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. 1d ago

    Why Bonchon's CEO Keeps Saying No to Tech Vendors | Suzie Tsai

    Suzie Tsai runs one of the fastest-growing Korean fried chicken brands in America, and most days her job is saying no. Bonchon's CEO walks Andy through the filter she runs every decision through, from franchise deals to vendor pitches, and why patience beats urgency almost every time. In this episode: (03:52) Why her first official act as CEO was restoring two Korean characters to the Bonchon logo(14:03) Why she came up through consumer insights instead of ops or finance(15:59) What a thousand hours of listening to guests reveals that operators consistently get wrong(24:37) The decision filter she applies to franchise candidates whose financials are flawless but whose answer to "why Bonchon?" is only about the economics(27:42) Deals she personally signed off on and now questions ("who approved this?" It was her)(33:41) Why the fastest way to lose her in a pitch meeting is leading with technology instead of the problem(34:07) Her blunt verdict on most vendor pitches: restaurants don't need more technology, they need fewer friction points(46:08) How "main and main" real estate, not Asian trade districts, became Bonchon's growth playbook in small-town America Subscribe to Restaurant Reset for conversations with the operators and executives actually running the restaurant business. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 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.

  2. Aug 11

    He Changed the Way California Pizza Kitchen Makes Every Single Pizza | Paul Pszybylski

    A guest ordered mac and cheese from California Pizza Kitchen, got a container of cheese sauce with no noodles, and posted it to TikTok. Within days it was everywhere. CPK's answer wasn't a statement from corporate it was their head of culinary, mid-photo-shoot and openly annoyed, being handed an iPhone and told to film a deadpan training video teaching his own cooks how to make it right. The punchline: because one guest got half a mac and cheese, everyone got half off mac and cheese. The video passed 12 million views and over a million likes, and doubled the brand's social following. Paul Pszybylski is the man in that video, and only the third person ever to run culinary at CPK in 41 years. He came to it sideways dropping out of college for a line cook job in the French Quarter, Le Cordon Bleu, pastry under Wolfgang Puck at Spago Chicago for $8 an hour, then a decade in Kraft's Glenview test kitchen developing everything from salad dressings to Oreos to the CPK frozen pizzas he'd eventually inherit from the other side of the table. In 2006 he served as a United Nations ambassador teaching Western culinary skills at a nonprofit school north of Hanoi. Today he's the rare culinary leader designing one idea to flex across sit-down restaurants, airports, international franchises, and a frozen business with Nestlé worth north of $230 million CPK now sells more frozen pizzas than restaurant pizzas, and its top frozen market is Charlotte, North Carolina. He sits between marketing and operations and speaks both languages, which is exactly why his story about betting the company on hand-stretching every pizza is the most useful thing in this episode. In this episode: The mac and cheese TikTok, the deadpan training video, and what "run toward it" actually looks like in real timeWhy telling Rick and Larry "no" almost cost Paul the job and the reframe that saved itScrapping a 30-year dough press to hand-stretch every pizza: marketing said "let's go," ops said "we'll never keep up"The West Coast Burger and the crispy chicken sandwich: what happens when a dish is too good for the kitchen it lives inHow to design one flavor idea for a hearth oven, a frozen line, and a franchisee in IndiaWhy ops buy-in comes before creative ambition, every timeSay hi to everyone from the dishwasher to the GM the Rick and Larry habit Paul still practices 16 years laterHis honest advice to young cooks: "You gotta be a little nuts" Subscribe to Restaurant Reset for conversations with the operators and executives actually running the restaurant business. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 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.

