach, the price of a restaurant meal, and the Ai paradigm

    #141 Josh sits down with Maddy Shannon, Head of Product Strategy at SpotOn, who has spent her career making independent restaurants more profitable. From a start at Bain, to the business team at The Alinea Group under Nick Kokonas, to the finances at SingleThread Farms in Healdsburg, to a Stanford MBA and now leading SpotOn's reporting, Profit AI, and analytics teams, Maddy sits at the rare intersection of hospitality and product. The conversation keeps circling one idea: great hospitality and great product design solve the same problem. Both anticipate what someone needs before they ask, and both disappear when they work. She calls it the invisibility problem, and it reframes everything from how a point of sale should feel to why diners undervalue what a restaurant gives them. The two dig into what a restaurant meal is really worth, and why pricing a plate off the cost of the prawns misses the wine glass that gets refilled and the person clearing your crumbs. Maddy floats David Nayfeld's idea of billing a meal the way a plumber does, materials, labor, total, so guests see what they are paying for. From there it turns to leadership, where she sets Nick Kokonas's clarity of vision against Kyle Connaughton's prove me right approach at SingleThread, and Josh on unlearning twenty years of knowing every station when he moved into tech. On AI, they land on the line that anchors the back half: data is plentiful, attention is scarce. Both agree the real unlock is not another dashboard but software that tells an operator what to do, the way a doctor diagnoses rather than asking where it hurts. It closes on mastery, the donabe rice pot Maddy treasures, and the tension that restaurant economics rarely leave a chef room to master one thing. Her parting advice: next time you sit down to eat, take a beat, look around, and do not look at the prices so closely. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Visit SpotOn: https://www.spoton.com Follow Maddy Shannon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maddyshannon Timestamps 03:29 From a Bain Offer to a Life in Restaurants 13:37 Scaling Impact From Fine Dining to SpotOn 17:38 Jobs to Be Done and Building Profit AI 20:40 Why the Best Hospitality Is Invisible 27:56 Why Guests Undervalue Restaurants 34:58 Rethinking How Restaurants Price the Experience 38:39 Leadership and the Nightly Grind of the Kitchen 48:32 Journaling, Therapy, and Building a Second Brain 59:46 Data Is Plentiful, Attention Is Scarce 1:06:29 Mastery, Craft, and Going Against the Grain

  6. Jul 14

    Deirdre Auld On Leading With Curiosity, Not Fixing

    #140 Josh sits down with Deirdre Auld, CEO and partner of Coda Restaurant Group in Boston, whose portfolio includes SRV, Baleia, Gufo, The Salty Pig, and the soon-to-open Celine. Deirdre traces her circuitous path into hospitality leadership, from an early love of architecture and a stint in private equity to years running restaurants and eventually stepping away to earn a master's degree and a leadership coaching certification from Northwestern. She and Josh dig into the coaching philosophy she's built her career around: assuming people are whole and complete, leading with curiosity instead of trying to fix, and helping leaders ask better questions rather than hand out answers.  The conversation moves through Dierde's approach to running one-on-ones and leadership meetings at Coda, her mental models for hiring, firing and performance improvement plans, and where she sees restaurant technology and AI heading over the next several years. Deirdre is candid about both the promise and the risk of leaning on AI as a thought partner, why she still believes human connection is the ohardest thing to replace in hospitality, and what it took to build a leadership culture that can absorb constant change. It's a wide-ranging, thoughtful conversation about leadership, mentorship, and what it really takes to develop people well. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Visit Coda Restaurant Group: https://www.codarestaurantgroup.com/ Follow Deirdre Auld on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdre-auld-b40666162 Follow Deirdre Auld on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deirdreauld/ Timestamps 01:19 From architecture and private equity into restaurant leadership 08:59 The story behind naming a restaurant Celine 15:11 Growing up in Raleigh and moving to Chicago for school 18:17 Finding her way back into restaurants after stepping away 20:54 Choosing to go back to school for a master's and a coaching certification 29:54 Building a coaching product for restaurant leaders 35:01 Where coaching ends and therapy begins 44:18 Using AI as a thought partner without losing critical thinking 50:07 Skill thinning, governance, and the hollowing out of middle management 59:43 One-on-ones, team structure, and weekly rhythms at Coda 1:06:30 Do performance improvement plans actually work 1:12:00 Closing thoughts and an invitation to visit Coda's restaurants

