Behind the Numbers

True Food Kitchen runs 2,200 active recipes to power a menu of fewer than 100 items. Stephan Manning, Director of Restaurant Systems and Optimization, joins Behind the Numbers to explain how a 46-location scratch kitchen keeps 1,200 purchase items, 16,000 vendor items, and close to 2,000 invoices a week clean and moving through Restaurant365.

Stephan covers the yield-on-yield recipe structure a scratch concept demands, the 7,000 mistakes he carried out of a failed lighthouse implementation and five years on CrunchTime, the naming conventions that keep the database honest, and how an 87 percent yield target turns into a real conversation with a prep cook. He also gets into managing 17 distribution centers across 18 states, soft-launching seasonal menus, what a new CEO means for the brand, using AI to sharpen an email instead of writing it, and why the industry has hit peak chicken tender.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Stephan Manning on LinkedIn and True Food Kitchen, now 46 restaurants across 18 states, at truefoodkitchen.com. Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

Munsok So's 612North event space did $220,000 in sales across two days, including more than $160,000 in a single four-to-five-hour event. On this episode of Behind the Numbers, the president and CEO of So Hospitality Group, who signed on with Restaurant365 when the company had 11 employees, walks through how he built eight restaurants across four concepts in the St. Louis area: Drunken Fish, Kimchi Guys, Stein Haus, and 612North.

So explains the labor budget every store receives with the rule of not a dollar over, the daily report that shows whether each store hit yesterday's number, and the weekly inventory count that takes a management team three to three and a half hours with a full bar program. He tells the story of opening a sushi restaurant in 2003 in a city that had three of them, the building collapse he missed by 15 minutes that produced Kimchi Guys and 612North, the SOP and bonus program he built with Claude in a couple of days, and the gaming license at Stein Haus that splits profits in thirds.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Munsok So on LinkedIn and So Hospitality Group at sohospitalitygroup.com. Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

Six months after their first farm stand order, Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily were selling granola in 52 Whole Foods stores and making almost nothing on it. On this episode of Behind the Numbers, the co-founders and co-CEOs of The Granola Bar explain why they abandoned CPG, how a cold call to a Dannon-owned yogurt shop led to a 1,200 square foot kitchen with an 800 square foot dining room attached, and how that store became a ten-location group.

The numbers run through the whole conversation: profitable in year one with no outside investors, Restaurant365 customer 421 out of more than 6,000, monthly QuickBooks P&Ls arriving two weeks late compared with daily reporting today, alcohol at under 5 percent of sales and what it changed at one location, a 3,200 square foot cellar kitchen supporting catering in a building that holds 2,600 people, and a menu still roughly 80 percent intact from 2013.

They also cover the new Midtown flagship at 330 Madison Avenue, the Takeaway concept near Grand Central, why they refuse to install kiosks, clairvoyant hospitality, hire slow and fire fast, and a hot take on AI.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily on LinkedIn. The Granola Bar operates ten locations across Connecticut and New York.

Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

GPS Hospitality sells somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million Whoppers a year, and VP of Operations Support Gary Thomas can walk you through the math: 400 guests a day per store, almost 60 million guests a year, a third of them ordering a Whopper. On this episode of Behind the Numbers, Thomas explains how one of the nation's largest Burger King franchisees grew from 42 restaurants in 2012 to just under 400 Burger Kings and 16 Popeyes with about 10,000 employees.

Thomas gets into the philosophy of winning or losing every hour, with labor forecast down to 15-minute increments, and the rollout that put Restaurant365 in 380 stores in a single month. He also covers five straight quarters of positive comp sales driven by returning customers, a Whopper patty that has climbed from the 80-cent range to over a dollar as beef hits an all-time high, and why AI in the drive-thru should coach rather than police.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Gary Thomas on LinkedIn and GPS Hospitality at gpshospitality.com. Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

Smokey Mo's BBQ sells over 1 million pounds of brisket a year, and President Craig Haley can walk you through exactly where every ounce goes. Recorded live at the NRA Show 2026, this episode of Behind the Numbers digs into the unforgiving math of Texas barbecue: a pound purchased becomes half a pound sold, briskets cook 10 to 13 hours and get fork-tested in 5 or 6 spots, and actual versus theoretical gets tracked meat by meat with weekly inventories.

Craig explains how tighter product management has let Smokey Mo's hold menu prices while cattle stocks sit at record lows, why upper choice brisket yields enough to justify its cost, and how a small-box drive-thru design delivers 70% to-go sales on a five-minute service target. Plus real-time guest feedback, where AI fits in the drive-thru, and a Smokey Take on kiosks.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Craig Haley on LinkedIn. Smokey Mo's BBQ operates 23 locations across San Antonio, Austin, and the Texas Hill Country.

Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

The Big Biscuit sold 1,388,759 biscuits last year, and VP of Finance Alex Clark can tell you the exact figure. Recorded live at the NRA Show 2026, this episode of Behind the Numbers gets into how The Big Biscuit runs finance on real data: capturing every sales channel, cutting manual accounts payable work, scaling from a handful of locations to two dozen, and pricing a premium menu item without pricing out the guest.

