Cole Moir on what replaced the CMO role - the four hires that matter, and how he'd manage budget for a $200 million brand. 31% of Fortune 500 companies don't have a CMO role right now. Starbucks, Walgreens, and General Motors are three of them. That number is the cleanest way to describe what's happened to the CMO role.

NRA Chief Economist Dr. Chad Moutray on what restaurant technology really does to staffing. Everyone assumes restaurant automation means fewer jobs. The National Restaurant Association’s data says 94% of operators cut zero: their restaurant technology investments over the past two to three years did not permanently eliminate a single...

NRA Chief Economist Dr. Chad Moutray on restaurant employee retention, managers, and the first 90 days. In Part 2 of our Hiring & Staffing series, Dr. Chad Moutray, Chief Economist at the National Restaurant Association, breaks down the numbers behind restaurant employee retention - when a new hire becomes “net positive,” why the fir...

Mark Ryski on why stores convert up to 70% of store traffic while online only converts 3% and Amazon only 10%. 77% of shoppers who walked out of a big box store without buying told exit interviewers they came in to buy. They couldn't find help, wouldn't wait in line, and left empty-handed. Mark Ryski has spent almost 3 decades measur...

NRA Chief Economist Dr. Chad Moutray on the 2026 restaurant labor market, 122% turnover, and the price of running a shift short. One missing employee can cost a restaurant $3,000 to $5,000 in lost sales over three months. That's just one shocking stat from the National Restaurant Association's new 2026 Hiring & Staffing report. And i...

The Vitamin Shoppe’s Andy Laudato on How Retail Leaders Are Scaling Innovation Without Losing Their Culture. Scaling innovation is one of the hardest skills in retail leadership, and it’s exactly what we dig into this episode. Andy Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe and author of Fostering Innovation, returns to share his playbook fo...