Attendees of this year’s National Restaurant Association Show may have noticed something new amid the usual milieu of robots, high-speed ovens and food samples on the show floor:
Podcast booths.
Over the past few years, podcasting has quietly become a cottage industry within the restaurant business. Once a fringe hobby for media and tech nerds, podcasts are emerging as a key way for operators and vendors to network and get noticed. For many hosts, podcasting has become almost a second job, and in some cases even a full-blown business.
Julie Zucker and David "Rev" Ciancio sit in a podcast booth at the restaurant show. | Photo by Joe Guszkowski
It’s not clear just how many B2B restaurant podcasts there are, but they have exploded in number since the pandemic. In an attempt to get a headcount, we recently put out a question on LinkedIn asking people to submit their podcasts. One response summed up the situation well: “The easier question would be, who doesn’t host one?”
Many tech vendors now produce their own podcasts. Some restaurant operators have gotten in on the action. Here at Restaurant Business, we have a handful of podcasts of our own. In fact, many of our editors spent a good chunk of this year’s restaurant show recording podcast episodes.
Our conservative estimate puts the number of these podcasts in the high dozens. But it could be more than that. And new ones seem to pop up every week.
We talked to half a dozen restaurant podcasters to learn about why they started, what the impact has been and why there seem to be so many restaurant podcasts right now.
Here’s what they said.
No barrier of entry
Perhaps the biggest reason podcasting has become so popular is because it’s easy to do.
All you need, really, is a computer and some basic editing software. A decent microphone doesn’t hurt. And there is no shortage of places to publish and promote the final product.
“The barrier of entry is almost nonexistent to doing it,” said Jeremy Julian, CRO at POS provider CBS NorthStar and the host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast.
Julian published the first episode of his podcast in 2015. Early on, he’d have guests come to his office to record. Recording on video at that time was almost impossible.
In 2020, he started publishing episodes more regularly, in part because the pandemic made it easier to do. Zoom became ubiquitous, and suddenly you could record a podcast with anyone, anywhere.
“As the technology has gotten easier, it’s definitely gotten easier to host, record, edit and post,” Julian said.
At the same time, the pandemic increased restaurants’ hunger for information as they tried to navigate the whirlwind of change brought on by COVID. Podcasts offered them a new source for that info.
Michael Schatzberg and Jimmy Frischling started their podcast, Hospitality Hangout, in 2019. It began as a way to talk to tech vendors they’d invested in through their company, Branded Hospitality Ventures.
When the pandemic hit, restaurants’ sudden need for technology “really gave more genesis to what we were doing,” Schatzberg said. “Operators that didn’t have an off-premise delivery platform or a system like that … were scrambling to get it.”
It was part of a broader boom in podcast listening coming out of the pandemic. From 2019 to 2024, the global podcast audience grew more than 80%, to 505 million people, according to market research firm Emarketer.
“I think the way we consume information continues to evolve and change,” Schatzberg said. “Podcasts are just a new medium that gives you the ability to pick what’s interesting to you based on your preferences.”
From side hustle to media business
But for the people who make podcasts, they are more than just a content delivery mechanism. They are also a way to gain attention and influence, and even make money.
Restaurateur Shawn Walchef launched his Digital Hospitality podcast in 2017. It started as a place for him to talk about what was happening at his restaurant, Cali BBQ in San Diego. But he soon realized it was a good way to meet people in the industry. He would invite tech founders on and ask them about their products and give them feedback.
“If I didn’t have the podcast, there would be no reason for me to set up the meeting,” Walchef said.
The local restaurant operator suddenly had a megaphone. Walchef eventually expanded into video and began posting clips on social media, growing his audience further. He became known for his Toast “unboxing” videos, in which he opens products from the POS provider. (He now sits on the company’s customer advisory board.)
In 2022, Walchef launched a second show, Restaurant Influencers. That’s when things really took off, he said. And they haven’t really stopped since.
“The more that I do it, the more I realize it’s beneficial from a business development standpoint,” he said. “People know who we are when we go to the [trade] shows.”
Walchef’s podcasts became the foundation for Cali BBQ Media, a digital marketing agency aimed at helping others do what Walchef has done. It now employs 13 people and produces nine long-form shows a week for customers including Incentivio, Restaurant365 and Gregg Majewski, the CEO of Craveworthy Brands.
Production packages start at $3,500 a month and scale up to $6,000, which includes four long-form videos and 12 short ones each month.
Walchef’s own shows, meanwhile, have landed sponsorships from Toast and Entrepreneur Media. And there is more Cali BBQ Media programming on the way, including a show about AI hosted by Matt Wampler, the co-founder of tech supplier ClearCOGs.
“Everyone thinks that there’s too many podcasts. I would argue that there really isn’t,” Walchef said. “We live in a world where every company, brand, leader, whether they want to hear this or not, needs to be their own media company and needs to publish content.”
The Hospitality Hangout podcast has followed a similar path from side project to legitimate business. What began as a place for Schatzberg and Frischling to talk about restaurant tech has expanded to include operators and executives discussing all facets of the industry.
As the show’s scope broadened, so did its audience. Hospitality Hangout now has 100,000 monthly listeners, Schatzberg said, many of them from outside the restaurant business. Fans of Sweetgreen or Jersey Mike’s will tune in just to hear what’s up at their favorite brands.
And Hospitality Hangout is growing, with two offshoots in the pipeline: Hospitality Hustlers, sponsored by Toast, and Sandwich Safari, which will feature Schatzberg and Frischling tasting sandwiches around the country.
