What's Cooking? | A Podcast from Nory

Missed the full episode with Topher Bertone-Ledford, VP of Operations at Emmy Squared Pizza? Here's the bite-size cut. Keep an eye out for our next episode of What's Cooking, hosted by Conor Sheridan, CEO of Nory, the AI operating system for hospitality. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/how-to-rebuild-a-struggling-restaurant-region-with/id1825066598?i=1000784508559&l=nl Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/18MabMxvjNe0CS2lkLkyV1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYcdNaALdhg CONNECT Topher Bertone-Ledford on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/topherbertoneledford Conor Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheridanconor/ Nory: https://www.nory.ai/ All What's Cooking episodes: https://www.nory.ai/podcasts

There's a split happening across hospitality right now that doesn't get talked about enough. Restaurant groups that opened after Covid built their operations for a world we're actually in: leaner teams, faster decisions, tighter margins, all from day one. Groups that existed before Covid and survived it are often still running on assumptions from a different era. Surviving the pandemic and surviving what came after are two very different problems. Topher Bertone-Ledford, VP of Operations at Emmy Squared Pizza, has spent the last two years living inside exactly that gap. He took over the group's New York region in a challenging state and rebuilt it from the ground up. Today, New York is the group's top-performing region on profitability. In this conversation with Conor, Topher walks through the operational reality of a post-Covid rebuild: why the middle of hospitality has disappeared, why "cleanliness is respect" is the foundation of everything, the labour acquisition speed problem no one has solved yet, the 12 Steps of Service campaign Emmy Squared rolled out in a three-month sprint, and the total-experience math the guest is actually doing at the end of every meal. Plus a frank closing take: the hospitality industry needs to stop pretending it's like any other industry. KEY TAKEAWAYS - The middle of hospitality has disappeared. Fast casual has streamlined; fine dining has doubled down on opulence. The mom-and-pop with linens and a $35 pork chop no longer works. Operators have to run to the edges to be successful. - Cleanliness is the foundation, not a nice-to-have. Topher's Emmy Squared turnaround started with one question walked through every restaurant: "Are we seeing the same restaurant?" Leaders who couldn't moved on. - Labour acquisition is a speed problem, not a salary problem. The talent pool has shifted post-Covid. The operators who move fastest on decisions and communicate vision fastest win the "diamonds in the rough." - Data has to be real-time to be useful. Running the business off a two-week-old P&L means being two weeks behind the bell curve. - Guest experience is total math, not dish math. The guest never knows the numbers. They do a split-second equation at the end: does this total match the experience I just had?

Missed the full episode with Harts Group CEO Sam Hart? Here's the bite-size cut. Keep an eye out for our next episode of What's Cooking, hosted by Conor Sheridan, CEO of Nory, the AI operating system for hospitality. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-harts-group-multi-brand-playbook-what-to/id1825066598?i=1000777855873 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3k5D3ehnKxeVb1krbspP7D?si=664c4a5bc49e4bbf YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmuhq3S1uIw CONNECT Sam Hart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-hart-23581851/ Conor Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheridanconor/ Nory: https://www.nory.ai/ All What's Cooking episodes: https://www.nory.ai/podcasts

Harts Group CEO Sam Hart on running eight distinct hospitality brands, centralising the systems that scale, and protecting the individuality that drives the reputation. Most multi-brand hospitality groups end up looking like a head office running several businesses that happen to share a name on a group balance sheet. Harts Group has done the opposite. Since 2003, the family-run business behind Barrafina, El Pastor, Quo Vadis, Parrillan, Bar Daskal, Drops and El Siete has scaled to 16 sites in London plus a first international opening in Dubai, while keeping each brand genuinely distinct in culinary identity, sourcing and guest experience. In this episode, Sam walks Conor through the operational architecture underneath: what gets centralised (finance, comms, HR, estates, one shared tech stack), what stays bespoke (menus, sequence of service, chef and MD leadership per side of the group), and the deliberate cultural decisions that let a group with 470 staff protect quality while absorbing a 38% minimum wage increase since 2022. Plus the two-year tech review Harts just completed, the AI task force building custom tools for restaurant ops (including an internal reservation bot), the Yum Pingo dish-level customer data that drives menu decisions, and the international expansion into Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Bangkok. A rare conversation with an operator who has held the line on individuality while genuinely scaling. KEY TAKEAWAYS The group owns the systems, the brand owns the identity. Centralise finance, HR, estates, comms and the tech stack; protect menus, sequence of service and culinary leadership per brand Lived experience is the guardrail on new brands. Harts opens restaurants where founders or partners have genuinely lived the cuisine. It's the discipline that keeps the portfolio credible The tech stack should be best-in-class and open. Standardised across the group, single source of truth, but modular enough to swap components as the market moves Data at dish level changes menu decisions. Popularity alone lies. Rating-per-dish across thousands of reviews (Yum Pingo) is how Harts improved customer satisfaction while cutting labour 18% Being privately owned is a structural advantage. No forced timelines, board consensus over votes, and the freedom to pause when the world changes. That patience compounds into brand quality USEFUL LINKS & RESOURCES Sam Hart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-hart-23581851/ Harts Group: https://www.hartsgroup.co.uk/ Barrafina: https://www.barrafina.com/ El Pastor: https://www.tacoselpastor.co.uk/ Quo Vadis: https://www.quovadissoho.co.uk/ Parrillan: https://www.parrillan.co.uk/ Bar Daskal: https://www.bardaskal.co.uk/ El Siete: https://www.elsiete.co.uk/ Drops: https://www.thedropbar.co.uk/ CONNECT WITH THE SHOW All What's Cooking episodes: https://www.nory.ai/podcasts Nory: https://www.nory.ai/ Nory blog: https://www.nory.ai/blog Nory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asknory/ Conor Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheridanconor/

Missed the full episode with Gabriel Shohet, co-founder and co-CEO of Black Sheep Coffee? Here's the bite-size cut. Keep an eye out for our next episode, featuring Sam Hart, CEO, Harts Group Hosted by Conor Sheridan, CEO of Nory, the AI operating system for hospitality. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conviction-over-consensus-with-the-co-ceo-of/id1825066598?i=1000775914193 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Rh8V1D5ehW6adnTPW0Cje?si=V004WR3hRkGBussUbRj7Ng YouTube: https://youtu.be/nIQeeaaa3Kg?si=71RcnyqwP6eqfbVQ CONNECT Gabriel Shohet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gasho/ Conor Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheridanconor/ Nory: https://www.nory.ai/ All What's Cooking episodes: https://www.nory.ai/podcasts