Alex explains why "good enough" data compounds into bad decisions, how her team models pricing and food cost through a menu item analysis, and how prebuilt labor matrices and inventory hand new franchisees a ready-made playbook. She closes with a hot take on AI in hospitality and the case for protecting human connection.

Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

Ramon Soriano sold 4 million tacos in ten years, and he can tell you exactly what that looks like stacked, lined up, and weighed. He can also tell you how La Calle Tacos went from a 13% net profit margin to 32%.

In this episode, the founder and CEO of Houston's La Calle Tacos joins hosts Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney to break down the systems behind one of the most efficient independent operations in the business. A third-generation restaurateur who has opened roughly 80 restaurants across his career, Ramon shares the origin story (a three-month build that took nine months), how he marketed the restaurant before it had a single guest, and the food writer whose review drove 500 people through the door in a week.

Then they get into the numbers: liquor cost tracked to the ounce with a 1.5% variance target, books closed five days after period end, and emergency purchases cut from 5% to under 1%. Ramon explains how he built two menus on a single line to stay efficient at any volume, why he tends to raise prices before his competitors, how he's converting a bar concept ahead of the World Cup, and why two guests recently told him ChatGPT sent them.

His closing hot take cuts against the noise: keep to the basics, build around your brand, and remember it's about love.

Behind the Numbers is presented by Restaurant365.

Connect with Ramon on LinkedIn and find La Calle Tacos across Houston. Franchise opportunities are available now.

Lance Reynolds has lived every side of the restaurant business, from dishwasher at age 12 to owner of four restaurants to Director of Restaurant Operations Consulting at US Foods. In this episode, hosts Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney talk with Lance about why restaurants are slow to adopt technology, what the numbers behind a nearly $40 billion distributor look like, and the retention turnaround that took his turnover from 200 percent to 42 percent.

We get into the CHECK business tools program and its two-year vetting process, the integration between Restaurant 365 and US Foods ordering, the labor math behind an $18.35 minimum wage, and why Lance believes 2026 will be the year everything changes for operators who embrace AI.

Kristen Sandhurst sits on both sides of the restaurant equation: she is a partner at Edotto, an accounting firm built to serve restaurant operators, and the CFO of an affiliated franchise group running 20 Taco John's and 3 Slim Chickens locations. In this episode, hosts Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney talk with Kristen about what actually moves the numbers in a restaurant operation right now.

The conversation covers the prime cost math that matters (sub-60% prime cost, supplies at 1.25%, repairs and maintenance at 2 to 3% for middle-aged buildings), how a 300 basis point cost of goods improvement came from getting one client to count inventory for the first time, and why an organized chart of accounts is the foundation for every financial insight that follows.

Kristen also breaks down her family's tech stack journey from 20 years on Microsoft Dynamics to Restaurant365 and Paylocity, and how she has been using Claude and ChatGPT to build automations, draft legal agreements, log 70 scanned PDFs into a spreadsheet, and even build a Chrome extension to fix a clunky accounting interface, all without writing code herself.

You will also hear why her group pulled AI out of the drive-thru after testing it at both concepts, where restaurants bleed money without realizing it (food cost and water bills top the list), and her hot take on unattended QSR dining rooms.

Whether you operate one location or a hundred, this episode gives you concrete benchmarks, actionable workflow ideas, and a framework for thinking about AI as task replacement rather than job replacement.

Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney

Featured Guest: Kristen Sandhurst, Partner at Edotto

Brought to you by Restaurant365: https://www.restaurant365.com

Subscribe to Behind the Numbers on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Follow Restaurant365 on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @restaurant365.

Greg Plummer started at 15 as a dishwasher at Bennigan's. Today he runs Concord Collective Partners, an airport hospitality company operating 12 restaurants and 13 branded concepts at LAX, with additional locations across Seattle, Ontario, and San Diego.

In this episode, Greg joins Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney to break down the economics of airport dining at scale: 2 million transactions per year, 8 million pounds of chicken, 550,000 labor hours, and the cost structure that drives a $12 beer and a $58 menu item. He explains why Los Angeles City living wage of roughly $30 per hour, rent that runs about 15% of P&L, and California's regulatory environment make airports one of the hardest operating contexts in the industry.

Greg also walks through the forming-storming-norming framework he used to rebuild the business from a 95% drop in air traffic during COVID, through the 2025 Los Angeles fires, and into preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympics. He shares concrete numbers from technology pilots at his restaurants: service robots that have logged thousands of miles carrying 340,000 pounds of food and dishes with zero safety incidents, and self-order kiosks that have driven a 30% increase in check average.

Whether you operate one restaurant or a hundred, this conversation offers practical insight on real-time financial visibility, hiring and retention, and why hospitality still runs on people being good to people.