Joining the show today, I am excited to have Troy Hooper, Chief Executive Officer at Hot Palette America. Troy Hooper joined Pepper Lunch as one of the three global business unit CEO’s for the brand, and oversees Pepper Lunch’s parent company in North America, Hot Palette America. Troy brings 30 years of unparalleled experience in hospitality, operations management and executive leadership to this role, which has fueled Pepper Lunch’s infrastructure development, growth efforts, and brand deliverables, creating a fruitful franchise model for the North American market.

Throughout his career, Troy has successfully built new concepts, rebranded existing restaurants, and improved well-established venues for iconic brands. Troy’s decades of experience and business acumen brings a breadth of knowledge to the rapidly growing global brand, Pepper Lunch.

By the way, I have some breaking news for you at the end of this episode so make sure you listen all the way through to make sure you don’t miss it!

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• You can also hear all these new episodes on the ConStrata website at ConStrata.io
• Email me at skip.kimpel@constrata.io

Next week is the one and only Geoff Alexander from Wow Bao. We all know both of these names very well. A man who had a vision, assembled an amazing team and has taken his vision to a whole new level! You think he is passionate about virtual brands? Well, you will have to tune in to hear him tell us what he REALLY thinks about the future of that side of the industry. 

So, check out Hot Bytes on all of my social media channels and let me know what you think.  I am very curious to see the reaction and see how sadistic you all really are!

Back with us today is Managing Director of ConStrata Consulting, Mr. Toby Malbec. This episode is dedicated to the two hospitality shows that recently happened, the industry standard, HITEC, brought to you by HFTP, which was held in Toronto and the brand new Hospitality Show put on by AHLA in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel. Both of these shows happened at the same exact time, so Toby and I decided to divide and conquer as so many others did as well. Today’s recap will highlight overall arching themes, similarities as well as differences between the two shows. Enjoy!

• Website: https://SkipKimpel.com (all archived shows and show notes will be posted here)
• Website: https://ConStrata.io
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/skipkimpel
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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipkimpel
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/constrata-consulting
• You can also hear all these new episodes on the ConStrata website at ConStrata.io
• Email me at skip.kimpel@constrata.io

Next week I am excited to share the time I had to chat with Troy Hooper, CEO of Hot Palette America, best known for their outrageously popular and delicious restaurant, Pepper Lunch. Troy has quite a bit to share with us regarding the growth of the organization including building out a tech stack for an international operation.  How is he going to pull it off? Tune in and find out!

Joining the show today is our special guest, Nabeel, CEO and Co-Founder of Lunchbox. Nabeel was born in Bangladesh, moved to Kuwait 7 years later, and to Queens, New York 7 years after that. Nabeel began his career as the first busboy at the Bareburger flagship store in Astoria, and spent his free time devising marketing objectives for the CEO. In 2019 he founded Lunchbox, a next-gen online ordering company, that was built out of the frustration of trying to build his own digital ordering system at Bareburger. In just a short period, Lunchbox has established itself as the premiere product in the digital ordering space, partnering with industry leaders such as Firehouse Subs, Papa Gino’s, Clean Juice, Wings Over, Bareburger and more.

Today’s show is NOT about Lunchbox. It is about AI and the new, free AI application that can be found online to allow restaurants generate food pictures for their online ordering guests.  We take this much further into the legalities around intellectual properties, regulation and the future of this technology.

We have some fundamental differences of opinion around the IP side of things but, at the end of the day, we are all trying to figure out where this all lands and are in it together.

• Website: https://SkipKimpel.com (all archived shows and show notes will be posted here)
• Website: https://ConStrata.io
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/skipkimpel
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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/constrata-consulting
• You can also hear all these new episodes on the ConStrata website at ConStrata.io
• Email me at skip.kimpel@constrata.io

Busy and crazy times in our industry right now. This also happens to be a very timely subject today, especially around the online ordering and virtual kitchen side of things as we are starting to see a slowdown in online ordering and a significant shakeup in that side of the industry. I would also love to hear your thoughts on where YOU think the digital restaurant is headed. I will be out at the new