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Mark Rosati has been culinary director of Shake Shack since it was a single hotdog stand in New York City’s Madison Square Park. He wasn’t sure he should take the job. He’d been cooking at Danny Meyer’s and Tom Colicchio’s fine-dining restaurant Gramercy Tavern, and running a takeout kiosk seemed like a step down. Would his chef friends even speak to him anymore? But Rosati said that he appreciated that Shake Shack used the same ingredients and cooking techniques that Meyer’s fine-dining restaurant used — in fact, prep for “The Shack” initially took place across the street at Eleven Madison Park, which was part of Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group at the time. Shake Shack has come a long way since then, with around 330 locations worldwide and its own test kitchen, and Rosati has relocated to Los Angeles for ease in travel as more shacks open in East Asia. His chef friends still speak with him. In this podcast, Rosati discusses how Shake Shack has evolved and how the research & development process as changed, including how he and his team have had to adjust during the pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the ways Chevy’s Fresh Mex parent company Xperience Restaurant Group demonstrated their priority of employees was by refusing to lay off any of their managers, Xperience Restaurant Group CEO Randy Sharpe said in this week’s episode of Extra Serving. To find out more about how Xperience Restaurant Group is able to afford higher wages and what they’re doing to combat staffing shortages, listen to this week’s episode of Extra Serving below.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the ways Chevy’s Fresh Mex parent company Xperience Restaurant Group demonstrated their priority of employees was by refusing to lay off any of their managers, Xperience Restaurant Group CEO Randy Sharpe said in this week’s episode of Extra Serving. To find out more about how Xperience Restaurant Group is able to afford higher wages and what they’re doing to combat staffing shortages, listen to this week’s episode of Extra Serving below.

As Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) marks its fiftieth year in business, president RJ Melman doesn’t see any signs of slowing down. The multiconcept operator has over 150 restaurants in several states across the country ranging from fast-casual to fine-dining and, during the pandemic, brought some closed concepts back as virtual restaurants. Melman, however, does not think virtual restaurants are the future of the industry despite the Chicago-based company’s massive success with them over the past few years. LEYE is a family business for Melman. His father Rich co-founded the company back in 1971 and RJ has been with the company all his life, learning from his father. It’s one of the reasons he thinks brick-and-mortar units are still the way of the future. Earlier this week, LEYE announced it would be opening Aba, a concept already in Austin and Chicago, in South Florida – something Melman hints at in our podcast, which was recorded before the news broke. That expansion marks the company’s first Florida unit and is set to open in 2022.

“We're benefiting from the heritage of the brand,” CEO Kevin Bazner said. “During times of crisis people gravitate to brands that they know and they love well. We're one of those brands for 102 years now and so we've got that and that continues. And we've exposed a lot of new customers and a lot of lapsed users to our brand over the last 13 or 14 months that are continuing to come back.”

As consumers emerge into the vaccine era, A&W is seeing the 96 convenience store units, of 900 restaurants, begin to perform well compared to other traditional and co-brand locations, CEO Kevin Bazner said. “We're starting to see that flip this year as people are moving around more,” he said. Many of the A&W c-store units are in travel plazas. As the brand emerges from the pandemic, Bazner said it is keeping an eyes on development costs. “Material cost, particularly lumber, has spiked,” he said. “Indicators today are that that's going to start to temper later in the summer as a supply catches up with demand.”

Neville Craw has been developing menu items at Arby’s for the past 17 years, including some of the quick-service segment’s only lamb items — the chain’s gyros — and certain extreme limited-time offers, including sandwiches of venison and duck that were offered at just a few restaurants until they sold out, which sometimes happened in as little as 15 minutes. Although largely marketing stunts, it turns out that using sous-vide cooking on those items helped with the development of the chicken wraps that the chain launched last year. In this podcast, Craw, Arby’s vice president and brand executive chef, discusses his sous-vide journey, the intricacies of finding the right salt to put on the chain’s new crinkle-cut fries, rolling out smoked brisket, and the new opportunities he has to work with the chefs at Arby’s sister chains within Inspire Brands — Buffalo Wild Wings, Rusty Taco, Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John’s and Dunkin’.

Fazoli’s experienced its most successful quarter in the beginning of 2021, breaking over 200 weekly sales records. CEO Carl Howard credits the financial success to the team at the fast-casual brand. The Lexington, Ky.-based brand saw March sales rise 85% over 2020 and 34% over March 2019. The brand is also expanding unit counts with 11 area development agreements signed in Q1 to add 36 additional locations to the pipeline. On the menu front, Fazoli’s has continued to innovate, and part of that was a virtual brand. The chain’s first virtual brand, Wingville, was in the works before the pandemic began, Howard explained, but the newer brands (ghost kitchens with fast-casual chain Wow Bao and Macaroniville) are a direct result of the pandemic. Macaroniville is the newest virtual brand coming out of Fazoli’s. It’s rolled out in three of the highest delivery-volume stores in the Midwest for testing before a national rollout. Menu items include lobster mac and cheese, Buffalo mac and cheese (in various flavors of Buffalo using virtual wing sauces) and more. The startup cost is under $500. Howard believes virtual brands will help Fazoli’s footprint grow exponentially after a year of extreme growth for their low-cost footprints. Listen to the podcast to hear more about how Fazoli’s achieved pandemic success from CEO Carl Howard.