The Bottom Line

Jonathan Maze The Bottom Line

Restaurant Business Executive Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants. He writes daily about the factors influencing the operating environment, including labor and food costs and various industry trends such as technology and delivery.

Jonathan has been widely quoted in media publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post and has appeared on CNBC, Yahoo Finance and NPR. He writes a weekly finance-focused newsletter for Restaurant Business, The Bottom Line, and is the host of the weekly podcast “A Deeper Dive.”

Financing

The U.S. food safety system is broken

The Bottom Line: The Taylor Farms cyclospora investigation has been beset by delays, confusion and errors, making the outbreak far worse and costing restaurant chains millions.

Financing

The long, steady decline of Papa Murphy's

The Bottom Line: This week’s edition of the weekly restaurant finance newsletter looks at the additional closures by the take-and-bake pizza chain.

The Bottom Line: More restaurant franchisees have declared bankruptcy so far this year than in all of 2025. And more of those filings suggest a business that is just not profitable.

The Bottom Line: The fast-food chain, which has spent years working to bolster the way its restaurants are run, has seen stronger consumer ratings, according to Technomic data. Operations matter.

The Bottom Line: Industry traffic remains negative, even as price hikes have stabilized. And now gas prices could start going up again.

The Bottom Line: This week’s edition of the weekly restaurant finance newsletter looks at the growing number of bankruptcy filings by multi-unit franchisees.

The Bottom Line: We tried the fast-food giant’s hand-breaded chicken tenders and wings at a location in Chicago and came away impressed. But operations questions must be answered before they hit prime time.

The Bottom Line: Fast-food burger chain sales have slowed over the past two years as consumers have shifted to quality. But chains with at least $2 million in average unit volumes have been winning.

The Bottom Line: This week’s edition of the weekly restaurant finance newsletter looks at weak industry hiring and why that points to a saturated business.

The Bottom Line: The fast-casual sandwich chain is going public with a lot of growth, a lot of change, and plenty of debt.

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