“It started out as a marketing tool, which a lot of people still look at it as for them, because they don’t make any money,” Schatzberg said. “For us, we’ve been fortunate now to have some really great partnerships with some great companies.”
The co-hosts continue to run their investment business, and Schatzberg owns several restaurants of his own. But podcasting has become an increasingly big part of their jobs.
“We’re spending a lot of time with it because I think our show is resonating with a lot of people, both in the industry and outside the industry,” Schatzberg said.
Thought leadership and passion
Still, the majority of restaurant podcasters likely don’t expect their shows to generate much revenue, let alone turn into full-fledged media businesses. Rather, they view podcasting as a way to share information while also making a name for themselves or their companies in an increasingly competitive environment.
Justin Foster, co-founder of AI voice startup Incept AI, recently began posting short video interviews on LinkedIn as part of what he called an “experiment” in podcasting. He said it’s a way to build his own profile, “and, more importantly, my company's profile by osmosis.”
The show also helps him learn about the industry, and it gives his guests a chance to tell their story and grow their platform as well, he said.
“It's much more of a long-term play here, without any real expectation of short-term benefit,” he said.
For Julian, hosting Restaurant Technology Guys has helped his CBS NorthStar business, but mostly indirectly. Though the company does sponsor the show, he doesn’t push it on guests or listeners.
“I see it as a thought leadership position,” he said. But the name recognition it imparts “does allow me to get appointments that I couldn’t get otherwise.”
And still other restaurant podcasters don’t see their shows as business ventures at all. Instead, they started doing it because they saw a need for different voices in the ecosystem.
That was the case for Byte-Sized and Bossy, which spotlights female executives in the industry.
“What we looked at through last summer and through the fall was that the only people who were hosting podcasts were these quote-unquote wannabe influencer dudes, and they only had other dudes on their podcasts,” said Chrissy Ouellette, VP of sales and business development at tech supplier TouchPoint and co-host of the show. “Nobody is highlighting women in our space.”
So Ouellette, along with fellow restaurant tech and marketing specialists Tammy Billings and Erin Levzow, launched their podcast in December. It gives female leaders a chance to celebrate their successes and tell their stories “so that the next generation that is up and coming has mentors to look up to,” Ouellette said.
It’s light-hearted and off the cuff, with conversations ranging from business to wine, travel and working out. More than 20 episodes in, “it’s been wildly successful,” Ouellette said.
The show has secured three sponsors, with all revenue going to pay a producer and to cover travel to events. Ouellette doesn’t talk about her employer on Byte-Sized & Bossy, and so far, the podcast has not translated into business for TouchPoint. But she said it wouldn’t surprise her if it did in the future.
“Visibility is always important, being seen as an expert,” she said. “But more than that, for me it is to let people know that I’m an ally in the industry.”
Marketer Kyle Drenon and Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze get ready to record an episode of Maze's A Deeper Dive podcast. | Photo by Kimberly Kaczmarek
The co-hosts of The Simmer also wanted to cut through some of the noise that dominates a lot of restaurant tech discourse.
Brandon Barton, CEO of kiosk provider Bite, and Kristen Hawley, who writes the restaurant tech newsletter Expedite, had long had private conversations about industry happenings. But they saw a podcast as an opportunity to take those discussions public, and, in a way, set the record straight.
“I think that part of motivation was, there are so many of these bad hot takes out there,” Barton said. “If there were things we felt we wanted to steal ears from, it’s these pods that are putting out uninformed opinions and that might even be backed by corporate dollars.”
The Simmer hosts also had another, more personal reason for starting a podcast: There weren’t any other restaurant podcasts they liked listening to. Barton, an avid fan of longtime sports podcaster Bill Simmons, said he and Hawley want to bring a similar sense of familiarity to The Simmer, “like I’ve known them for years,” he said.
Bite does sponsor the show and covers production costs. But Barton insisted that the The Simmer is not meant to be a promotion for Bite, and he tries to avoid talking about the company on the program.
Is this thing on?
So, does this budding group of podcast personalities listen to other restaurant podcasts?
Not as much as you might expect.
Schatzberg is more of a streaming TV guy and also a big Howard Stern fan. The biggest podcast consumer in the Hospitality Hangout crew, he said, is producer Julie Zucker. Her favorite show is How I Built This with Guy Raz.
Foster watches Walchef’s work (“I consider that to be a ‘real’ restaurant podcast,” he said), but otherwise hasn’t paid much attention.
Julian has a rotation of about 12 podcasts, including shows on personal development, leadership and Christianity. But restaurants? “I do not listen to restaurant podcasts, if I’m being truthful,” he said.
Barton has given some industry pods a try, and will listen to individual episodes of news shows if the topic grabs him.
Ouellette is loyal to Restaurant Owners Uncorked, hosted by restaurant tech founder Will Brawley, and will tune into other industry pods if there’s an interesting guest.
Walchef listens to a number of non-restaurant shows, including Guy Raz and Arianna Huffington. And he listens to podcasts hosted by his friends in the industry, such as Troy Hooper of Pepper Lunch and Zack Oates of Ovation.
He encouraged anyone to start a podcast, despite how hard it can be to build an audience.
“In the beginning, no one cares, and you look stupid and you sound stupid,” he said. Many people quit. Among the 2 million or so podcasts on Apple Podcasts, a quarter only have one episode, and another 80% don’t make it to 10, he said.
“If you’ve podcasted and done more than 10, you’re already in the top 10% of the 2 million,” he said. “The people that are doing it are just consistent.”