The meez Podcast

Josh Sharkey
  • 5.0 (45)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • 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. 7h ago

    Inside the Kitchens Feeding the World’s Biggest Events: Jennifer Bargisen of Sodexo Live!

    #152 Josh sits down with Jennifer Bargisen, VP of Culinary Transformation at Sodexo Live!. They recorded at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver after a day touring its kitchens. Jen explains contract foodservice: running food and beverage for stadiums, convention centers, zoos, aquariums, ferry systems and other venues that don’t operate it themselves. She planned to be a lawyer, cooked through school in Atlanta, and chose 90-hour weeks in kitchens over 90-hour weeks at a law firm. Her path ran through 103 West at Buckhead Life Restaurant Group, Fairmont hotels at home and overseas, and MGM in Las Vegas, where the competition was across the street every day. They get into why this side of the industry is really a logistics business on top of an experience business powered by a culinary operation. Planning for big events starts up to two years out, and a Taylor Swift concert at the Colts’ stadium should feel different from a football game. Jen walks through Formula One in Miami and the Paris 2024 Olympics, where custom kitchens were built inside a former movie studio. She explains how one menu gets broken out across suites, clubs and concessions, and why new chefs need three to six months to ramp up. She also says why she thinks the cold kitchen is the hardest station. They cover packaging and robotics in receiving, food waste as stewardship, menus that change every day, and how tools like meez help chefs focus on quality over volume. It closes on what a chef-run supermarket could look like, which brings up Jen’s years at Giant Eagle’s Market District and the day a colleague put her in a potato costume to sell potatoes. 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 Sodexo Live!: https://www.sodexolive.com Connect with Jen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chefjenb/ Timestamps 02:25 What Contract Foodservice Is 05:15 From Law School Plans to Atlanta Kitchens 09:56 Why Live Events and What Las Vegas Taught Her 12:04 How a Stadium Food Operation Works 13:53 Planning a Taylor Swift Concert vs. a Colts Game 15:51 Formula One and Food Built for the Moment 17:11 Feeding Athletes at the Paris Olympics 20:50 Ramping Up Cooks and Why the Cold Kitchen Is Hardest 23:35 Her Role Now: Packaging, Robotics and RFID 27:20 Food Waste and Stewardship at Scale 29:14 What Sodexo and Sodexo Live! Do 31:45 What Would Surprise Restaurant Chefs 37:28 What If a Chef Ran Your Supermarket? 39:24 Giant Eagle, Market District and the Potato Costume

  2. Oct 14

    From Rolling Stone Dreams to Restaurant News: Sam Oches of Nation's Restaurant News, Take-Away and Extra Serving

    Josh sits down with Sam Oches, editor in chief of Nation's Restaurant News and host of the Take-Away with Sam Oches podcast, for a candid conversation about who covers the restaurant industry now and who holds it accountable. Sam spent 12 years at QSR magazine before joining Informa in 2021, where he also co-hosts Extra Serving with Alicia Kelso and leads CREATE, the event for emerging restaurateurs. Before any of that he wanted to be Cameron Crowe writing for Rolling Stone, and he still keeps the drum kit he got at 12 in his basement (his 10-year-old daughter can hold a beat). The two dig into how a trade outlet covers restaurants that also buy its ads ("we're not critics, our job is accountability"), whether any news can be unbiased, and what happened to the trade press. NRN had 32 writers 20 years ago. NRN and Restaurant Business now share about 8 editors, Food Arts, Plate and Restaurant Hospitality are gone, and a 23-year-old eating a Burger King burger in their car can outdraw Bret Thorn, NRN's food editor of 30 years. "We were the gatekeepers. Now we're not." Sam explains why people come to conferences to meet each other, why a $500 registration fee got walked back, and why there are too many events. Josh pushes on all-in-one tech stacks versus open platforms, and Sam traces roughly $20 billion of 2021 foodservice VC money down to about $1 billion last year. They close on awards (what actually qualifies a winner, and why NRN admits a couple of past Hot Concepts are gone), the operator family trees running from P&G to Yum, and Fogo de Chão CEO Barry McGowan's path from his brother's Pizza Hut to a team that has followed him for 20 years. Sam's case for the industry: about 1 million restaurants, a trillion dollars in sales, fewer than 50 trade journalists covering it, and a business AI will never replace. 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/ Nation's Restaurant News: https://www.nrn.com Follow NRN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationsrestaurantnews/ Connect with Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-oches-5923bb13 Follow Sam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soches/ [NEEDS GUEST INPUT] Take-Away with Sam Oches: https://www.nrn.com/program/take-away-with-sam-oches Extra Serving: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extra-serving-a-restaurant-industry-podcast/id1466959303 NRN on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NationsRestaurantNews Restaurant Business: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com CREATE: https://informaconnect.com/create

