The Restaurant Coach Podcast

What would change in your restaurant if you had a team working on the business while you slept? A team that doesn’t call in sick. Doesn’t need days off. Doesn’t collect overtime. And keeps working through the administrative tasks that consume your attention. The AI restaurant is here—and independent restaurant owners need to understand what that means. In Episode 187 of The Restaurant Coach® Podcast, I sit down with Andrew Steakley to explore how he’s using AI agents across his restaurant brand, from hiring and marketing to inventory, menu design, websites, and SEO. We’re talking about moving beyond asking AI to write a caption and toward building agents with defined responsibilities, access to useful information, and clear standards for execution. For an independent owner, that opens up a powerful question: How much of your day could you reclaim if you stopped being the person who has to touch everything? From Another Tool to an AI Operations Team Restaurant owners already have plenty of software. What they need is help turning information into action. A sales report doesn’t solve a scheduling problem. An inventory count doesn’t explain every variance. A marketing calendar doesn’t execute itself. This conversation explores how AI agents can help connect those pieces—and what it takes to keep the owner in command. The opportunity reaches across the business: Hiring: Supporting recruiting, applicant communication, and interview scheduling. Marketing: Creating consistent content and campaigns that reflect your brand. Inventory: Helping identify purchasing issues, waste, and cost changes. Menu design: Bringing costs, popularity, and profitability into the conversation. Websites and SEO: Keeping your digital presence working to help guests find you. Owner visibility: Organizing information so you can see what needs attention and make decisions. What Does the Owner Still Own? An AI agent needs direction, standards, and accountability. Working around the clock doesn’t guarantee that it gets everything right. The owner still needs to decide what an agent can access, what it can do, and what requires approval. That makes leadership more valuable. Your standards. Your judgment. Your culture. Your responsibility for the guest experience. The goal is to give your human team more room to deliver hospitality—and give you more room to lead. The Future Restaurant Starts With a Different Owner Imagine starting your morning with a briefing instead of a scavenger hunt. You can see the issues that need attention. The work that has been prepared. The decisions waiting for approval. You spend less time chasing information and more time acting on it. That is the future worth building: a restaurant where the owner has the information and support to work ON the business, instead of spending every waking hour buried IN it. Listen to Episode 187 — The AI Restaurant is HERE with Andrew Steakley. Stop Being the Night-Shift Chatbot Before we wrap, I want to leave you with something. Most independent owners aren’t losing to bad food. They’re losing to the night shift. The emails. The ordering. The schedules. The numbers. All the work that follows you home and keeps you working long after the doors close. That’s why I built Grok Bot Haus. It’s a custom AI operations team built for your restaurant: agents designed to watch your prime cost, draft your schedules and orders, help keep your training and food safety tracking on course, draft responses to reviews, and hand you a morning briefing. You stay in command. You approve what goes out. Your people can focus on people. Your agents can keep working on the tasks that pull you away from leading the business. It’s a team that never sleeps, working for you. Setup takes one to two weeks, and I’m doing it with owners who want their life back. If that’s you, go to GrokBotHaus.com Grok Bot Haus. Stop using AI as a chatbot and unleash it’s power to build your profits!

