FULL COMP: Restaurant Tactics, Tools, & Strategies

What if the new customers you keep chasing are the reason your restaurant isn't growing?

Ryan Volberg has spent more than two decades building the tools restaurants actually needed, from the first cloud POS to earned wage access. Now, as founder of Guestologie, he's attacking the most expensive blind spot in hospitality: the anonymous guest who walks in, gets seated, and leaves without anyone realizing they could have been a regular.

In this conversation, we get into why frequency beats acquisition every time, why status is the cheapest loyalty tool you own while discounts are the most expensive, and how to grow revenue from the guests already sitting in your dining room.

If you're spending to fill seats instead of keeping the right ones, this one earns its time.

To learn more about Guestologie and how they help restaurants see and keep their highest-value guests, visit guestologie.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 smartest way to grow in a market full of closures is to keep every restaurant small?

Adam Weisblatt co-founded Last Word Hospitality and turned Found Oyster, a 777-square-foot oyster bar, into a seven-restaurant group that keeps expanding while famous names around it close.

In this conversation, we get into why a tiny footprint takes the pressure off your rent and your margins, why he builds every concept around talented people instead of clever ideas, and why making your operators owners is the only way to grow without burning out.

If you're convinced you need a bigger room to make real money, this one will change how you think about scale.

To pre-order his upcoming book, For the Love of Restaurants, visit https://a.co/d/0cGZmQ5t.

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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 spending more on your staff is the fastest path to a more profitable restaurant?

Jon Murray washed dishes at Applebee's and spent six years in music before rising to Chief Restaurant Officer at Indigo Road, running more than 20 concepts on someone else's terms. Then he walked away to build Noko and Kase in East Nashville on a people-over-profit model most operators would call reckless.

In this conversation, we get into why he hands 5.5% of sales back to his team, how four-day workweeks and free therapy dropped his turnover to 15% in an 80% industry, and why he believes loving your people is the real driver of margin.

If you think you can't afford to treat your people well, this one will change the math.

To learn more about Noko and Kase, visit nokonashville.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 biggest profit leak is hiding behind the bar, in the engine your guests never see?

Tobin Ellis spent 30 years behind the stick before he started designing bars for a living. As founder of Studio Barmagic, he's redesigned everything from NFL stadiums to five-diamond resorts, once lifting a landmark hotel bar's revenue 131% in a single quarter.

In this conversation, we get into why your labor problem is really a design problem, why the money is made during peak volume instead of slow Tuesdays, and why he builds every bar for the bartender first, the guest second, and the investor last.

If your margins are thin and your weekends are leaving money on the table, this one shows you where to look.

To learn more about his work designing high-performance bars and to grab his book, Bar Design Essentials, visit barmagic.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 owning a restaurant isn’t the win you think it is, but a risk most people misunderstand?

Helen Johannesen didn’t just step into ownership, she sacrificed for it. Walking away from financial stability and taking a major pay cut, she bet on herself and a single restaurant that could have gone either way. Today, she’s a partner behind one of LA’s most respected hospitality groups and the force behind a wine brand built on trust, not intimidation.

In this conversation, we unpack what ownership really demands, and why it’s not a universal path. Helen breaks down the illusion of revenue versus profit, why equity isn’t the right incentive for most teams, and how she built a wine program that rejects exclusivity in favor of access. 

If you’re chasing ownership—or questioning it—this episode will force a reset.

To explore her selections and join the club, visit helenswines.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 smartest thing you can do with your single biggest advantage is hand it to the competition?

Brendan and Bianca Shah run Chado Tea Room and the wholesale arm, International Tea Importers, the family business their father Devan built into one of the engines of America's specialty tea culture. When he died in 2016, the two of them inherited a company that lived entirely in his head and rebuilt it from first principles.

In this conversation, we get into why selling their best tea to direct competitors grew the entire category and made the brand their real moat, how the wholesale and retail sides power a single flywheel, and why paring a 300-tea catalog down to its essentials is what unlocks growth.

If you're competing on product alone, this shows you what it looks like to build something nobody can copy.

To learn more about Chado Tea Room, visit chadotea.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 real thing holding your restaurant back is your refusal to trust your own taste?

Jeremy Lett spent 26 years at Bloomin' Brands building food for Outback, Carrabba's, Fleming's, and Bonefish before taking over innovation at Cracker Barrel, a 650-unit institution he joined right as the brand was weathering its biggest public firestorm in decades.

In this conversation, we get into why a great menu grows through subtraction, how to separate a product failing from you failing, and why your taste, earned over thousands of reps, is the one competency no spreadsheet can replace.

If you're sitting on a concept people respect but won't repeat, this one will show you where to cut and what to trust.

To learn more about his work leading culinary innovation and product development at Cracker Barrel, visit crackerbarrel.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 can't actually manage your people, and every hour you spend trying is the reason your restaurant won't scale?

Seth Gerber co-owns MIDA, a six-restaurant Italian group out of Boston, and was a 2024 James Beard semifinalist for Best Restaurateur. He came up through Hillstone, earned his sommelier pin and an MBA, and treats outlearning everyone in the room as his only real edge.

In this conversation, we get into why you manage the structure people work in and never the people themselves, why the cinematic version of risk that bets it all on one move is a fantasy that quietly ruins operators, and why the best restaurateurs grow slower than their egos want them to.

If you're grinding inside your business and still feel like the bottleneck, this one tells you where the real problem is.

To learn more about MIDA and their growing collection of neighborhood Italian restaurants, visit midarestaurant.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 conventional wisdom about putting customers first is the very reason your restaurant keeps losing good people?

Harry Posner and Natalie Dial walked away from careers in medicine to open Tomat, a Michelin-recognized, seasonally driven restaurant in Westchester, Los Angeles. Neither came from the industry. Both came with the analytical frameworks most operators spend years trying to build.

In this conversation, we get into why they deliberately ranked employees above customers before opening day, how diversifying revenue across breakfast, lunch, dinner, events, and a rooftop gave them financial staying power when the calendar went quiet, and why the "wrong" location turned out to be one of the smartest market plays in recent LA dining.

If you think the customer is always right, this episode will change your mind.

To learn more about Tomat, visit tomat.la.

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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 isn't built to last is because you designed it to survive instead of dominate?

Philippe Massoud opened ilili in November 2007, a 10,000 square foot Lebanese restaurant in New York City, nearly $7 million in debt, in the middle of a financial crisis, with critics questioning whether anyone wanted Lebanese fine dining at that scale. Nineteen years later, the restaurant is still breaking records.

In this conversation, we get into why going smaller and safer is often the riskiest move an operator can make, how Philippe grew revenue 30% annually for five consecutive years after weathering the financial crisis, and why running a restaurant with two guests in mind changes everything.

If you're building something real in a market that keeps getting harder, this episode is the one to hear.

To learn more about ilili, visit ililirestaurants.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