  3. Oct 14

    Ty Wilson On The Hidden Spend Quietly Eating Restaurant Margins

    #150 Josh sits down with Ty Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Tab Commerce, the financial management platform built specifically for restaurants. Ty grew up in his parents’ restaurants in Canada, studied finance, spent a few years in investment banking in Toronto, and landed back in the family business during the pandemic, where he saw how much money quietly leaks out of a restaurant through the expenses nobody is tracking. He and Josh get into why the local sourcing marketplace he started with never worked, what it took to move from software into regulated financial services, and why the long tail of spend (subscriptions, service contracts, repairs, and runs to Restaurant Depot) is where margin disappears. Ty explains how virtual cards, real-time visibility, and automated coding change what an operator can control, why Tab has moved more than a dozen restaurant groups off Ramp and Brex without losing one back, and how vendor-funded rewards are reshaping what a business card is worth. They dig into where operators are actually buying supplies today, the shift to ordering online, and how much the convenience of a single distributor can quietly cost. They also cover the hardest lesson of building software for operators, that respecting the switching cost matters more than being right on paper, and why hiring people who genuinely love the industry has been a bigger competitive advantage than automation. Along the way Ty tells the story of his family’s other business, the traveling Ribfest barbecue circuit that tours Ontario every summer. It closes with both of them trading favorite restaurants and an unapologetic defense of the Cheesecake Factory. Since we recorded, Tab has launched Tab Supply, an online store and AI purchasing agent that operators can use to buy 500k+ supplies from 180+ manufacturers. This includes equipment, paper goods, and supplies at great prices, fast shipping, and unlimited 5% cash back on every order when they pay with their Tab Card. It’s the same idea Ty lays out in the episode: make it faster, easier, and cheaper for operators to get what they need, while showing them where their purchasing can get better. 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 Tab Commerce: https://tabcommerce.com/  Follow Ty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyedwardwilson/ Timestamps  05:50 Growing Up In His Parents' Canadian Restaurants  08:04 From Local Marketplace To Restaurant Back Office  11:45 The Terrifying Leap Into Financial Services  14:01 What Tab Commerce Actually Does Today  17:51 Life Before Tab, Petty Cash And One Shared Card  22:11 Restaurant Depot, Webstaurant, And Where Operators Really Buy  26:16 How Cash Back And Vendor Funded Rewards Work  32:53 Turning Spend Data Into Real Savings  43:40 The Hardest Lesson, Respect The Switching Cost  51:37 Olympians, Hospitality, And Canadian Ribfest

  4. Oct 6

    Actuals beats averages, Open beats closed, and questions beat answers. With David Corts, CEO of Fresh KDS.

    #149 Josh sits down with David Corts, CEO of Fresh Technology, the company behind Fresh KDS, now running in roughly 11,000 restaurant locations. David started his career in New York in the mid-90s as the first employee at @plan, met his wife of 25 years on a Metro North reverse commute while she was one of the first 20 employees at Priceline, and later sold a business to AOL, landing there as a VP of product under Tim Armstrong. He was also an English major, which he took to abbreviating as "ENG" once the Google transplants at AOL started asking what he studied, and now argues was his real advantage all along. He got to Fresh six years ago, a software division spun out of a restaurant holding company, walked away from online ordering in the middle of the pandemic, and bet the whole business on the kitchen display system instead. The conversation keeps circling one idea: the number most operators measure is not the thing that actually happened. David argues that the middle layer of management, the part that exists to collect what happened and report it upward, is being abstracted away, and that the new bottleneck is coordination rather than execution. He explains why he blew up his own process ceremony, why he now hires only for people who unblock themselves, and how his personal knowledge vault became a company brain running on two repos, one PR-gated and one wide open. Josh tees up the 1950 Air Force study where Gilbert Daniels measured 4,063 pilots and found zero who were average on all ten dimensions the cockpit was built around, which sets off his case against average ticket time. The guest never experiences your average. They experience their order. They also get into whether sous vide counts as cheating, the rent-free SoHo apartment David's brother occupied for seven years, and why open beats closed in the long run. 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 Fresh KDS: https://www.fresh.technology Follow Fresh KDS on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fresh.kds/ Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcorts/ Timestamps 08:40 Building A Team Of "We'll Figure It Out" People 11:11 AI, Management, And The New Coordination Bottleneck 19:08 Lessons From The Dot-Com Era: AI Is Just A Utility 23:13 Services As Software And Customization At Scale 33:09 Why A Liberal Arts Background Is An Advantage In The AI Age 39:11 Spinning Out Fresh KDS And Betting On The Kitchen 47:06 Why Averages Are Dumb 53:12 Turning Kitchen Data Into Meaning With AI 58:59 Building A Personal Second Brain And A Company AI Operating System 01:13:50 The SaaSpocalypse, Headless Software, And Why Open Beats Closed

