Restaurant Growth Podcast

How do you beat the restaurant industry labor shortage? By focusing on the people already working for you. In this employment landscape, team member retention is more important than ever before.

We chat with Dan Simpson, CEO of Taziki's, which with nearly 100 locations and 3000 employees, manage to retain staff at a rate higher than the industry average. How? By developing a keen understanding of who works for them and what they can do to provide them with a career that is reflective of that. 

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts and hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino

Restaurant Marketing doesn’t begin and end—it’s ever moving. We sit down with Chip Klose, founder of Restaurant Strategy to chat though the restaurant marketing flywheel of attract, retain, evangelize, with strategies for how to win at each. The best part? The marketing flywheel applies both to customers and your own team. 

The 7shifts' Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino

About 7shifts

7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We  help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their  staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team  communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a  time.

What would it be like to get paid every day? Now, it’s possible. Learn about the financial revolution that is real-time pay and earned wage access, and how Nico Simko and the team at Clair are making financial wellness attainable for hourly workers. We also chat about how 7shifts and Clair work together to provide restaurant owners with this compelling benefit to offer their teams.

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "DJ" Costantino, 7shifts content writer

About Nico Simko

Nico Simko is the CEO and Co-Founder of Clair, a New York-based  fintech company that is breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle by  offering fee-free on-demand pay to America's workers.

Prior  to co-founding Clair, Simko led the M&A due diligence process for  J.P. Morgan’s payments division. There, he gained insight and expertise  into the lesser-known financial pain points that many Americans face —  including high-interest payday loans — which eventually led to the  conception of Clair.

Since  its founding in 2019, Clair has become accessible to millions of hourly  workers across America. The company closed a $15M Series A earlier this  year that it plans to use to continue fine-tuning its on-demand pay  product, as well as expand its suite of financial tools for America’s  workforce.

Originally from Switzerland and Argentina, Nico holds a B.A in Economics from Harvard University.

Are you meeting the demand of local diners? Are you leveraging social media properly? Are you leaving money on the table? These are all questions that you should ask as you lay the foundations for a $10 million dollar restaurant. Josh Kopel, restautauateur and content creator, lays the blueprint for reaching profitability and then some in this tactic-packed episode.

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is brought to you by 7shifts and hosted by Dominick “D.J.” Costantino

About Josh Kopel

Josh Kopel is a restaurateur, tech pioneer and environmental advocate. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the spawn of bootleggers and retail giants, he was bred for the hospitality industry. Throughout Kopel’s 20+ year career in hospitality he has managed venues ranging from the Alligator Bayou Bar, located on Alligator Bayou Road, seated on Alligator Bayou (it was exactly how you’re picturing it in your mind) to the hottest Hollywood nightclubs, bars, and ultra-lounges (far less glamorous than you’re picturing it in your mind).

Kopel went independent in 2010, opening his first concept Five0Four, a New Orleans-inspired bar, on the Walk of Fame in the heart of Hollywood. In subsequent years, he would open the Michelin-rated fine dining concept, Preux & Proper as well as South City Fried Chicken, voted the best fried chicken in Los Angeles by LA Weekly. Despite his success, he saw foundational issues within the industry and set out to fix them himself.

In 2018, Kopel founded FLO Hospitality Solutions, a company solely focused on leveraging tech to bring more humanity to the customer service experience, not less. His first product, FLO, launched in 2019 offering an all-in-one communication solution for restaurants, saving restaurateurs 1,500 labor hours per year while increasing their profits, on average, 5-15%. .

In 2020, the pandemic offered another opportunity for Kopel to serve the industry. In response to the devastation he saw, Josh created FULL COMP, a podcast, blog and video series dedicated to seeking out thought leaders from within and outside of the hospitality industry, using their wisdom to help the restaurateurs survive the present and thrive in the future.

Kopel’s varied interests and talents have landed him several positions of influence including board seats on the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council and the California Restaurant Association. He is also a co-founder of the Friends of Runyon Canyon, a non-profit focused on the protection of local Los Angeles Park areas.

The restaurant industry is anything but predictable. But there are two major costs that you have more control over: food costs and labor costs. These two combined make for prime costs, which can be even better manged with the use of modern restaurant technology. Steven Downer from XtraChef by Toast came by to chat about the micro-adjustments made possible by restaurant tech that can help restaurant owners stay more on top of their controllable costs.

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts, and hosted by Dominick "DJ" Costantino.

About 7shifts

7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

For our tenth episode, we welcome the authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Carl Osbourn and Meredith Sandland. Delivering The Digital Restaurant explores the world of off premise food and the massive disruption facing American  restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans, and start up entrepreneurs. We chat about how the book came about, who it's for, and how technology can help restaurant during the labor crisis.

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts, and hosted by Dominick "DJ" Costantino.

