What if your loyalty program is the reason your guests feel nothing?

Punch cards and points reward a transaction. Guests want to belong to something, and a free appetizer on the tenth visit gives them nothing to belong to.

In this takeaway, I break down how one restaurant scrapped a 3,000-member rewards program nobody used and rebuilt it as a club, why access and recognition drove a 30% lift in spend per visit and doubled visit frequency, and why being known by name matters more to your best guests than any reward you could print on a card.

If you're running a program your guests ignore, this is where you start rebuilding it.

That's this week's takeaway. To build the marketing team that brings your best guests back more often, visit restaurantbusinessschool.com.
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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if you have to go deeper into the day to day before you can ever get out of it?

Brianna Keefe spent her entire first year inside one store, open to close, writing the systems by hand and training every person who walked through the door. That year is the reason she can now be nowhere near the sixty five stores operating under her name.

In this conversation, we get into why delegation collapses when the founder steps back too early, why she hires her support team a full year before the business needs them, and why her best performing store sits in a market she would never have chosen herself.

If you are the bottleneck in your own business, this one explains how you got there.

To learn more about Toastique and the franchise opportunities she's building across the country, visit toastique.com.
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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the guest you're pricing around doesn't exist?

Across tens of thousands of guest reviews, nobody has ever complained about paying too little. What shows up is that something felt too expensive. That is a verdict on value, and cutting the price will not fix it.

In this takeaway, I break down why the regular you're afraid of isn't watching your menu, how I raised the price of one item a week for six weeks and got zero pushback, and why $16 and $18 land the same way while $19 and $21 do not.

If you've known for a year that an item is underpriced and still haven't touched it, this one is costing you every week you wait.

To build the marketing team that raises your check average for you, visit restaurantbusinessschool.com.
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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the reason you gave away a piece of your restaurant is a myth you never bothered to test?

Most operators believe banks will not touch a restaurant, so they go straight to investors, credit cards, or whatever money is easiest to reach. Ami Kassar has placed over a billion dollars in small business loans, and he says the restaurant exception does not exist.

In this conversation, we get into why a line of credit belongs in your business before you need it, how the cash advance built into your point of sale locks you out of real financing, and why the monthly payment matters more than the rate.

If you have never asked whether your restaurant is bankable, this is the episode that makes you ask.

To learn more about MultiFunding and their work helping entrepreneurs find the right financing, visit https://www.multifunding.com/

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if your regulars didn't leave you? What if they just forgot you exist?

Most operators spend the year buying strangers while the people who already love them go quiet. The problem is memory, and memory is cheap to fix.

In this takeaway, I break down why a guest who visits once a month is worth $720 a year and double that at twice a month, why a reminder beats a reward every time, and how a pre-loaded year of signature events kills the pressure to invent something new every month.

If you have a mailing list you never use, this is the fastest money in your building.

To build the marketing team that sends those reminders for you, visit restaurantbusinessschool.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the reason your restaurant runs on you is that you keep showing up?

Mike Mudrey bought a crêperie in East Lansing with no restaurant experience and a corporate job he had no intention of leaving. Nine years and four locations later he still has both, and one of his restaurants sits over an hour from where he lives. Never being able to work the floor is what forced him to build systems instead of habits.

In this conversation, we get into why every question you answer twice should become a system, how prepaid and pre-selected bookings drove his no-shows and food waste close to zero, and why the money was never in the crêpe.

If your operation stops working the week you take off, this one is for you.

To learn more about The 601 Group and their portfolio, visit 601-group.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the only reason your guests came once is that nothing changed after they left?

Felipe Riccio is chef and partner at Goodnight Hospitality in Houston, TX. At his restaurant March, his tasting menu restaurant, the entire menu is thrown out twice a year and rebuilt around a different corner of the Mediterranean. He is twelve seasons in. He will tell you it is probably not a winning formula.

In this conversation, we get into why a concept nobody can repeat back to you will never travel, how discipline and paperwork are what buy a chef creative freedom, and what it costs to close a restaurant for two weeks twice a year on purpose.

If your guests like you but do not come back, this is a great place to start.

To learn more about Goodnight Hospitality, visit goodnighthospitality.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if your concept should have been designed backwards, starting from the check average you need?

Ariel Arce had 16 seats and no way to predict what anyone would spend. So she solved for the number first. Sixty five dollars a head, two turns a night. Then she designed a guest experience to deliver it, down to a rule that every song has to be three minutes long.

In this conversation, we get into why she has refused to charge what the market would pay for nearly ten years, why she now plans the closing date of a business before it opens, and how the real asset in her SoHo townhouse turned out to be the three floors themselves.

If you built your concept first and hoped the numbers would follow, this one’s going to give you a better blueprint.

To learn more about Tokyo Record Bar, visit tokyorecordbar.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the fastest way to become a great independent operator is to go work for a chain?

Al Lucas spent 21 years at Chart House, starting as a dishwasher and leaving as a vice president. He took that to Stephen Starr, then to Defined Hospitality, where Kalaya just won Outstanding Restaurant at the 2026 James Beard Awards. When a young cook asked him for career advice, Al told him to get out of independent restaurants as fast as possible.

In this conversation, we get into the fundamentals most independents never get taught, how Al and his partners choose who is worth building a restaurant around, and why the room at the Beard Awards is full of operators who will be gone within a year.

If you learned this business by figuring it out alone, this will show you what you missed.

To learn more about Defined Hospitality, visit definedhospitality.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com

What if the thing you are most proud of in your business is also the thing quietly draining it?

Amanda Signorelli and Nick McMillan took over the Golden Steer in 2019, the oldest steakhouse in Las Vegas, open since 1958. Neither of them came from restaurants. They came from tech, inherited a brand with more history than margin, and had exactly one year to learn the business before COVID shut it down.

In this conversation, we get into why they rebuilt the financial model from scratch instead of fixing the old one, why none of us have any business running their own social media, and the lessons learned growing the brand to new markets.

If you are sitting on a brand people love and numbers that do not work, this one is for you.

To learn more about Golden Steer, visit goldensteer.com.

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Free 5-Day Restaurant Marketing Masterclass – This is a live training where you'll learn the exact campaigns Josh has built and tested in real restaurants to attract new guests, increase visit frequency, and generate sales on demand. Save your spot at restaurantbusinessschool.com