Hosted by Rich Sweeney and Marc Cohen of Restaurant365, Behind The Numbers features in-depth interviews with some of the most prominent and successful figures in the restaurant and hospitality space. Join us each week to learn more about the technology that powers out industry and how you can take advantage in your own business!
How True Food Kitchen Manages 2,200 Recipes, 16,000 Vendor Items, and 2,000 Invoices a Week
True Food Kitchen runs 2,200 active recipes to power a menu of fewer than 100 items. Stephan Manning, Director of Restaurant Systems and Optimization, joins Behind the Numbers to explain how a 46-location scratch kitchen keeps 1,200 purchase items, 16,000 vendor items, and close to 2,000 invoices a week clean and moving through Restaurant365.
Stephan covers the yield-on-yield recipe structure a scratch concept demands, the 7,000 mistakes he carried out of a failed lighthouse implementation and five years on CrunchTime, the naming conventions that keep the database honest, and how an 87 percent yield target turns into a real conversation with a prep cook. He also gets into managing 17 distribution centers across 18 states, soft-launching seasonal menus, what a new CEO means for the brand, using AI to sharpen an email instead of writing it, and why the industry has hit peak chicken tender.
Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Stephan Manning on LinkedIn and True Food Kitchen, now 46 restaurants across 18 states, at truefoodkitchen.com. Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
27 Aug 2026
How Munsok So Built a Hospitality Group From a Hotel Lounge
Munsok So's 612North event space did $220,000 in sales across two days, including more than $160,000 in a single four-to-five-hour event. On this episode of Behind the Numbers, the president and CEO of So Hospitality Group, who signed on with Restaurant365 when the company had 11 employees, walks through how he built eight restaurants across four concepts in the St. Louis area: Drunken Fish, Kimchi Guys, Stein Haus, and 612North.
So explains the labor budget every store receives with the rule of not a dollar over, the daily report that shows whether each store hit yesterday's number, and the weekly inventory count that takes a management team three to three and a half hours with a full bar program. He tells the story of opening a sushi restaurant in 2003 in a city that had three of them, the building collapse he missed by 15 minutes that produced Kimchi Guys and 612North, the SOP and bonus program he built with Claude in a couple of days, and the gaming license at Stein Haus that splits profits in thirds.
Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Munsok So on LinkedIn and So Hospitality Group at sohospitalitygroup.com (https://sohospitalitygroup.com/). Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
6 Aug 2026
From 52 Whole Foods Stores to 10 Restaurants: Inside The Granola Bar
Six months after their first farm stand order, Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily were selling granola in 52 Whole Foods stores and making almost nothing on it. On this episode of Behind the Numbers, the co-founders and co-CEOs of The Granola Bar explain why they abandoned CPG, how a cold call to a Dannon-owned yogurt shop led to a 1,200 square foot kitchen with an 800 square foot dining room attached, and how that store became a ten-location group.
The numbers run through the whole conversation: profitable in year one with no outside investors, Restaurant365 customer 421 out of more than 6,000, monthly QuickBooks P&Ls arriving two weeks late compared with daily reporting today, alcohol at under 5 percent of sales and what it changed at one location, a 3,200 square foot cellar kitchen supporting catering in a building that holds 2,600 people, and a menu still roughly 80 percent intact from 2013.
They also cover the new Midtown flagship at 330 Madison Avenue, the Takeaway concept near Grand Central, why they refuse to install kiosks, clairvoyant hospitality, hire slow and fire fast, and a hot take on AI.
Hosted by Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney. Find Julie Mountain and Dana Noorily on LinkedIn. The Granola Bar operates ten locations across Connecticut and New York.
Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Who has been a guest on Behind the Numbers
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Philip Gay
Jung Lee
Andrei Stern
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
96,698
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
10 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 32 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
14
Social presence
0
YouTube
76
Engagement
51
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