About Meredith Sandland

Spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After building 1000+ restaurants as the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands’ Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the GV (Google Ventures) backed disruptor. Meredith lives in Orange County, California with her three favorite guys: husband, Scott; son, Lincoln; and dog, Kobe. 

About Carl Osbourn 

Carl led BP-owned ampm and its billion-dollar grab-and go food and beverage offering across the brand’s 1000+ convenience retail locations. At BP, Carl obsessed over consumer convenience, and transformed ampm’s fresh food offerings to deliver record growth. In 2018, Carl joined  

Kitchen United to lead Operations, working with restaurant brands to reinvent an operating system that capitalized on the rapidly changing face of  

food delivery. Carl, his wife Elicia, and their two cats, Positano and Ravello, live in Orange County, California.

About 7shifts

7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

How do you train a deskless workforce with modern technology? Through our great uniter—the text message. We welcome Rachael Nemeth, Co-founder and CEO of Opus Training on the show to discuss Opus' text message-based learning platform for frontline workers, onboarding and training the deskless workforce, and how a great training program can help keep employees around.

The 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino, 7shifts' Content Writer.

About Rachael Nemeth
Rachael Nemeth is the CEO and Cofounder of Opus, a platform that helps employers design and deliver text message-based courses to their "deskless" workforce. Her background combines decades of experience in the service industry, instructional design, and second language acquisition. Before Opus, she worked in Operations and HR for Danny Meyer's, Union Square Hospitality Group, Baked, and Hot Bread Kitchen, an NGO that teaches baking production skills to underrepresented women. Her first company, ESL Works brought industry-relevant English training to New York City kitchens. Rachael is an alum of The New School and is from Kansas City (the Kansas side, if you're wondering).

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

We have a very special episode to share with you all, featuring the one and only Danny Meyer. We had the pleasure of hosting Danny (virtually) in our offices for a fireside chat with our CEO, Jordan Boesch. Danny went over his career, philosophy on hiring for his teams, the state of the restaurant industry, the early days of restaurant technology, and answered some questions from our team. It's an episode that you don't want to miss. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

About Danny Meyer
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Danny Meyer grew up in a family that relished great food and hospitality. Thanks to his father’s travel business, which designed custom European trips, Danny spent much of his childhood eating, visiting near and far-off places, and sowing the seeds for his future passion. In 1985, at the age of 27, Danny opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, launching what would become a lifelong career in hospitality. 

Thirty years later, Danny’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) comprises some of New York’s most beloved and acclaimed restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, Maialino, and more. Danny and USHG founded Shake Shack, the modern-day “roadside” burger restaurant, which became a public company in 2015. USHG also offers large-scale event services, foodservice solutions for public and private institutions, industry consulting, and educational programming. 

Under Danny’s leadership, USHG is renowned not only for its acclaimed restaurants but also for its distinctive and celebrated culture of Enlightened Hospitality. This guiding principle of prioritizing employees first and foremost has driven and shaped USHG’s ongoing evolution from a small group of restaurants into a multi-faceted hospitality organization.

Danny and USHG’s diverse ventures have added to the hospitality dialogue in many contexts including dining options in museums, sports arenas, and cultural institutions, as well as prescient investments in burgeoning neighborhoods.

Danny’s groundbreaking business book, Setting the Table (HarperCollins, 2006), a New York Times Bestseller, articulates a set of signature business and life principles that translate to a wide range of industries. A celebrated speaker and educator, Danny has set industry standards in areas such as hiring practices, innovative leadership, and corporate responsibility and addresses a wide range of audiences on such topics around the country.

Danny has been generously recognized for his leadership, business achievements, and humanitarianism, including the 2017 Julia Child Award, the 2015 TIME 100 “Most Influential People” list, the 2012 Aspen Institute Preston Robert Tisch Award in Civic Leadership, the 2011 NYU Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City, and the 2000 IFMA Gold Plate Award. Together, Danny and USHG’s restaurants and individuals have won an unprecedented 28 James Beard Awards, including Outstanding Restaurateur (2005) and Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America (1996).

Danny and his wife, Audrey, live in New York City and have four children.

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

What are your restaurant's core values? If you're not sure, this episode of the podcast will help you figure that out. We sit down with Kelly McCutcheon, VP of People at Hopdoddy Burger Bar to chat about how Kelly and her team sat down and whittled down a list of 50 characteristics into four core values that drive the 32 location machine that is Hopdoddy Burger Bar. 

The 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino, 7shifts' Content Writer.

About Kelly McCutcheon
In her hospitality career spanning 20 years, Kelly’s skill for training has grown into a passion for leading and developing others. She’s had the pleasure of leading the creation of a TM to GM career development program, where over 100 Team Members have turned their passion into purpose by advancing their career into a position of leadership. Through experience opening over 60 new restaurant locations, she’s discovered that great training aligns what we do with what we say we do, and great business performance begins by pouring into our people. Her training mission is to help people grow into the best version of themselves. Kelly is currently VP of People for Hopdoddy Burger Bar based in Austin TX. She’s also the Regional Training Director for the Council of Hotel & Restaurant Trainers and a dog mom of 2 adorable rescues.

