The Joy of Ops

Steve sits down with Professor Vince Slaugh of the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration after the Future Food Equation Round Table in New York City, where the theme was rethinking growth, value, and survival in food and beverage.

They talk about what came up in the room: price volatility, labor supply, immigration, and what the future restaurant workforce looks like. Vince shares how AI turned a back-of-house storage right-sizing project into about 80 hours of work instead of roughly 500. Steve explains why SP's rule is that there should never be a cell in a workbook whose formula you don't understand.

They also get into:

• Why feasibility gets overlooked in the desirability, viability, feasibility conversation, and what dialysis clinic scheduling taught Vince about it
• How translation tools could change the labor pool for restaurants and other industries
• Deming's case for cooperation over competition, and what independent operators could build together
• The one KPI Vince would track in a new restaurant: covers per hour, and the habit of finding the bottleneck

If you're interested in Cornell's PhD program, you can find Vince's research profile on the Nolan School and SC Johnson College of Business sites.

The Joy of Ops is produced by Service Physics.

Most brands manage labor with a weekly target. Hit the number by Sunday. Will Stewart thinks that's the problem.

Recorded live at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Steve Crowley sits down with Will Stewart, founder of Rightwork and a former Starbucks data scientist who worked alongside Steve and Brian on store layout, labor analytics and real estate strategy.

Will explains what a labor model actually is and why building it from the bottom up beats a top-down target, how splitting service labor from support labor creates room to staff the peak properly, and why the same total hours spent more precisely can be worth a 10% productivity change on its own.

Steve makes the case that resource efficiency looks like steady driving on an open road, not hammering the gas and the brake, and the two land on the pattern every operator recognises: overspend early in the week, panic, cut the peak, lose the customer, cut again. The labor death spiral.

They also get into the one KPI Will would give an operator if he could only pick one, and why a letter grade beats a dashboard for changing behaviour in the field.

In this episode:

• Will's Starbucks background (01:09),
• Who Rightwork builds for (03:15),
• Where the name comes from (04:03),
• Labor models vs labor targets (05:13),
• Service labor and support labor (05:13),
• Turning ambition into a target window (09:53),
• Defining labor productivity (16:48),
• The grading system (16:48), the one KPI (20:11),
• The labor death spiral (22:49).

Find Rightwork at right.work, or reach Will at [email protected].

The Joy of Ops is a Service Physics podcast: servicephysics.com/podcast

Every restaurant already records what happens inside its four walls, all day, every day. Then the footage sits on a server as an insurance policy and nobody looks at it.

Recorded live at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Steve and Rebecca sit down with Brock Weeks, co-founder and CEO of Savi, who is turning that footage into operational data. Brock explains the moment a COO running close to a billion dollars in sales got excited about a door sensor, why "order accuracy" is really two different problems with very different value, and how one store manager's extra question on the drive-thru headset bought 10% more throughput at peak.

Steve tells the story of three engineers flying to Antelope, California to fix a drive-thru that a trash barrel had broken, and Brian makes the case that cost, quality and speed were never a pick-two.

In this episode:

video as a data set (00:44)

Difficulty vs value and the pizza test (03:13)

Focus and the historic marker (05:09)

Freeing labor instead of cutting it (07:03)

Crisis management vs systemic change (08:20)

The headset question (11:24)

The trash barrel (12:52)

Empowering store managers (14:32).

Find Savi at getsavi.com

The Joy of Ops is a Service Physics podcast: https://www.servicephysics.com/podcast/

Recorded on the floor of the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Tim talks with Dustin Mares, co-founder of Meal Outpost, about what actually changed at NRA 2026.

A year ago, Dustin counted 52 booths with "AI" on the backdrop and found almost none could explain how they used it. This year the fluff is gone. He breaks down the shakeout, why humans still own the 20% that's coordination and judgment, and how running a ghost kitchen for six months taught him to build what restaurants actually need.

Connect with Dustin at [email protected] or on LinkedIn (Dustin Mares).

🎧 The Joy of Ops: real conversations with the most interesting people in the industry.

Marc Chappron (Salesforce): Cutting Through the AI Hype to Build Customer Joy

Marc Chappron of Salesforce joins us at the National Restaurant Association 2026 show to talk about where technology actually helps restaurants, and where the hype gets ahead of reality.

From starting out as a server at Red Robin to a decade at Starbucks and now advising retail and restaurant brands at Salesforce, Marc brings a grounded view on how operators should think about AI. He breaks AI into three parts: predictive analytics, generative tools, and agentic software that takes action so leaders can focus on strategy instead of clicks.

We get into what separates brands with real staying power from the rest, why leaning into your brand DNA builds durable growth, and how to balance two opposing tensions: knowing that what got you here won't get you there, while resisting every shiny distraction along the way. Plus a running highway metaphor about when to stay in the lane, when to take the exit, and when to stop for gas.

A conversation about using technology to tell your brand story, build trust, and create joy on a human level.

In this episode:

• Breaking AI into predictive, generative, and agentic
• Why durable growth comes from brand DNA and customer connection
• Luck versus what you can actually control in restaurants
• Honoring the work that got you here while knowing it's time to change
• Balancing innovation with focus, without chasing shiny objects

Connect with Marc on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcchappron/

Seth Temko, co-founder and CEO of nCentiv and a three-time restaurant tech CMO, sums up 2025 in one word: coping. We get into inflation, labor, oversaturation, and why culture beats technology every time.

