The Return

16 Episodes

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Technology vs. Human Judgment

2026-09-3014:40

Restaurant technology is supposed to give your team time back. But what happens when it starts taking away the thinking that made them good in the first place?Anthony makes the case for automating as much back-of-house work as possible, while questioning the growing number of tools that replace human judgment instead of supporting it.He pushes on what operators are actually giving up in the name of efficiency.The episode gets into forecasting tools that slowly weaken a manager’s instincts, guest-facing technology that cuts labor but also cuts hospitality, and why having more information about a guest means very little if your team hasn’t been taught what to do with it.Plus The Lie: that technology gives your team time back.

The Guest Isn’t a Data Point

2026-09-1621:44

We have more guest data than we’ve ever had. And somehow, we may know our guests less than we ever did.Jen Dodd has spent more than 30 years in the restaurant business and believes data is essential, especially when you’re trying to scale hospitality across hundreds of locations.Anthony pushes back on what the dashboard can actually tell you.They get into the difference between knowing your numbers and knowing your guest, why great operators still need to “listen to the hum” of the restaurant, and whether AI and automation are helping leaders see more or slowly replacing the instincts that made them great operators in the first place.Plus The Lie: that if we collect enough data about a guest, we actually know them.

Why Promotion Is Killing Your Best GMs

2026-09-0220:21

Every great GM is supposed to want the next title. Regional. Director. Bigger scope. More locations.But what if promoting your best operator is the fastest way to weaken your best restaurant?Anthony sits down with Christin Marvin of Columbine Hospitality to argue about the career ladder hospitality treats as inevitable: whether moving up is real development, or just churn we’ve learned to call growth.They get into why the GM chair should be a destination job, not a stopover; why autonomy matters more than another training program; and what happens when a company’s growth plan gets mistaken for an individual leader’s ambition.Plus The Lie: that up is the only direction that counts.

Nobody Is Loyal to a Discount

2026-08-1718:20

I argue loyalty programs don't create loyalty, they just find the guests who were already loyal and put a price tag on them. Zach Goldstein, founder and CEO of Thanx, builds those programs for a living. They get into why most loyalty metrics are meaningless, what the "40% of revenue through the app" number actually tells you, and why a program that hasn't changed in two years is holding your brand back instead of growing it. 18 minutes, no filler.

The 10:01pm Test

2026-07-2220:33

Kathleen McDonough and Derek Williamson built Shifting People on a belief: take care of your people and everything else follows. Anthony built The Return on the opposite arrow. Episode 2 puts both in the same room. No warmup, no panel-discussion politeness. Kathleen makes the strongest case for people-first you'll hear anywhere, Derek gets asked to tear it apart before Anthony ever touches it, and then a soaked two-top shows up at a locked door at 10:01pm and every framework in the room gets tested at once. Plus The Cut, the people cost each of them trimmed that never makes the case study, and The Lie, where the people-ops world gets asked what it's lying to itself about. The 10:01 Test, with Kathleen McDonough and Derek Williamson of Shifting People.

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