  3. Aug 4

    How Bite's CEO Turned a Danny Meyer Education Into a 5-Star Kiosk Experience | Brandon Barton

    Most of the restaurant industry sells self-ordering kiosks on one number: labor saved. Brandon Barton thinks that's exactly the wrong pitch. As CEO of Bite, whose software runs kiosks for Portillo's, Chopt, Krispy Kreme, Big Chicken, and Arby's inside Love's Travel Stops… he argues that a screen isn't a cost cut. It's a hospitality channel, and it can out-serve a slammed cashier on a Friday night. Brandon earned what he calls his "masters degree in Enlightened Hospitality" running beverage at Danny Meyer's Tabla, then carried that education into tech at Avero, as the first non-tech hire at Resy, and now at Bite. In this conversation with Andy, he makes the skeptic's case for digital hospitality and gets specific about what separates a kiosk guests love from one they tolerate. This one is for operators: the reasoning is practical, the takes are honest (including which vendors are "lying" about their numbers), and the playbook is usable Monday morning. Highlights: Why "telling someone your order" was never the hospitality and where the human should go insteadHow to design for "graceful failure" so a screen can apologize like your best serverThe one question to ask Shake Shack's team before betting your career on a categoryWhat Danny Meyer drills into you that no management book can teachHow to read the next AI pitch and spot the vaporware behind the 20% check-lift claimThe three fixes for a five-location operator whose kiosks feel cold Subscribe to Restaurant Reset for practical conversations with the people reshaping how restaurants run. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop regularly. Hit follow so you don't miss 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.

  4. Jul 28

    How the "Godfather of Restaurant Tech" Survived Every Platform Shift for 40+ years | Christopher Sebes

    Christopher Sebes has already been handed the restaurant industry's lifetime achievement award. Most people take that as a cue to slow down. At 72, he started his third career instead. On this episode of Restaurant Reset, host Andy Grindstaff sits across the mic from the man who hired him a decade ago, the founder who built the platform Andy now runs. What follows is part career retrospective, part masterclass: how Sebes went from managing five-star hotels in Africa to building restaurant tech's first Windows point of sale, carried a company through Chapter 11 without his team ever feeling the panic, and beat far bigger competitors with a single rule. Underneath the war stories, it's a conversation about the one thing that compounds over 50 years in business: trust. And why, in a low-margin, high-churn industry, it may be the only moat that lasts. In this episode: Why Sebes started a brand-new AI company at 72, and how he decides what's worth learning nextThe $20,000-a-day math that kept his company alive through bankruptcyThe one rule that beat Micros and Aloha: "always do what you promise"How to project calm as a leader when the business is quietly on fireThe only question restaurant operators should ask about any AI toolWhat really happens to your product after an acquisitionHis advice to anyone stuck in a job they can't stand Subscribe to Restaurant Reset for conversations with the people shaping the future of hospitality. 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.

  5. Jul 14

    How to Tell If Your Restaurant Loyalty Program Is Secretly Failing | Olga Lopategui

    Loyalty used to be a competitive edge for restaurants. Now it's table stakes, and the question executives are asking has flipped from "how do we launch a program" to "how do we prove this thing makes money." The uncomfortable answer, according to loyalty expert Olga Lopategui, is that most of them can't. Olga is the founder of Restaurant Loyalty Specialists and a former Moscow oil-and-gas lawyer who spent 15 years inside the marketing machines at Pizza Hut, KFC, and TGI Fridays before building her own firm. This year she sat down with more than 50 senior loyalty leaders at America's biggest chains for her "Restaurant Loyalty Frontier" report. What she found is the cleanest Restaurant Reset story there is: vendors advertising 15% lifts that shrink to 4% under real math, "personalization" that's mostly batch-and-blast, and programs running untouched for a year while nobody checks if they work. In this episode: Why a lawyer's skepticism makes her distrust every vendor ROI numberHow to spot a loyalty program that's quietly failing in week oneThe real reason 3 of 4 brands still send everyone the same emailWhat "set it and forget it" actually costs a restaurant over a yearWhy 80% of your guests are anonymous, and why the app won't fix itWhere AI genuinely helps a loyalty team, and where it burns your databaseThe one number a small operator with no analyst should track this quarter If you run a restaurant, lead marketing, or own a loyalty program you can't quite prove works, this one's for you. Subscribe to Restaurant Reset for new episodes every week. 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.

