Kevin Boehm has spent his career building iconic restaurants. But after co-founding Boka Restaurant Group and opening over 40 establishments, the James Beard Award–winning restaurateur found himself battling burnout, loss, and collapse at the height of the pandemic. Boehm shares how therapy, systems, and human-centered leadership helped him come back stronger, with a new lens on wellness, hiring, and scaling sustainably.

In this episode, Boehm opens up about the personal struggles behind his professional pivot, what it takes to turn a good restaurant into a great one, and how he has systematized success across dozens of venues without losing soul.

Takeaways:

• Build culture through holistic onboarding and role rotations
• Embrace hypercritical feedback to grow from good to great
• Use SOPs to scale without losing touch
• Adapt operations post-crisis with evolving playbooks
• Train leadership to think financially and act like owners
• Technology should empower, not replace, hospitality
• Sustainable growth requires slowing down to align the team
• Personal transformation strengthens professional leadership

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