Restaurant Reset

Genius For Restaurants
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The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works. Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken. We’ll share real stories, practical systems, and proven ways to run a tighter, smarter, more profitable operation. The industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving. Let’s reset.

  1. 6D AGO

    Why Restaurants Keep Choosing the Wrong Tech (with Andy Grindstaff)

    Andy Grindstaff has spent his career at the intersection of restaurants and technology. He worked at restaurants long before he helped build the tech that runs them at Genius. In this solo Q&A episode, he answers your questions directly. The DMs. The emails. The real stuff people have been asking since the show started. And the questions are good. Andy covers why AI projects keep failing in restaurants (it's not the AI), what "clean data" actually means if you're a smaller operator, whether tech vendors are doing to restaurants what private equity does. And yes, someone asked him to explain what Genius actually is like they own two Tex-Mex locations and have never heard of Global Payments. No guest this week. Just Andy, your questions, and some straight talk about what restaurants actually need from the technology companies serving them. What We Cover: Why restaurant tech doesn't need to be cutting edge… it needs to work, reliably, every shift, for the people using it The data problem that's quietly killing most restaurant AI initiatives before they start Employee satisfaction → guest satisfaction → profit: why the chain starts where most operators aren't looking Where restaurant tech is actually heading in the next 3–5 years (and what Andy thinks is overhyped) And a little about what Andy does when he's not building restaurant tech: training for a 100-mile ultra trail race with his wife If you're running a restaurant, evaluating technology for your operation, or building products for this industry… this one's worth your time. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    21 min

  2. MAY 12

    Why Your Worst Guest Experience Is Your Biggest Revenue Opportunity with Zack Oates @ Ovation

    Zack Oates is the founder and CEO of Ovation, the guest experience platform used by thousands of restaurant locations across the country to collect feedback, recover unhappy guests, and build the kind of loyalty that actually shows up in revenue. Before all of that, he went on a thousand dates, wrote a book about it, and turned the whole thing into a keynote called Dating Your Customers. It sounds like a bit, but the framework holds up. In this conversation on Restaurant Reset, Zack lays out the data behind something most operators have never heard framed this way: the guest who had a bad experience and got properly recovered is worth more to your restaurant than the guest who never had a problem in the first place. Not a little more. Five times more in a year. Twenty-four times more when you factor in reviews and referrals. There's a name for it. It's called the service recovery paradox, and the numbers behind it are hard to ignore once you've heard them. What We Cover: Why 70% of first-time guests never come back to a restaurant, and what operators who know this statistic actually do about itThe service recovery paradox: why a properly recovered complaint is worth 24x the value of an average guestHow Zack went from a thousand dates to a keynote on guest experience, and why the operating manual for dating and the operating manual for restaurants are basically the same documentWhy your P&L tells you where you're at, but your guest experience tells you where you're goingThe one thing that distinguishes operators who are building generational brands from operators who are just trying to turn a profit this quarterWhy AI is now 10% better at recovering unhappy guests than humans, and what that means for how restaurants staff and scaleThe reason Google filters out any restaurant below four stars, and what that practically means for your visibilityWhat the best GMs in the country all have in common, and why it has almost nothing to do with their restaurant experienceWhy brands that start with the guest outlast brands that start with the P&L, and the PE firms that keep getting this backwards If you're a restaurant operator trying to understand why guests aren't coming back, a GM looking for a framework for handling complaints, or anyone building a brand that's supposed to last, this episode is worth your time. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    46 min

  3. MAY 5

    The Software Engineer Who Built a Michelin-Starred Restaurant Empire (By Letting Chefs Be Themselves)

