AI Lessons From a US Foods Operations Consultant

AI Lessons From a US Foods Operations Consultant

Lance Reynolds has lived every side of the restaurant business, from dishwasher at age 12 to owner of four restaurants to Director of Restaurant Operations Consulting at US Foods. In this episode, hosts Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney talk with Lance about why restaurants are slow to adopt technology, what the numbers behind a nearly $40 billion distributor look like, and the retention turnaround that took his turnover from 200 percent to 42 percent. We get into the CHECK business tools program and its two-year vetting process, the integration between Restaurant 365 and US Foods ordering, the labor math behind an $18.35 minimum wage, and why Lance believes 2026 will be the year everything changes for operators who embrace AI.

How a CPA-Operator Built an Accounting Firm on Top of 23 Restaurants

Kristen Sandhurst sits on both sides of the restaurant equation: she is a partner at Edotto, an accounting firm built to serve restaurant operators, and the CFO of an affiliated franchise group running 20 Taco John's and 3 Slim Chickens locations. In this episode, hosts Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney talk with Kristen about what actually moves the numbers in a restaurant operation right now. The conversation covers the prime cost math that matters (sub-60% prime cost, supplies at 1.25%, repairs and maintenance at 2 to 3% for middle-aged buildings), how a 300 basis point cost of goods improvement came from getting one client to count inventory for the first time, and why an organized chart of accounts is the foundation for every financial insight that follows. Kristen also breaks down her family's tech stack journey from 20 years on Microsoft Dynamics to Restaurant365 and Paylocity, and how she has been using Claude and ChatGPT to build automations, draft legal agreements, log 70 scanned PDFs into a spreadsheet, and even build a Chrome extension to fix a clunky accounting interface, all without writing code herself. You will also hear why her group pulled AI out of the drive-thru after testing it at both concepts, where restaurants bleed money without realizing it (food cost and water bills top the list), and her hot take on unattended QSR dining rooms. Whether you operate one location or a hundred, this episode gives you concrete benchmarks, actionable workflow ideas, and a framework for thinking about AI as task replacement rather than job replacement. Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney Featured Guest: Kristen Sandhurst, Partner at Edotto Brought to you by Restaurant365: https://www.restaurant365.com Subscribe to Behind the Numbers on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Follow Restaurant365 on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @restaurant365.

Inside a $52M Airport Hospitality Business

Greg Plummer started at 15 as a dishwasher at Bennigan's. Today he runs Concord Collective Partners, an airport hospitality company operating 12 restaurants and 13 branded concepts at LAX, with additional locations across Seattle, Ontario, and San Diego. In this episode, Greg joins Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney to break down the economics of airport dining at scale: 2 million transactions per year, 8 million pounds of chicken, 550,000 labor hours, and the cost structure that drives a $12 beer and a $58 menu item. He explains why Los Angeles City living wage of roughly $30 per hour, rent that runs about 15% of P&L, and California's regulatory environment make airports one of the hardest operating contexts in the industry. Greg also walks through the forming-storming-norming framework he used to rebuild the business from a 95% drop in air traffic during COVID, through the 2025 Los Angeles fires, and into preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympics. He shares concrete numbers from technology pilots at his restaurants: service robots that have logged thousands of miles carrying 340,000 pounds of food and dishes with zero safety incidents, and self-order kiosks that have driven a 30% increase in check average. Whether you operate one restaurant or a hundred, this conversation offers practical insight on real-time financial visibility, hiring and retention, and why hospitality still runs on people being good to people.

PK Karamchandani on Building Balance Pan-Asian Grille

Prakash Karamchandani -- PK -- co-founded Balance Pan-Asian Grille in 2008 with nothing but credit cards and a college roommate. Today Balance runs four corporate locations in Ohio, generates roughly $3 million AUV per store, and carries zero debt. On this episode, PK breaks down the operational and financial systems behind those numbers. The conversation covers the badge-based pay structure that has driven a 4.6-year average hourly tenure (vs. an industry standard below 12 months), with a maximum pay rate of $24.50 per hour and a current average just over $21. PK explains how 70% of revenue flows through a proprietary mobile app with no per-order fees, how the bubble tea bar alone accounts for 20-22% of gross revenue, and how the company tracks $2,000-per-hour peak throughput and keeps labor below 24% using daily badge density data. He also talks through the indoor vertical farm in Detroit that supplies the restaurants as a separate LLC, what rising build-out costs (from under $500K pre-COVID to $800K today) mean for their expansion plans, and how usage data in Restaurant365 gave them the leverage to negotiate floor stocking agreements with packaging suppliers during the 2021-2022 supply chain crunch. Balance has maintained positive same-store sales every year since COVID. 2026 is shaping up to be the company's biggest transformation year yet, with a new app, new POS stack, new operations director, and corporate store growth back on the table.

Using Data to Drive Sales and Reduce Theft Across 55 Locations

Rebecca Stewart, VP of Technology at HuHot Mongolian Grill, sits down with Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney to discuss how a 55-unit family-owned brand uses data and automated reporting to increase sales and reduce theft. HuHot has been operating for 26 years, starting from a single location in Missoula, Montana. Today the brand serves 1.7 million pounds of noodles annually across three core varieties and tracks that figure through the Actual vs. Theoretical report in Restaurant365. Rebecca walks through how HuHot built a benchmarking system that publishes performance rankings down to the store level each week, how the Flash Report with roughly 40 data columns functions as their daily fraud checkpoint, how a cloud-based camera system tracks grill-line throughput in addition to serving as a security tool, and how AI-assisted communication tools help store-level managers, including those for whom English is a second language, respond to guest feedback. She also covers what's driving HuHot's 2026 agenda: deeper bench development, an online training overhaul that replaced binders with tracked videos and certifications, and a new LTO calendar built from a guest marketing survey.