  6. Jun 30

    Two Federal Prosecutors Mortgaged Their Homes to Sell Pizza: The Real Story of California Pizza Kitchen with Co-Founder Rick Rosenfield

    In 1985, two of the most successful trial lawyers in Los Angeles walked away from the law, mortgaged their homes, and opened a pizza restaurant on the quiet side of Beverly Drive. Their fancy menu bombed almost instantly. The chef they hired from Spago lasted a month. And then a barbecue chicken pizza turned California Pizza Kitchen into one of the most influential restaurant brands in American history. Rick Rosenfield co-founded CPK with Larry Flax and ran it through every ownership structure a restaurant company can have: a PepsiCo "blank check" that nearly broke it, a founder-led buyback, a Nasdaq IPO, a boardroom showdown he triggered himself, and a $470 million sale. On this episode of Restaurant Reset, he sits down with Andy to mine that 40-year arc for the lessons today's operators actually need. This is the conversation behind his forthcoming memoir, and it goes places his other interviews never have: the month CPK almost died, what a capital partner reliably misunderstands, and why culture, not product, is the only thing that ever lasts. In this episode: Why the high-concept menu failed and a single pizza became the #1 seller worldwide for 40 yearsThe night the founders cried in the back office, and how they rebuilt with no chefHow PepsiCo's "blank check" turned into the worst period of Rick's careerThe store-by-store numbers that exposed a problem the whole board had missedWhy CPK refused to franchise domestically for 25 yearsThe ROCK values, and the people playbook that still works in 2026Rick's honest verdict on the second-act concepts that didn't surviveSubscribe to Restaurant Reset for conversations with the operators and executives actually running the restaurant business. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 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.

  7. Jun 16

    Why a Bad AI Experience is a Double Failure for Your Restaurant (and How to Change That) | Andy Grindstaff

    Everyone in restaurant tech is racing toward AI ordering and automation. The customer data tells a different story. Only 9% of consumers say they'd rather order from an AI voice than a person, and the number one frustration is still the same one it's always been: the order being wrong. In this solo episode, Andy Grindstaff walks through a Global Payments consumer survey on how people actually want to order, pay, and wait in 2026. Andy has spent his career at the intersection of restaurants and the technology that runs them, and he reads the data the way an operator would, with no vendor spin. The throughline is simple: get the fundamentals reliable before you layer anything clever on top. From the drive-thru line length where customers give up, to why a quarter of your customers still aren't using your app, to the loyalty math hiding inside a fast experience, this one is a useful gut check for anyone investing in restaurant tech right now. Highlights: Why only 9% of consumers prefer AI ordering, and the one condition that makes people comfortable with automationHow a failed AI order becomes a "double failure" that costs more than the manual processWhy 1 in 4 customers aren't using restaurant apps, including the younger ones you'd assume areThe drive-thru threshold where most people leave, and why a fast visit today buys patience tomorrowWhy order accuracy still beats every shiny new feature on the roadmapWhat 40% of consumers are doing differently because of rising prices New episodes of Restaurant Reset every week. Follow on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 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.

  8. Jun 9

    How to Escape the Restaurant Operator Trap (Before It Bankrupts You) with Mike DeJong

    Mike DeJong ran 5 Nothing Bundt Cakes bakeries at the same time. From the outside, it looked like a growing empire. From the inside, he was working more hours, opening more locations, and somehow making less money. He calls it the operator trap, and he's blunt about how it closed on him: he had built a job, not a business. The wake-up call came on a tarmac in Mexico. His manager quit by phone. His phone was blowing up. And the realization that hit him wasn't about the manager… it was that he'd turned his phone on in the first place. Mike walks Andy through the full sequence: what the trap actually feels like before you recognize it, the moment he found himself 60 days from bankruptcy on a location he thought had gone passive, and the specific steps he took to turn it around: including the hire that eventually let him run a bakery outside Seattle while living in Mexico. In this episode: How Mike went from burning out at five locations to building two more without being on-siteThe 60-day bankruptcy near-miss: what metrics he stopped watching and whyThe three operator types (Architect, Hunter, GSD) and the order of hires that followsWhy 75% of his staff quit during the turnaround and why he called it an opportunityThe one metric he watched daily: sales per labor hourThe mindset shift that changed everything: facts vs. stories Subscribe to Restaurant Reset on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week for operators who want to run a better business. 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.

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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
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Genius For Restaurants
  • Show Website
    Restaurant Reset