    Roni Mazumdar is a software engineer from RPI who was working at Johnson & Johnson in 2011 when his father, a former fruit cart vendor and retired NYPD traffic cop, was getting close to retirement. Roni didn't want his dad to feel irrelevant. So he found a listing on Craigslist and they opened a 28-seat Indian restaurant together in New York's Lower East Side. His father ran the front of house at 75 years old. The Prime Minister of Malta dined there. And that tiny restaurant, Masalawala, became the first chapter of Unapologetic Foods, the restaurant group Roni has built into one of the most acclaimed Indian dining brands in America. Today, Unapologetic Foods is home to multiple celebrated restaurants, including Semma, which earned a Michelin star by doing something radical: letting Chef Vijay Kumar cook exactly the rural South Indian food he grew up eating. Bloomberg BusinessWeek named Roni one of the people who defined global business in 2021. What We Cover: The Immigrant Shackles: Why Indian restaurants spent decades adding heavy cream, softening spice levels, and asking "mild, medium, hot, or Indian hot?" and what that cost the cuisine What Hospitality Really Is: The fruit cart, the divorce, and why Roni's father understood something no MBA program can teach The Superpower of Authenticity: How Roni builds restaurants by letting chefs be fully themselves, and why that's the strategy, not a side benefit No Rules, No Apologies: What Roni learned watching his father break every hospitality rule in the book (and build the most loyal regulars in the Lower East Side) The Money Trap: Why the biggest restaurant mistakes start with the transaction, and what to lead with instead Take the Leap: Roni on what the accolades don't show you: the debt, the fear, and why the path to success runs straight through failure, not around it If you've ever wondered what it takes to build something that genuinely doesn't apologize for who it is, this conversation is required listening. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    48 min

  4. APR 28

    How Andrew Smith Built a $750M Restaurant Investment Platform by Doing the Opposite of Every PE Firm

    Andrew K. Smith is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Savory Fund, one of the most active restaurant investment platforms in the country. 13 brands. Owned, operated and scaled up to 575 restaurants in 29 states. Over $3 billion in cumulative sales. 40,000+ jobs created. But the story of how he got here starts with his wife Shauna. In October 2008, while the financial world was collapsing, she opened a Kneaders Bakery in Lehi, Utah. Andrew, a three-time tech CEO at the time, told her it was the dumbest idea in the world. She crushed it from month one. A few months later, he called her and said he wanted in. Her response: "Perfect. My dishwasher just called out." That's how a tech CEO ended up in the dish pit. And how the idea for Savory Fund was born. In this conversation on Restaurant Reset, Andrew goes deep on the thesis he's been pounding the table on for 18 years: that restaurants are essential services, not consumer. What We Cover: - Why Andrew says restaurants are essential services, not consumer (and what that misclassification costs operators raising capital) - How three tech exits and a bakery in Utah turned him into one of the most respected restaurant investors in the country - Why the old PE "financial engineering" playbook is now setting restaurant brands on fire - The Savory model: $4M-$15M checks, 65 in-house specialists, and a first-90-days playbook that does almost nothing on purpose - Inside the Mo'Bettahs journey from 6 locations to 63 to the 2025 F&B Deal of the Year - Why scaling from 10 units to 30 is exponentially harder than you think, and what breaks first - The hard truth Andrew tells every young founder who wants a shortcut to what he built - The one founder red flag that makes Savory walk away from a deal every time - How he and Shauna have stayed married 27 years while building two billion-dollar businesses together - Why restaurant failure looks more common than it actually is (and the real closure numbers after year 7) If you're a restaurant operator thinking about raising capital, a founder wondering whether your brand is ready to scale, or anyone building anything and trying to do it the right way, you should definitely listen to this episode of Restaurant Reset. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    48 min

  5. APR 14

    The Rick Rubin of Restaurants: How to Build a Restaurant Empire by Making Chefs the Stars with Kevin Boehm