Then the real question. VO2 max predicts human lifespan better than any other single metric. What is the equivalent for a restaurant? Seth's answer depends entirely on whether you are growing or enduring.

Plus the geometry lesson every operator buying local ads needs: why doubling your radius quadruples your spend, and why Meta and Google are in no hurry to tell you.

Recorded at the NRA Show in Chicago.

Find Seth at https://ncentiv.com/

Hosts: Steve Crowley and Rebecca Anderson

What if the hardest job in the world is also the most joyful? Karyn Ross, coach, consultant, artist, and author of The Toyota Way to Service Excellence and The Kind Leader, joins The Joy of Ops live from the National Restaurant Association Show 2026 in Chicago, after more than two years of coaching the Service Physics team over video. This was the first time meeting in person.

Karyn makes the case that true joy comes from serving others, and that the people on the front line of a restaurant are the face of the whole operation — which is exactly why leaders can't blame them when things go wrong. Through a series of stories (a "no, those glasses are only for alcohol" standoff; a nephew five weeks into his first fry-station job; a hostess who begged a customer to complain because management wouldn't listen), she draws the line between training people to follow a standard and teaching them how to think, have empathy, and see the system behind the symptom.

The conversation digs into the coaching "gears" — telling, teaching, training, coaching, and open counsel — and how to know which one a moment calls for (and why coaches who only ask questions get called "ask-holes"). Karyn also unpacks why getting clear on the target isn't removing waste, it's preventing it.

In this episode:
• Why serving others is the real source of joy and why 100% of us are service customers
• Training vs. teaching: standards matter, but so does teaching people how to think
• Principles over rigid rules for high-variation service ("say yes to the customer")
• Don't blame the person — find the broken system behind the symptom
• The coaching gears: telling → teaching → training → coaching → open counsel, and when to shift
• Clarity as waste prevention, and the one diagnostic question: "Am I seeing what I expect?"
• Leadership's real job: removing burden to create space for joy

Find Karyn at Karyn Ross Consulting

https://www.karynrossconsulting.com/

Can a winning concept survive contact with the kitchen?

Joseph Saliba, Partner at Strop, joins The Joy of Ops live from the National Restaurant Association Show 2026 in Chicago to talk about the space where consumer insight meets operational reality.

Strop works at the top of the innovation funnel, bringing the voice of the customer in as early as the chef's first ideation, and Joseph explains why desirability testing only matters if a concept can actually be delivered across 100, 200, or 2,000 locations. Along the way: the measurable gap between what customers say they want and what they actually buy, why "authenticity" and believability now beat "premium" for Gen Z, the double-edged sword of the open kitchen, and a surprisingly optimistic take on AI as an additive partner rather than a replacement.

As Joseph puts it: a thousand miles of supply chain can get ruined in ten feet.

In this episode:

• Insight as decision science: testing concepts in days, not months
• Desirability, viability, feasibility: and where Strop and Service Physics overlap
• Why "too sweet" can still mean "buy it" the just-about-right trap
• Gen Z, authenticity, and the power of an unexpected brand partnership
• Open vs. closed kitchens: credibility when it works, exposure when it doesn't
• AI in insights and operations: additive, not wholesale replacement
• 
  

Learn more about Joseph and Strop Insights at strop.com or reach him at [email protected].

Steve Crowley and Rebecca Anderson recorded live at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, this episode features Tammy Hanson, Membership Experience Manager at the Restaurant Technology Network (RTN).

Tammy makes the case for something restaurants rarely get on a show floor: a place to ask honest questions and do real research without being sold to. She and Steve dig into why operators often know they have a problem but haven't defined it yet, how RTN's town halls and work groups help restaurants learn from each other, and why open APIs and vendor-to-vendor integration are among the biggest technology challenges operators face today.

Along the way: how to compare point-of-sale systems "apples to apples," why being an educator beats being a salesperson, and how RTN connects restaurants of every size — from single-location owners to national brands.

Guest: Tammy Hanson, Membership Experience Manager, Restaurant Technology Network
Learn more or join (complimentary for restaurants): https://restauranttechnologynetwork.com/

Chapters:
00:20 — Meeting Tammy at the NRA Show
00:53 — What RTN is and what it does
02:38 — Why restaurants need a "safe space"
05:47 — Understanding the problem before choosing a solution
06:12 — Town halls and monthly topics
08:15 — Being an educator, not a salesperson
11:00 — The biggest challenge: open APIs and integration
12:55 — Comparing solutions "apples to apples"
13:44 — How to join RTN

The Joy of Ops is presented by Service Physics.

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Recorded live at NRA 2026, Steve Crowley talks with Jay Fiske, President of Powerhouse Dynamics, makers of the Open Kitchen IoT platform for multi-site food service.

Jay's team runs on one belief: love efficiency, despise waste. 

He and Steve dig into how connected kitchen data turns tribal knowledge into action.

• AI that sequences equipment to cut utility demand charges without touching guest comfort 

• The fryer running 5 hours before the first batch of fries 

• Speed of service as the restaurant's "VO2 max" - the one signal of a healthy operation 

• The chain that swore it needed more ovens (it didn't)

Connect: 

Linkedin: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayfiske/⁠

Email:  ⁠[email protected]⁠

⁠⁠https://powerhousedynamics.com/⁠⁠