Stop Chasing Food-Cost Percentage: The Metrics and Negotiations That Actually Protect Profit with Bo Bryant The Restaurant Coach® Podcast — Episode 186 Most independent restaurant owners know their food-cost percentage. Far fewer understand what that percentage is actually telling them. A restaurant can report a “good” food-cost percentage while quietly losing thousands of dollars through poor purchasing, inaccurate recipes, overportioning, waste, theft, substitutions, invoice errors, and weak distributor agreements. The percentage is not the diagnosis. It is only the first symptom. In Episode 186 of The Restaurant Coach® Podcast, I sit down with food-cost and broadline foodservice expert Bo Bryant for a results-focused conversation about the numbers restaurant owners chase, the metrics they overlook, and how to negotiate with a foodservice distributor from a position of knowledge. Because asking your sales representative for a better price is not a purchasing strategy. And believing that 30% is automatically a “good” food cost is not financial control. Why Your Food-Cost Percentage Is Not Enough One of the biggest mistakes independent restaurant owners make is evaluating food cost as a single percentage. Context matters. Your concept matters. Your menu mix matters. Your contribution margins matter. Most importantly, the difference between your theoretical and actual food cost matters. Theoretical food cost tells you what your food should have cost based on what you sold, your recipes, portions, and current ingredient prices. Actual food cost tells you what you really spent. The gap between those two numbers is where the truth lives. That gap can expose: Overportioning Waste and spoilage Unauthorized food Recipe inconsistency Receiving errors Invoice mistakes Theft Incorrect yields Untracked substitutions Poor inventory practices Inside the TRC Method, we use the Theoretical Plus Two Rule. Your actual food cost should generally remain within approximately two percentage points of theoretical food cost. When that variance grows wider, you do not simply have a food-cost problem. You have an execution problem. Are You Negotiating—or Just Asking for a Discount? Bo and I also dig into one of the most misunderstood areas of restaurant profitability: broadline foodservice negotiations. Most owners look at the price printed beside each item. That is only part of the deal. A true broadline negotiation may include: Cost-plus structures Fixed markups Deviated pricing Manufacturer rebates Freight and fuel surcharges Delivery minimums Contract terms Product substitutions Pack-size changes Service expectations Price-verification procedures Category commitments A sales representative might offer a lower price on several highly visible products while margin is recovered elsewhere in your order guide. That is why you cannot negotiate effectively using feelings, loyalty, or a handshake. You need purchasing history. You need product specifications. You need usage reports. You need delivered-cost comparisons. You need a method for verifying that the promised savings reached your invoices. If you do not know your numbers before the negotiation, you are not negotiating. You are asking the person across the table to decide what is fair. What You Will Learn in Episode 186 Bo and I discuss: Why a food-cost percentage without context can be dangerously misleading The difference between theoretical and actual food cost Where to investigate when food-cost dollars start disappearing Why high food-cost items are not automatically unprofitable The daily and weekly metrics every owner should monitor How to prepare for a broadline distributor negotiation The purchasing data that gives independent restaurants leverage The hidden costs that can erase an apparent discount When vendor consolidation helps—and when it creates dangerous dependency How to measure whether a new distributor agreement produced real savings The food-cost metrics owners chase incorrectly The actions restaurant owners can take immediately to regain control This episode is not about squeezing pennies out of every plate. It is about building a cost-control system that exposes reality and produces measurable action. Because food does not become expensive only when the distributor raises the price. It becomes expensive every time your restaurant fails to control what happens after that product enters the building. See Bo Bryant at the 2026 Restaurant Success Summit Bo will take this conversation even deeper at the 2026 Restaurant Success Summit, happening October 19–21 in Scottsdale, Arizona. During his presentation, Bo will challenge the traditional food-cost metrics restaurant owners have been taught to chase and reveal what they should be measuring instead. If you own an independent restaurant and want stronger margins, smarter purchasing decisions, and greater control over your food-cost dollars, you need to be in that room. Listen to Episode 186 of The Restaurant Coach® Podcast with Bo Bryant. Then bring your numbers to Scottsdale. Because you cannot improve a number you do not understand. And you cannot negotiate from a position of strength when the other side knows more about your purchasing than you do. Reserve your seat at the 2026 Restaurant Success Summit: RestaurantSuccessSummit.com

Building an Empire with Lisa Gasparian: How She Turned a Crisis into a Multi-Million Dollar Brand What do you do when everything you’ve built gets turned upside down? You build something even bigger. In this episode of The Restaurant Coach Podcast, Donald Burns sits down with entrepreneur and restaurateur Lisa Gasparian, founder of Cafe Cremerie, to share the remarkable story of how she transformed one of the most difficult seasons of her career into the foundation of a thriving multi-million-dollar café brand. Like so many operators, Lisa watched the restaurant landscape change dramatically during COVID. The business she had invested years building was no longer the business she wanted to own. Instead of clinging to what was, she made the difficult decision to start over. That decision led to the birth of Cafe Cremerie—a brand built with intention, systems, leadership, and a vision that extends far beyond a single location. This isn’t just another success story. It’s a masterclass in resilience, reinvention, and what it really takes to build a restaurant business that can scale. Throughout the conversation, Lisa shares the lessons she learned while navigating uncertainty, building a brand from the ground up, creating a culture people want to be part of, and making decisions that position her company for long-term growth instead of short-term survival. She also opens up about something many successful entrepreneurs rarely discuss: the importance of having a coach. Lisa explains how implementing The Restaurant Coach® (TRC) Method helped reshape the way she thinks