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

Now that guests are coming back into your restaurant, it means there are more tables to clean, more guests to attend to, and more side work to complete.

The problem of restaurant task management is not a new one. Restaurateurs named employee engagement their third-biggest challenge going into 2020, meaning that figuring out how to keep your staff productive and motivated has been (and continues to be) a top priority in the restaurant industry.

In this episode, we’ll help you answer that question. Keep listening for our tips on making your staff more efficient and ensuring no task is left incomplete when you go home for the day.

Opening a restaurant is a big challenge that requires a huge investment of time and money. But the challenges don’t stop there—once open you have to focus on improving processes, managing labor schedules, and controlling restaurant costs.

Whether it’s food cost increases due to inflation or a labor cost rise due to rising minimum wage, cost increases, like taxes, are pretty much a guarantee in the restaurant industry.

This episode answers these questions and more. You’ll learn almost everything you need to know about restaurant costs so that you can remain profitable.

Welcome to the 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast, where sit down with the best minds in the restaurant industry to inspire you with new ways to improve your business. In this episode, Shrad Rao, CEO of Wagepoint, discusses just how far restaurant tech has come in the last decade, and the wealth of technology available to restaurants right now. We also dive into some payroll best practices (and horror stories) and discuss how solid payroll practices can help retain employees.

The 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino, 7shifts' Content Writer.

About Wagepoint
Wagepoint is built just for small businesses and the bookkeepers and accountants who serve them. That goes for everything from product features and pricing to how we define our customer model — in a way that ensures our customers feel like Wagepoint is a friend who just happens to know a lot about payroll.

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

Welcome to the 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast, where sit down with the best minds in the restaurant industry to inspire you with new ways to improve your business. On this episode, Jensen Cummings, chef, and creator of Best Served Creative, chats about the labor shortage and what red flags to look for when looking for jobs in the restaurant industry.

The 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino, 7shifts' Content Writer.

About Jensen Cummings
Jensen Cummings is a fifth-generation Chef & Certified Cicerone, based in Denver, CO.. His brands Best Served Creative and Best Served Podcast are working tirelessly in the pursuit of valuing and focusing on Why and Who before what and how for the Hospitality Industry. Their mission is to advance acknowledgment of our purpose and our people through storytelling, marketing and evolving the business model of restaurants and F&B hospitality.

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

Not sure how to schedule employees effectively? We got you covered.

Effective employee scheduling is simple in theory: Create optimal work schedules, so you’re never over or understaffed. But in practice, it’s anything but.

With the many types of shifts to choose from like rotating, fixed, and on-call shifts, and over 500 shift patterns, creating a schedule that’s right for your business can be a huge challenge. And even once you’ve created a schedule, there’s no guarantee it'll remain optimal as you have to contend with last-minute shift changes and requests for time off.

Thankfully, there’s good news. In this episode, you’ll learn what the keys to effective scheduling are and how to schedule employees effectively in 8 simple steps. View the keys to effective scheduling as the building blocks for creating a schedule.

Welcome to the 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast, where we sit down with the best minds in the restaurant industry to inspire you with new ways to improve your business.

The 7shifts Restaurant Growth Podcast is hosted by Dominick "D.J." Costantino, 7shifts' Content Writer.

About Eric Cacciatorre
Eric Cacciatore is the host of Restaurant Unstoppable, the number one restaurant industry podcast. Since 2013, Eric has been sharing the stories, ideas, knowledge, values, energy, recommendations, and mentorship from proven successful restaurateurs.

About 7shifts
7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

In this episode, we’ll define a feasibility study, outline the sections restaurant feasibility should have, and identify the best practices you should follow when conducting one. 

A restaurant interview can take many forms – a group interview, an open interview, or a scheduled one-on-one interview, to name a few. No matter the setting, having poise, being authentic, exuding confidence, and articulating knowledge will help you stand out from other candidates.

Dew Smith, the Brand Strategist at 7shifts, shares 12 restaurant interview questions you might be asked to answer, as well as some guidelines on how to answer them to help you prepare for your interview. 

How do you start moving up? What are the restaurant management skills you need to succeed and how do you acquire them? Is it difficult to get the right training? Do you need a degree? 

Let’s take a look at what a restaurant manager does, what skills they need, and how to brush up on those skills.

In this episode of 7shifts Audio Series we are going to explore how to create a comprehensive restaurant staff training manual. It will be everyone’s guide for instructions, processes and all the answers to common questions, while being a great reference point to ensure staff feel engaged and supported.

In this episode of 7shifts Audio Series we explore how restaurants can create a new, upgraded marketing plan and gain a competitive edge in 2021. As we all know, 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone — especially those in the restaurant industry — but a strong marketing plan will help you get back on track.

Download the marketing plan in PDF format - bit.ly/33A4jdp