Contributors
Temoc Morfin
Temoc Morfin immigrated to Chicago when he was 11 years old, as his father was searching for a better life with more opportunities for his children. After spending almost a decade in local government, he decided to change career paths and opened the first Cilantro Taco Grill in 2013 in the Stone Park neighborhood of Chicago.
Rahkeem Morris
Rahkeem serves as Vice Chair of the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology and was appointed a member of the 17-person Special Commission to Study the Future of Work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Jacqueline Mueller
Jacqui is Senior Vice President of Client Insights and Success for Service Management Group (SMG), a leading experience management (XM) firm focused on helping brands boost loyalty and improve business performance. Jacqui is also a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and has been providing research into the restaurant space since 2007.
Rebecca Murray
In addition to leading Goodcents as VP of Marketing, Rebecca Murray has led marketing initiatives for Pryor Learning, Andrews McMeel Publishing, and more. She and her team rely on data-forward insights derived from A/B testing to drive strategy and predict each campaign's impact on customer behavior. Goodcents is experiencing record growth under her marketing leadership.
Pooja Nair
Pooja S. Nair is a business litigator and head of the Food, Beverage, and Hospitality practice group at Ervin Cohen & Jessup in Beverly Hills. She advises food and beverage clients on a comprehensive range of issues, including employment, trade secrets, partnership disputes, contract negotiations and intellectual property.
Aman Narang
He holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from MIT and currently leads innovation and business development initiatives at Toast.
Sreedhar Narhari
iNymbus is a tech company that offers automated solution for financial operations, helping finance teams work more efficiently and Data-driven decisions.
Li-ran Navon
Entrepreneur, founder, and CEO, Li-ran has led Sauce from day one, focused on helping independent restaurants thrive in a digital world, taking the company from scratch to eight figures in revenue. When not balancing the demands of a fast-growing company and three babies, Li-ran makes time to read books, fly planes, snowboard, hike, rescue dive and play the piano and trumpet.
Lane Nichols-Elliott
Lane, a Senior Account Executive at Supper Co., a Full-Service Marketing Agency located in Springfield, MO, brings an array of experience to the table. Specializing in the dynamic hospitality sector, Lane's professional focus is centered on elevating restaurant brands. Lane's passion for the industry goes beyond the ordinary. In the fast-paced and ever-evolving landscape of hospitality marketing, Lane remains at the forefront by staying consistently informed about the latest trends.
Carrie Nielsen
Carrie Nielsen, NCIDQ, ASID, is a Senior Associate and Senior Project Designer at JCJ Architecture. With a deep passion for creating inspiring spaces, she is actively involved in every stage of the design process—from conceptualization and planning to documentation, implementation, and quality control. Known for her dynamic approach and ability to seamlessly blend creativity with functionality, Carrie brings energy, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to design excellence.
Aric Nissen
As Chief Marketing Officer for Restaurant Technologies, Aric Nissen has over 25 years of experience leading customer growth, business performance, and digital innovation initiatives.
Shannon O'Shields
Shannon O’Shields is the Vice President of Marketing at Rubix Foods, where she is responsible for creating and accelerating the company’s marketing strategy and brand recognition in the food industry. She is focused on building customer-centric marketing programs to promote Rubix’s one-of-a-kind product innovation and value-added capabilities in the flavor and ingredient space. In her role, Shannon oversees brand management, digital, go-to-market strategy and consumer insights.
Meredith Otte
Jason Morgan throughout his career has built and led successful growth companies across various industries. Currently, as Chief Executive Officer at Original ChopShop, Morgan has increased unit count from three units to 22 units in the past seven years achieving sales and operating results that are leading the fast casual sector. As Chief Financial Officer of Zoës Kitchen from 2008 to 2015, Morgan was instrumental in the growth of the company, increasing store count from 20 to 150 and revenues from $18mm to $223mm.
Janine Perry
Janine is a strategy director at Partners + Napier where she helps brands across categories leave a mark on business, people, and culture by creating work with lasting impact. Janine has counseled some of the top brands in restaurant and food/bev, including Starbucks, Chipotle, KFC, PepsiCo, Breyer's, MillerCoors, Quaker, and many more. Her unique blend of brand, digital, and cultural strategy experience helps clients increase relevance with their audience and achieve their business goals. She has held prior roles at Edelman, mcgarrybowen, DigitasLBi, and sparks & honey.
Shira Petrack
Shira Petrack is a former lawyer and current content manager for Placer.ai, the most advanced foot traffic analytics platform allowing anyone with a stake in the physical world to instantly generate insights into any property for a deeper understanding of the factors that drive success.
Lindsay Petrovic
Lindsay Petrovic is the Corporate Vice President of Product Management, Restaurants at NCR Voyix. In this role, she focuses on cloud-based, customer solutions that transform, run and connect restaurants' technology platforms.
Patrick Pleiss
Patrick Pleiss is the co-founder of Hyperlocology, a multi-location marketing platform that enables brands to centrally control local advertising, across the most powerful digital channels, for their hundreds or thousands of restaurants. Hyperlocology’s best-in-class technology includes automated local advertising campaign builder, restaurant-level analytics, community data, and per-restaurant insights to drive meaningful business outcomes.Zachary Poelma
Zachary Poelma is SVP, Supplier Strategy for Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, the world's preeminent distributor of beverage alcohol. He is responsible for embedding a supplier-centric approach across a Center of Excellence team of talented professionals including Supplier Strategy, Insights, and other supplier support functions. In addition to his time at Southern Glazer's, Zach has also worked in corporate and financial roles for Procter & Gamble, Dannon, and UBS. He earned a Bachelor of Science from The U.S. Naval Academy and received an MBA from NYU's Stern School of Business.
