We are visited by Lance Trenary, the CEO of Golden Corral and if that’s not enough, the Chairman of the Board of the National Restaurant Association. Lance stopped by the pod to share his experiences on leading his company out of the pandemic, how that changed his outlook as a leader, and his vision for the National Restaurant Association going forward. It’s a fascinating conversation and worth listening in.

And restaurant owners are being increasingly manipulated by bad actors using the prospect of poor Google reviews to shake them down for cash. Besides the illegal nature of this activity, are their reputational and public policy concerns at play here as well? We’ll discuss.

And activists are paying bounties to restaurant servers and bartenders to give them notice when a prominent pro-life advocate comes into their restaurant so that they may descend on the unknowing public official while they are dining. Brett Kavanaugh got the treatment last week at a Morton’s Steakhouse in Washington, DC. Is this a new trend in activism? We’ll take a look.

We’ll discuss those issues and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.