Stories and Lessons breaks down the modern tech, digital strategy, and operational insights reshaping the hospitality industry and beyond.
Here is some of what we learned this week:
Lesson: Have a 100-Year Hospitality Mindset
Following our recent trip to London to create Toast content and connect with incredible hospitality leaders, we wanted to highlight a long-term perspective shift featured in our Restaurant Influencers video podcast series on Entrepreneur.com.
Alistair Darby, CEO of Sir Richard Sutton Limited, argues that running a hospitality business on a quarterly mindset is “insane.” Instead, operators need to think about what their business will look like in 50 or 100 years. If you want to build a lasting legacy, you must be willing to endure short-term pain, like investing heavily in the guest experience before the demand even exists, for long-term sustainable growth.
Read the Entrepreneur article: The ‘Insane’ Business Rule That Stops Growth
Lesson: Think Scrappy, Not Spielberg
In our latest Rising Tides Live community stream, we discussed an important mindset for modern content creation that works: Scrappy, Not Spielberg. The term was originally shared with us by Chef Will Murray of London’s Fallow and it’s a game-changer for people worried about making the perfect content.
If you’re waiting for perfect lighting, an expensive camera, or a heavily produced set, you’re missing out on opportunities to tell stories.
As pointed out in the call, when Steven Spielberg was filming Jaws, his mechanical shark famously kept sinking and breaking down. With a deadline approaching, Spielberg had to pivot, using yellow barrels and John Williams’ iconic score to imply the shark’s presence. He shipped the product anyway. Even Spielberg had to be scrappy. And it worked better than anyone dreamed. The movie invented the Summer movie blockbuster.
Watch the full community conversation here:
Don’t wait for perfection. Use your smartphone, start documenting your daily operations, and hit post. The algorithm and audience crave authenticity over over-production.
Lesson: Scaling With Soul Requires Strategy
Our Digital Hospitality conversation with Seth Cohen of Sweetfin is a masterclass on how to build a fast casual poke empire and a universal lesson on strategic growth.
When you’re looking to scale your brand, the focus shouldn’t just be on the menu item itself. It has to be on the repeatable operations, the unit economics, and the digital infrastructure that allow you to expand without losing the soul of your hospitality.
Whether you sell barbecue, pizza, or poke bowls, the blueprint for scaling smart requires a relentless focus on operational efficiency.
Read a breakdown on Seth Cohen’s growth strategy here.
Get Involved: Tell Us Your Toast IQ Stories
Restaurant tech is moving faster than ever, and AI is at our fingertips. Toast IQ is the AI assistant built directly into the Toast POS. It has changed how operators access their data. Instead of digging through endless dashboards and spreadsheets, you can now simply ask your POS questions in plain text, like “What is our current labor cost on Saturday?” or “What’s the prep time on the mac and cheese?”
At Cali BBQ, we used Toast IQ to instantly surface data that helped us save $4,000 on labor when analyzing our Sunday early opening hours.
How are you using Toast IQ in your restaurant? Send me a message and share your best Toast stories, operational wins, or creative prompts you’ve used to make your business better. We want to highlight some of the best stories we find in upcoming content.