as a business owner, gave her greater clarity as a leader, and provided the accountability and strategic perspective needed to build the company she envisioned. As she says during the interview, having an experienced coach in her corner became one of the foundational pieces behind the business she’s building today. In This Episode You’ll Learn: How Lisa rebuilt her career after COVID changed everything The mindset required to walk away from the past and start over Why building a brand is different than simply opening a restaurant The biggest leadership lessons learned while growing Cafe Cremerie How systems create freedom and scalability Why culture must be built intentionally from day one The importance of making decisions like an owner instead of an operator How coaching accelerated Lisa’s personal and professional growth The role the TRC Method played in helping build a scalable restaurant company What it really takes to create a restaurant brand designed for long-term success Key Takeaway Restaurants are built by operators. Empires are built by owners. Lisa’s story is proof that setbacks don’t have to become permanent. When you’re willing to change your thinking, raise your standards, and build systems that support your vision, adversity can become the catalyst for something far greater than you originally imagined. Quote of the Episode “Sometimes losing the business you thought you wanted is exactly what creates the opportunity to build the business you were meant to own.” About Lisa Gasparian Lisa Gasparian is the founder of Cafe Cremerie, one of Chicago’s fastest-growing café concepts. After navigating the challenges brought on by the pandemic, she chose to build a new brand centered on exceptional guest experiences, operational excellence, and scalable systems. Today, Cafe Cremerie continues to expand while staying true to the values that inspired its creation—proof that resilience, vision, and disciplined execution can transform even the toughest circumstances into extraordinary opportunities. Connect with Lisa Gasparian Follow Cafe Cremerie’s journey and learn more about the brand by connecting with Lisa and her team on social media and visiting their website: Cafe Cremerie Ready to Build Your Own Restaurant Empire? Every successful restaurant owner reaches a point where working harder is no longer the answer. The next level requires better thinking. Better leadership. Better systems. That’s exactly what The Restaurant Coach® helps independent restaurant owners build. If you’re ready to stop surviving and start building a restaurant that creates freedom, profitability, and long-term wealth, apply for a complimentary Profit Rescue Call today. Learn more at: TheRestaurantCoach.com Subscribe to The Restaurant Coach Podcast Every week, Donald Burns brings you conversations, strategies, and real-world coaching designed specifically for independent restaurant owners who refuse to settle for average. If you enjoyed this episode: Subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review. Share this episode with another restaurant owner who needs to hear Lisa’s story. Remember… All business problems are people problems…and coaching fixes the people problems. BOOK YOUR PROFIT RESCUE CALL HERE!

Your Menu Is Programming Your Guests: The Psychology Behind Every Purchase Most restaurant owners think their menu is a list of food. It’s not. It’s the most powerful sales tool in your restaurant. Long before your server greets the table, your guests have already begun making buying decisions. Every price, every description, every section, every design choice, and every word on your menu is influencing what they order—and how much they spend. In this episode of The Restaurant Coach Podcast, Donald Burns pulls back the curtain on the hidden psychology behind menu design and explains why some restaurants effortlessly increase average guest checks while others unknowingly encourage guests to spend less. You’ll discover why menu engineering isn’t about manipulation—it’s about making it easier for guests to make confident decisions while creating a better dining experience and a more profitable restaurant. In This Episode You’ll Learn: Why guests buy based on emotion before they justify with logic The psychology behind menu pricing and perceived value How “anchoring” influences purchasing decisions Why too many menu choices actually reduce sales The hidden cost of menu complexity How menu descriptions increase perceived value Why guests fear making the wrong choice—and how your menu can eliminate that fear The power of scarcity, social proof, and identity in restaurant purchasing How visual hierarchy determines what guests notice first Why your menu should guide guests instead of overwhelming them Simple psychological principles that can dramatically increase your average guest check Key Takeaway Your guests don’t simply order what’s on your menu—they order what your menu leads them to believe is valuable. The best menus don’t just display food. They shape perception. They reduce uncertainty. They build confidence. And ultimately, they create higher profits without making guests feel like they’re being sold. Donald’s Challenge This Week Print a copy of your menu and review it as if you’ve never seen it before. Ask yourself: Is this menu making decisions easier or harder? What items naturally draw my attention? Which dishes generate the highest profit—and are they receiving the most attention? Are my menu descriptions creating desire or simply listing ingredients? Am I giving guests confidence…or creating confusion? Remember: Your menu isn’t just communicating your food. It’s communicating your value. Quote of the Week “Profit isn’t created when the food leaves the kitchen. Profit begins the moment your guest opens the menu.” — Donald Burns Need Help Making Your Menu More Profitable? If you’re tired of guessing why your guests aren’t ordering your most profitable items, it’s time to engineer your menu for maximum profitability. At The Restaurant Coach®, we help restaurant owners build restaurants that generate more profit, create better guest experiences, and run with systems instead of stress. Apply for a complimentary Profit Rescue Call, and let’s identify the hidden opportunities inside your menu, pricing strategy, and restaurant operations. Learn more at: TheRestaurantCoach.com Subscribe to The Restaurant Coach Podcast Never miss an episode. Each week, Donald Burns shares proven strategies, leadership lessons, and operational systems designed to help independent restaurant owners make more, work less, and build a restaurant that serves their life—not consumes it. If you enjoyed this episode: Subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review. Share this episode with another restaurant owner who needs to hear it. Together, let’s eliminate struggling restaurants—one owner at a time.