  7. Jul 7

    Xavier from OEO on restaurant bookkeepers vs Ai and how to charge corkage fees

    #139 Josh and Mike sit down with Xavier Mariezcurrena Vega, co-founder of Over Easy Office and ChouxBox to trace the winding road that took him from busing tables as a teenager to running a 400-person back-office operation spanning Philadelphia, Bogotá, and Manila. Xavier shares the story of opening and losing a restaurant in Dallas, the friendship with his business partner Tony that grew out of a failed concept in Philadelphia, and how their shared frustration with messy invoices and unreliable financial reporting led them to build a company designed to bring transparency and accountability to restaurant operations. The conversation digs into how Xavier and Tony built their Philippines-based team from scratch, the early days of scanning invoices by hand to win over skeptical operators, and the cultural and logistical challenges of training a team to understand the chaos of restaurant data. Xavier offers a candid take on why he believes bookkeepers and the human-in-the-loop will remain essential for the foreseeable future, even as AI tools improve, and explains the difference between administrative bookkeeping and the deeper financial insight that helps operators actually run their businesses. He also weighs in on the limits of automation and robotics in restaurants, the realities of working with razor-thin margins, and what keeps him optimistic about the future of independent restaurants. The episode closes with a lighter detour into wine, corkage fees, and the debate over whether a good bottle can ever really be bad for you. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Follow Xavier on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/followxavier/ Follow Xavier on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/winepeopleproblems/ Follow Overseasoned (Xavier and Tony's podcast) on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/overseasoned.us/ Visit Over Easy Office: https://www.overeasyoffice.com Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-jacober-713104124/ Visit Blanket: https://www.blanket.app/ Follow Michael: @michaeljacober Timestamps 08:24 Xavier's Path From Busboy To Restaurant Owner 13:39 Meeting Tony And The Failed American Oak Concept 17:16 The Idea Behind Over Easy Office And ChouxBox 21:01 Building The Team In The Philippines From Scratch 24:38 Winning Over Skeptical Restaurant Operators 32:01 Landing Early Clients And Learning The Hard Way 41:23 Are Bookkeepers Going Extinct With AI 48:01 Defining What A Bookkeeper Actually Does 56:31 The Limits Of Automation And Robotics In Restaurants 01:02:43 Rising Costs, Shrinking Margins, And The Future Of Restaurants 01:07:24 Wine, Corkage Fees, And Closing Thoughts

  8. Jun 30

    28 years inside Nobu with Chef Thomas Buckley, why Nobu's legacy continues to grow, lasting relationships, and Thomas' $250 Grilled Cheese

    #138 Josh sits down with Thomas Buckley, Corporate Executive Chef of Nobu Restaurants and one of the key culinary leaders behind more than 60 Nobu locations worldwide. Thomas shares the unlikely path that took him from a vegetarian upbringing in a seaside town in England to some of the world’s most influential kitchens, including The Connaught, Daniel, El Bulli, and ultimately Nobu. Along the way, he reflects on discovering his passion for cooking, learning classical French technique, and how a transformative experience in Spain changed the way he thought about food forever. The conversation explores what has kept Thomas at Nobu for nearly three decades, the philosophy and leadership style of Nobu Matsuhisa, and the challenge of maintaining consistency across a global restaurant empire. They discuss grower relationships, sourcing, Japanese culinary principles, opening restaurants around the world, the evolution of Nobu’s menu, and the lessons Thomas has learned from working with some of the greatest chefs of his generation. He also shares stories from early Nobu Miami, the realities of opening restaurants at scale, and why simplicity, restraint, and respect for ingredients continue to define great hospitality. Links and resources 📌 Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlsharkey/?hl=en Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-sharkey-406965b/ Visit Nobu: https://www.noburestaurants.com Follow Nobu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noburestaurants/ Follow Thomas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-buckley-385a27a/ Follow Thomas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fissionchips/ Timestamps 00:02 Growing Up Vegetarian In England 02:14 Discovering Cooking And Culinary School 05:05 Moving To London And The Connaught 10:10 Working In France And Michelin Kitchens 13:47 From Daniel To Nobu 18:55 The Philosophy Behind Nobu’s Food 25:24 Building Global Consistency Across 60+ Restaurants 31:51 Tempura, Rice, And The Details That Matter 40:56 Opening Nobu Miami And The Early Days 48:51 Nobu Hotels, Future Projects, And What’s Next

See All (154)

Trailers

5
out of 5
44 Ratings

About

Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.

Information

  • Creator
    Josh Sharkey
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    154
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The meez Podcast
  • Show Website
    The meez Podcast