Kernel made a splash when it opened its first New York City restaurant in early 2024. The then-vegan restaurant’s star employee was a robotic arm tasked with moving food in and out of the oven, assisting human workers by handling much of the heavy lifting. But the robot, along with Kernel’s name and one-time signature green paint in stores, have been retired. Instead, Kernel Foods is working on a new sandwich concept: Counter Service. Chief operating officer Tom Cortese, also a co-founder of hit fitness platform Peloton, still has an eye on how tech will take this burgeoning restaurant brand to new heights. 

This episode starts with a lawsuit and an upset: Uber sues DoorDash in San Francisco, and New York Magazine declares all the cool restaurants are on OpenTable now. The drama! (Kind of.) Then, Michael Osanloo, president and CEO of Portillo’s — now a fast-growing, publicly traded restaurant company — joins the Simmer to talk marketing, loyalty, third-party delivery, and Chicago street food.

We’re back on the restaurant loyalty beat this week with Abhinav Kapur, who’s led Bikky for nearly a decade. In this episode, we talk about developing loyal diners, email (and text!) marketing, and “tendies” from a new KFC spinoff, whatever those are. 

Finally, Resy CEO Pablo Rivero joins The Simmer, completing our trifecta of interviews with leaders of the country’s largest reservations providers. In his role as SVP of global dining, he also oversees Tock, the reservations and ticketing platform Amex acquired last year for $400 million. It was a smart acquisition: American Express cardholders spent a staggering $100 billion (!!!) on dining in 2023. In this episode, we discuss artificial intelligence, bots, exclusivity, and the future of the reservations business.

Zach Goldstein is optimistic about the year ahead for restaurants. As founder and CEO of Thanx, a leading guest engagement platform for restaurants, Zach is known for his honest and sometimes provocative takes on the future of the industry. In this episode, we tackle hot topics in restaurant loyalty including personalization, advertising, guest retention, and AI. 

Here’s something different: for the first time, Kristen and Brandon aren’t hosting a guest on The Simmer. Instead, we’re talking trends — good, bad, and ugly — that continue to shape restaurants. In this episode we talk about restaurant tech consolidation, restaurant robotics, and what a new US administration might mean for restaurants and the people who work in them. Thanks for helping to make 2024 a success for The Simmer, see you next year!

Wow Bao started two decades ago as a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Chicago. Since then, it’s grown through modern channels like vending machines, deals with airports and sports stadiums, ghost kitchens, and frozen, packaged goods in grocery stores. In this episode, Geoff talks about his tech philosophy (tl;dr: it’s good to be first!), Wow Bao’s growth over time, and the challenges of selling one brand in lots of places. 

Over the last few weeks, foodborne illnesses have killed several people in the U.S., sickening many others. Outbreaks affected major restaurants and retailers from McDonald’s to Whole Foods to Walmart; the offending E. coli bacteria was traced to ingredients including onions, carrots, and broccoli.
Christine Schindler founded Pathspot to make restaurants safer, using tech to support health and safety initiatives from hand washing to ingredient labeling. In this episode, we talk about the recent E. coli outbreaks specifically and food safety in America generally, plus how technology helps standardize processes in order to keep us all safe and healthy. Fascinating stuff!

Recipes on the internet have always been bad. They’re hard to find and even harder to mange. Many have tried to find a fix, but few have completely flipped the model on its head. Until now! Lisa Grimm is co-founder and CEO of Roux, which she describes as “the home of food culture.” It’s a place to find, store, modify, and share recipes while giving credit (and cash) to the original creator. (Join the waitlist at roux.app.)

In this episode, we cover Roux’s inception and soft launch, plus Brandon and Kristen share restaurant-related news out of the recent presidential election and Wonder’s big acquisition of Grubhub. 

Founder and CEO of Table22, Sam Bernstein, has some incredible news. He just closed a Series A funding round of 11 million dollars. In the latest episode, Bernstein talks about how Table22 is helping restaurants generate new revenue streams and innovatively bring their brands to life, fueling its mission to support merchants, restaurants, and shops in operationalizing unique offerings.