What if your staffing problem isn’t actually a staffing problem? Every restaurant owner has experienced it. You interview someone who seems perfect. They say all the right things. They start strong. You begin imagining how much easier life is about to become. Then, a few weeks later… They lose their urgency. They create drama. They damage your culture. Or they disappear without warning. The natural reaction is to blame today’s labor market. But what if the real issue isn’t the people you’re hiring? What if it’s the standards you’re leading with? In Episode 183 of The Restaurant Coach Podcast, Donald Burns challenges one of the biggest myths in the restaurant industry: most owners don’t have a staffing problem—they have a leadership problem. This episode dives deep into the psychology behind why restaurant owners often repeat the same hiring mistakes over and over again, uncovering the hidden patterns that quietly shape every team they build. In this episode you’ll discover: Why the same hiring mistakes keep repeating themselves. The psychological concept of repetition compulsion and how it influences who you hire. The three leadership patterns that sabotage restaurant teams: The Rescuer The Conflict Avoider The Approval Seeker Why your team reflects the standards you tolerate—not the labor market you’re in. How psychological safety determines whether your team tells you the truth…or hides it. The People Pillar Framework: Attract the right people. Develop them into high performers. Protect your culture by removing those who don’t belong. The power of implementing a 90-Day Standard for every new hire. Why hiring out of desperation almost always costs more than remaining temporarily understaffed. The leadership mindset that attracts A-Players and builds a culture people refuse to leave. One of the most powerful ideas from this episode is simple: Your staff is not an accident. They are the result of the standards you choose to uphold—or the standards you choose to compromise. If you’re tired of dealing with the same employee issues, constant turnover, culture problems, or feeling like you’re always starting over with your team, this episode will challenge the way you’ve been thinking about leadership. Because changing your staff doesn’t begin with another hiring ad. It begins with changing the leader they are following. Your Challenge This Week Take a fresh look at your roster and ask yourself three difficult questions: Who would I enthusiastically hire again today? Who is actively strengthening the culture we’re trying to build? Who have I been avoiding having a difficult conversation with? The conversation you’ve been putting off may be the breakthrough your restaurant has been waiting for. What’s Coming Next In Episode 184, we’ll shift from people to profits as we explore the psychology behind your menu—why guests spend more (or less), and the hidden decisions that influence every purchase long before they ever place an order. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with another independent restaurant owner. Your reviews and shares help us reach more operators who are ready to stop surviving and start building restaurants that truly thrive. Until next time… Make More. Work Less. Lead Better. Ready to Take the Next Step? If you’re ready to stop the profit leaks, build an A-Player team, and create a restaurant that runs with stronger leadership, it all starts with knowing exactly where you stand. Ready to stop the profit leaks and get your restaurant on the fast path to being highly profitable? Take the FREE Restaurant CheckUP! www.RestaurantCheckUP.com In just a few minutes, you’ll discover where your restaurant is losing money, what’s holding your team back, and the biggest opportunities to increase your profits while working less. Make More. Work Less. It starts with your Restaurant CheckUP.