  5. Sep 15

    Sean Josephs: The Sommelier Who Built America's Great Bourbon Bars and now create's a bourbon they pour.

    Josh sits down with Sean Josephs, founder of Pinhook Bourbon and the new subscription-only Old Joseph's, for a conversation that traces two decades in restaurants and spirits. Sean didn't find the industry until he was 30, after five directionless years in fashion and beauty account management, before landing as a food runner at Tia Pol, the Chelsea restaurant his wife Mani opened in 2004. From there he trained under master sommelier Roger Dagorn at Chanterelle, then went on to build Char No. 4 in Brooklyn, Maysville, and Kenton's in Manhattan, all before relocating to New Orleans. Along the way he became one of the earliest people to treat bourbon the way sommeliers treat wine, pouring small tastes at a time and eventually founding Pinhook, a brand built around buying young barrels on lineage and being transparent about where the whiskey actually comes from. The conversation moves through the mechanics of the bourbon industry that most drinkers never think about: why big brands dilute their whiskey down to 80-86 proof and chill filter it to hide inconsistency between barrels, how scarcity turned Pappy Van Winkle into a cult bottle despite sharing a mash bill with Weller 12, and how vintage bottles that sold for $58 a decade ago now go for $10,000. Sean and Josh debate what connoisseurship actually means, identifying quality even in something you personally dislike, argue about when homemade beats store-bought (can you really beat Heinz), and dig into why bourbon barrels aging in Kentucky have tripled since 2012, helped along by private equity speculation. It closes on Sean's bet for what comes next: the best bourbon hasn't been made yet, and it won't come from a single distillery. Links and Resources📌  Sean's website: https://pinhookbourbon.com  Follow Sean on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theseanjosephs/  Follow Sean on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-josephs-a1126573/ 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/

  6. Sep 8

    Janello On Red Sauce Joints, Chicken Parm, And What Makes Them Last

    #146 Josh sits down with Jason Anello, better known as Janello, at Da Nico on Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy. Janello is an experience strategist on a mission to bring back dinnertime. That inspired him to create The Red Sauce Map and the Forking Tasty supper club so others can experience dinnertime through his Italian-American lense. They trace how Italian immigration and New World abundance turned scarcity cooking into stacked, saucy, unmistakably American plates, and why chicken parm has no Parmesan in it at all. Janello defines what actually qualifies a restaurant as a red sauce joint, from the antipasto and the tiramisu to the photos on the wall and the bottle of cheap Chianti, and runs down his top chicken parms and lasagnas across the country.  The conversation moves through fresh versus dried pasta, the ricotta dishes he can live without, and a segment called In Memory Of, where the two of them eulogize the neighborhood spots that have closed. From there it turns to the new generation of chefs reinterpreting the genre, what Carbone understood about theater and hospitality, and the three reasons Janello thinks these restaurants really close. It is a warm, opinionated look at a category of restaurant that is equal parts food, memory, and cultural preservation.    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/ Red Sauce Map: https://www.theredsaucemap.com Follow Janello on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forkingtasty Follow Janello on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janello/ Timestamps  02:07 The History Of Red Sauce Joints In America  04:23 How Janello Defines A Red Sauce Joint  06:49 The Chicken Parm Origin Story 1 1:16 Janello's Top Five Chicken Parms In The Country  13:03 What Makes A Great Chicken Parm  14:45 Lasagna, Manicotti, And The Ricotta Debate  20:50 The Checklist Every Red Sauce Joint Should Meet  22:45 In Memory Of: The Closed Joints He Misses Most  25:51 Old School Versus The New Red Sauce Joint  33:50 The Three Reasons Red Sauce Joints Close