    Kevin Boehm co-founded Boka Restaurant Group in 2002 with a single restaurant in Chicago. Today, Boka operates 30+ restaurants across Chicago, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn, serves 2.5 million guests a year, and generates more than $250 million in annual revenue. Boka restaurant has held a Michelin star for 15 consecutive years. Kevin and his partner Rob Katz won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2019. He also co-founded the Independent Restaurant Coalition during COVID, helping secure $28.6 billion in federal relief for independent restaurants. He co-founded BIÂN, a 35,000-square-foot private wellness club in Chicago. He appeared as himself on Season 3 of The Bear. And in November 2025, he published his memoir, The Bottomless Cup, which Bloomberg named one of the best books of the year. This is a masterclass in what it means to build a restaurant group the right way. What We Cover: • The Chef Partnership Model — Why Kevin and Rob built Boka around chefs as stars, not just as employees. How they find chef partners, evaluate them, and structure creative and operational responsibility. • The Chef Audition Process — The exact science behind how Boka has started the partnership process with "a couple hundred" chefs and only gone all the way with about 14. (Spoiler: it starts with "do we think you're smart and do we like you?") • The Restaurateur as Producer — Kevin's Rick Rubin analogy for the restaurateur-chef relationship: "Rick Rubin isn't going to tell Paul McCartney how to write a song, but he might have a great idea Paul can execute." • The Argument That Changed Everything — The exact moment Kevin and Rob realized they had to stop growing and build infrastructure first. "We knew we had to go backwards to go forwards." • Michelin Pressure and What It Really Takes — Why maintaining a Michelin star for 15 straight years is harder than most people realize, and what that kind of sustained excellence actually demands. • Fear of Being Discovered as a Fraud — How "faking it" in the early days drove Kevin to learn faster than anyone around him, and why he built his identity from 20 different mentors. • Whiteboard Yourself — What Kevin would tell his 23-year-old self: get a therapist, study Buddhism, stop drinking, and stop thinking there's a finish line. • 3 Pillars of a Good Life — Kevin's simple framework for knowing if he's on track: purpose, people, and unedited footage. • The Independent Restaurant Coalition — How Kevin went from grieving restaurateur to testifying before Congress and helping secure $28.6 billion in relief. With zero political experience. • Accept People as They Are, Place Them Where They Belong — Kevin's framework for building teams without projecting unrealistic expectations. Kevin Boehm doesn't just build restaurants. He builds platforms for chefs, platforms for careers, and now, with The Bottomless Cup, a platform for honesty about what success actually costs. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    47 min

  6. APR 7

    John Tesar: The Chef Bourdain Called a Genius, Dallas Called Its Most Hated, and Michelin Called a Star

    John Tesar's career is the kind of arc that sounds made up. Anthony Bourdain called him "the single most talented cook I ever worked with." He later wrote Tesar into Kitchen Confidential as Jimmy Sear,— a character defined by equal parts chaos and brilliance. In 2011, D Magazine put "The Most Hated Chef in Dallas" on its cover with John's face. Eleven years later, in 2022, he earned a Michelin star at Knife & Spoon in Orlando. Tesar has seen this industry from every angle: the celebrated highs, the very public lows, and the hard-won years of building something that actually works. He ran Knife, his Dallas steakhouse, to over $16 million in revenue from 83 seats over nine years. He's licensed that brand to hotels. He's been broke, written off, and rebuilt. And he came on Restaurant Reset this week with zero interest in sugarcoating any of it. This is one of the most honest conversations we've had on the show. What We Cover: • John's blunt reality check for operators who think they can outperform their own math • Why the math of restaurant finance works completely differently at different scales • How Knife became a scalable brand from a single 83-seat Dallas steakhouse, and the specific decisions behind that number • Why John gives up control, decision-making, and P&L upside when licensing Knife to hotel partners • His take on today's commercial real estate market • Why the wrong hire costs you more than a headcount • Why he'd rather put a human being behind a job than a machine John Tesar has lived more restaurant lives than most operators will ever know. This is the conversation you need if you want to understand the real business behind the kitchen. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments, and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    54 min

  7. MAR 31

    From One Steakhouse to 13 Restaurants and a $75M Empire: Benjamin Berg on Ego, Debt, and Giving Up Control

