HeyJaredRestaurant Reset
The restaurant industry is stretched thin. Margins are tight, labor is scarce, and guests want more for less. I’m Andy Grindstaff, and after years in both operations and restaurant tech, I’ve seen what works.Restaurant Reset is for leaders who know the old playbook is broken.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 15, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest episodes
Why Main Squeeze's CEO Won't Tolerate Mediocrity | Jennifer Dodd (opens the original)
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Jennifer Dodd took over Main Squeeze Juice Co in 2024 walking into a brand where franchisee trust had been obliterated. Four months later sales were up 35%, and they held it for over a year without a single base price increase. She walks Andy through how she rebuilt that trust, the demographic patterns she has been reading since 2007, and why she believes the competition restaurant operators should fear is the convenience store down the road. In this episode: • (01:02) The red mop wig outside a
A New Logo Won't Save a Failing Chain | Joseph Szala (opens the original)
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Joseph Szala has publicly graded three restaurant rebrands. Domino's worked. Long John Silver's worked. Cracker Barrel did not. His read is that the logos had almost nothing to do with any of it. Cracker Barrel sterilized the interiors, lost the rocking chairs and the old man on the sign, then let a rebrand take the blame for a shift that was already underway. Domino's ran an ad where the CEO admitted the pizza was bad and promised to fix it, and bought itself years of goodwill in the process. T
Why Bonchon's CEO Keeps Saying No to Tech Vendors | Suzie Tsai (opens the original)
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Suzie Tsai runs one of the fastest-growing Korean fried chicken brands in America, and most days her job is saying no. Bonchon's CEO walks Andy through the filter she runs every decision through, from franchise deals to vendor pitches, and why patience beats urgency almost every time. In this episode: (03:52) Why her first official act as CEO was restoring two Korean characters to the Bonchon logo (14:03) Why she came up through consumer insights instead of ops or finance (15:59) What a thousand
He Changed the Way California Pizza Kitchen Makes Every Single Pizza | Paul Pszybylski (opens the original)
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A guest ordered mac and cheese from California Pizza Kitchen, got a container of cheese sauce with no noodles, and posted it to TikTok. Within days it was everywhere. CPK's answer wasn't a statement from corporate it was their head of culinary, mid-photo-shoot and openly annoyed, being handed an iPhone and told to film a deadpan training video teaching his own cooks how to make it right. The punchline: because one guest got half a mac and cheese, everyone got half off mac and cheese. The video p
How Bite's CEO Turned a Danny Meyer Education Into a 5-Star Kiosk Experience | Brandon Barton (opens the original)
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Most of the restaurant industry sells self-ordering kiosks on one number: labor saved. Brandon Barton thinks that's exactly the wrong pitch. As CEO of Bite, whose software runs kiosks for Portillo's, Chopt, Krispy Kreme, Big Chicken, and Arby's inside Love's Travel Stops… he argues that a screen isn't a cost cut. It's a hospitality channel, and it can out-serve a slammed cashier on a Friday night. Brandon earned what he calls his "masters degree in Enlightened Hospitality" running beverage at Da
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