  7. Sep 1

    Rocco DiSpirito talks technique, content creation, and the path of the modern chef

    #145 Josh sits down with chef, restaurateur, author, and television pioneer Rocco DiSpirito for a wide-ranging conversation about how dramatically the path of a chef has changed. Recorded at Bar Rocco, the episode begins with Josh realizing that Rocco actually judged a cooking competition he entered 25 years ago, before the two revisit their shared connection to legendary chef Gray Kunz. Rocco traces his own path from earning 50 cents an hour at a Queens pizzeria to culinary school, Europe, Lespinasse, Union Pacific, television, health and wellness, and eventually back into restaurants. Along the way, they unpack what young cooks once had to endure to gain access to culinary knowledge and whether today's chefs really need the same years of repetition and classical training now that so much information is instantly available online.   Rocco and Josh also get into the realities of building a sustainable career as a chef, from why great food alone may no longer be enough to why Rocco's former business partner taught him to balance "perfecting" with "promoting." They discuss social media, chef IP, restaurant ownership, licensing and management deals, and why Rocco believes younger chefs shouldn't become overly protective of a name or trademark. Rocco shares how triathlon training transformed his approach to health and led to nine health and wellness books, names some of the cookbooks that shaped him, and gets deep into the technique behind cooking with black truffles. The conversation closes with what's ahead: more Bar Rocco, a new book blending recipes and stories, his work with CookUnity, and, above all, a desire to keep cooking.   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 Rocco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rocco-dispirito-27125916/ Follow Rocco on Instagram: @roccodispirito Visit Rocco DiSpirito: https://www.roccodispirito.com/ Visit Bar Rocco: https://www.barroccony.com/ Timestamps 00:00 Reconnecting 25 years after Josh first met Rocco 06:42 Rocco's early career, culinary school, and Gray Kunz 14:11 How a Queens pizzeria changed Rocco's life 18:02 Why the traditional path to becoming a chef has changed 23:42 Training cooks when fundamentals are no longer assumed 27:26 Why chefs need media to build sustainable careers 37:46 Protecting chef IP and rethinking restaurant ownership 41:45 How health and triathlons transformed Rocco's cooking 49:52 The cookbooks that shaped Rocco as a chef 53:17 Black truffles, flavor, and the value of hands-on experience

  8. Aug 25

    Revisiting Epic Conversations: Wylie Dufresne of Stretch Pizza, Du's Donuts, Alder, and wd~50 (Part 2)

    We’re revisiting Part Two of Josh’s conversation with legendary chef Wylie Dufresne, continuing their fireside chat from the annual meez team summit at the Tarrytown Estates outside New York City. After exploring the story and philosophy behind wd~50 in Part One, Wylie tackles some not-so-quick-fire questions, shares the unexpected inspiration behind Stretch Pizza, and takes questions from the audience. Chef Wylie reveals how stumbling upon a Breville pizza oven during the pandemic sparked an obsession with pizza-making. His desire to understand every lever and variable behind the perfect dough became a source of stimulation and happiness during a difficult period and ultimately helped inspire the opening of Stretch Pizza. The conversation also explores the difference between copying a recipe and truly mastering a craft. Wylie explains why great cooking comes from years of practice and repetition, the importance of seeking honest feedback, and learning to recognize when a dish is truly balanced. It’s a thoughtful continuation of Part One and a look at how curiosity keeps chefs and creators learning, experimenting, and pushing their work forward. 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 Wylie on X: https://x.com/wyliedufresne Follow Wylie on Instagram: @wyliedufresne Timestamps: (2:13) Lightning round  (7:15) Why American cheese is so good (11:37) Funny moments at wd~50 (18:00) Du’s Donuts flavor hits and misses (19:16) Why pizza saved Wylie  (24:35) How to identify talent (26:37) When it’s time to stop iterating (28:17) Is imitation really the greatest form of flattery (31:00 ) What wd~50 was all about (32:50) When to take a pause on ideation (35:41) Innovating on equipment and ingredients

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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
    163
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The meez Podcast
  • Show Website
    The meez Podcast

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