    What does it actually take to build a restaurant empire from a single steakhouse without a famous name, without outside investors, and without ever letting your team see you doubt the destination? Benjamin Berg has the answer. And the war stories to prove it. Berg is the founder of Berg Hospitality Group, one of Houston's most dynamic restaurant companies: 13 concepts, 1,200 employees, and $75M+ in annual revenue. He started with B&B Butchers & Restaurant on Washington Avenue, built The Annie Café & Bar with James Beard Award-winning Chef Robert Del Grande, and has since launched Turner's, Trattoria Sofia, B.B. Italia, and more. He's a Cornell-trained hospitality operator who started as a bellman and bartender, survived a business partner who got deported and sued him for $1 million before he ever served a single table, navigated pandemic debt, and came out the other side with hard-won convictions every operator needs to hear. He doesn't sugarcoat. He doesn't perform. He just tells you the truth about what this business really takes. In this conversation, Andy and Ben get real about: • What you actually need to check off before you sign a lease (and why loving your product is not enough) • Why the best restaurant concepts aren't selling food at all, and how to engineer the emotional attachment that turns guests into loyalists • How Ben went from running his own payroll in QuickBooks to leading a $75M company — and why letting go was the hardest and best thing he ever did • Why giving 30% of your company to your leadership team might be the most high-leverage growth decision you'll ever make •Why "poor parking" can nuke an otherwise brilliant concept, and what making the guest experience effortless really looks like in practice • How Ben built most of his empire on cash flow, what happened when COVID forced him into debt, and the lesson he learned at 46 that now guides every decision he makes Ben Berg is the real deal: direct, self-aware, and full of the earned wisdom that only comes from building, losing, and rebuilding. This one is required listening for anyone who owns a restaurant, manages one, or is seriously thinking about opening one. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    44 min

  8. MAR 23

    How to Build a Restaurant Brand Before You Sign a Lease with Sarah Gavigan @ Otaku Ramen

    What does it actually look like to build a cult restaurant brand in a boomtown city and then have the guts to pull back before it kills you? Sarah Gavigan didn't set out to open Nashville's first ramen shop. She moved back to Tennessee after two decades in LA film and music production, couldn't find a decent bowl of ramen anywhere in the city, and started cooking 50 pounds of pork bones at 2am in her backyard. Three years of pop-ups. No lease or culinary training or restaurant experience at all. In 2015, she opened Otaku Ramen in Nashville's Gulch. It was profitable from day one, because she'd spent three years building a brand before she ever built a kitchen. She expanded. She rode Nashville's boomtown momentum. And then she started to see what almost every hot-city founder misses until it's too late: the hype cycle ends. The developers fluff you. The taxes rise. The big boys move in. And the thing that got you here won't keep you here. Sarah closed her East Nashville location after 16 months. Then closed West. Her operating philosophy: "Screw Up Fast." Ego is expensive. Correction is free. And the founders who survive long-term are the ones who can tell the difference between the two before the market does it for them. What We Cover: • Why Sarah's #1 piece of advice to any founder is to survive three years as a pop-up before you sign a single lease (and what those three years actually build) • How private equity, skyrocketing development costs, and property taxes create a five-year shelf life for restaurants in "hot" cities — and how to spot the ceiling before you hit it • What Sarah's 48-hour framework actually looks like when something goes wrong with food, service, or numbers, and why ego is always the enemy of a fast fix • Why umami is a neurological response (not just a flavor), how stacking amino acids triggers serotonin and dopamine, and why Sarah says a ramen cook's only job is to create happiness in a bowl • Why Sarah's father told her never to hire consultants, why she didn't listen, and what she lost because of it — plus her argument for why founders need operating partners, not advisors • Sarah's bar for every aspiring restaurant owner: you need to be able to tell her your food costs and profit margins after three martinis. If you can't, you're not ready • How three years of ramen pop-ups gave Sarah something money can't buy — a loyal audience waiting on day one — and why the brand always has to come before the brick and mortar • The Super Happy Noodle story: why Sarah invested in a noodle manufacturing operation, why her customers rejected it, and what she learned about "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" • Book Recommendation: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson and why Sarah thinks the next generation of founders needs to study customer pattern behavior more than any business book Whether you're running your first pop-up, thinking about signing your first lease, or managing multiple locations in a market that's getting hotter by the day… this episode is packed with honest, operator-level truth from someone who's lived every part of it. Restaurant Reset is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the restaurant point of sale system that can power orders, payments and services in any type of food and beverage setting.

    52 min
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About

The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works. Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken. We’ll share real stories, practical systems, and proven ways to run a tighter, smarter, more profitable operation. The industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving. Let’s reset.

Information

  • Creator
    Genius For Restaurants
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Genius For Restaurants
  • Show Website
    Restaurant Reset