Why Smart Restaurant Leaders Should Plug Into Podcasts in 2026: A Hospitality-Focused Listening Guide
In hospitality, where every minute counts and every margin matters, leaders are hungry for learning that fits into the cracks of an already overloaded day. Podcasts have quietly become one of the most powerful ways to stay sharp. And as we step into 2026, with technology evolving fast, menu inflation pushing limits, staffing challenges persisting, and multi-unit operations getting more complex, the right podcast can feel like sitting in on a masterclass during your commute.
With global podcast consumption now surpassing 580 million monthly listeners, operators have elite-level insights at their fingertips, without stepping away from the line, the office, or the nightly P&L review. A few minutes between site visits can suddenly become a strategic advantage.
For COOs, CEOs, owners, chefs, financial directors, purchasing leaders, and accounting partners who serve hospitality clients, this guide highlights the 10 best restaurant podcasts for growing smarter, scaling faster, and leading with more clarity.
🎙️ What Makes a Great “Restaurant Podcast”
The best hospitality podcasts tend to share a few defining traits:
Ground-Level Experience:
Real voices—chefs, operators, tech founders, finance pros, sharing what’s actually happening inside restaurants. Some hosts even started as dishwashers before becoming multi-unit executives, a theme explored often in conversations with different hospitality leaders. Ground-level storytelling is mandatory.
Operational Depth:
Episodes in this category go beyond theory, digging into the essential systems that drive profitability: inventory controls, AP automation, labor management, leveraging AI tools, optimizing the guest experience, implementing sharp cost controls, and strategies for multi-unit scaling. As operators increasingly recognize the power of tech adoption and artificial intelligence, these discussions focus on what these tools actually mean for daily operations and financial intelligence. We offer a deeper dive into this topic in our article, AI for Restaurants: Powering the Future of Hospitality and Financial Intelligence.
Storytelling with Substance:
Not theory. Stories and lessons pulled straight from kitchen floors, accounting offices, and expansion playbooks, very similar to what’s discussed in some of the following podcasts, where operators open up about the messy, human, and financial sides of hospitality.
Forward-Thinking Insight:
AI, forecasting software, restaurant accounting best practices, and changing consumer behavior, everything shaping the future. This becomes especially relevant when podcasts dive into topics like automation and financial clarity, which connect closely to the way AI is reshaping decision-making in real time.
Industry Range:
Fine dining, QSR, emerging concepts, boutique brands, and 100+ location groups.
Podcasts have become a form of rolling professional development, a resource becoming even more important as restaurant tech accelerates. Insights around automation and forecasting are growing quickly, and operators are getting more value out of the tech-focused episodes featured later in this list.
Top 10 Restaurant & Hospitality Podcasts Worth Adding to Your Queue
Below are ten podcasts delivering high-impact insights, real stories, and actionable ideas — perfect for today’s hospitality leaders aiming for growth and resilience.
Restaurant Unstoppable
A powerhouse podcast of in-depth conversations with restaurateurs, operators, and industry leaders. Episodes tackle everything from menu engineering, staffing and retention, to scaling multi-unit brands. For anyone looking to grow beyond a single site, this show offers playbooks from those who have done it.
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Website: restaurantunstoppable.com/podcast
Restaurant Leadership Podcast
Focused on leadership, team cohesion, burnout prevention, and sustainable growth — this podcast is essential for any owner or director who understands growth isn’t just revenue, but culture and people. Great for multi-location groups, managing teams across geographies, or ensuring consistent standards across units.nce.
Host: Thailur Kachenchai
Website: therestaurantleadershippodcast.com
Working Lunch
A weekly show analysing macro-economic trends, labor shifts, M&A activity, quick-service vs full-service models, and broader industry-wide developments. Ideal for operators who want to stay ahead of market forces and make data-driven strategic decisions.
Host: Align Public Strategies
The Racist Sandwich
Diving into race, gender, class, and identity within the food world, this podcast offers a cultural and social lens often missing from mainstream hospitality commentary. A must-listen for leaders committed to inclusion, ethical operations, and building equitable teams.
Hosts: Stephanie Kuo and Juan Diego Ramirez
Website: theracistsandwichpodcast.com
The Restaurant AI Podcast
Explores how artificial intelligence and modern technologies apply to foodservice operations, from back-office automation to predictive analytics, supply-chain forecasting, labor scheduling, and more. Offers a look at the future of restaurant operations, and how tech-savvy operators are getting ahead.
Host: Matt Wampler
Website: clearcogs.com/podcast/
The meez Podcast
Features interviews with world-class entrepreneurs transforming the food space, from ghost kitchens and tech-driven supply to new business models. Insightful for restaurateurs exploring innovation, diversification, or alternate concepts beyond traditional dine-in.
Host: Josh Sharkey, Founder & CEO of meez
Website: getmeez.com/podcast
Over Seasoned
Honest, candid, no-nonsense conversations between technologists-turned-restaurateurs. Episodes tackle real-world mistakes, hard-learned lessons, operations headaches — and how to navigate them with tech + heart. Very relatable for those who’ve walked the kitchen floors themselves.
Hosts: Tony Aiazzi & Xavier Mariezcurrena
Website: overseasoned.us
Secret Sauce (Restaurant Marketing Podcast)
Centered on marketing ideas, tactics, and strategies, how restaurants can attract more customers, retain them, and turn one-time guests into repeat visitors. Great especially for multi-unit operators or those looking to scale aggressively, or for marketing/operations teams wanting data-driven marketing insight.
Host: James Eling
Digital Hospitality
Interview podcast series that explores the ways successful people have harnessed the power of the Internet and social media. The show is hosted by Cali BBQ Media Founder Shawn P. Walchef and is a must-listen for anyone in the hospitality business.
Host: Shawn P. Walchef, Founder & CEO of Cali BBQ Media
Website: content.calibbq.media/listen/
86 Reason Podcast
A storytelling-driven series featuring operators, chefs, founders, accountants, and innovators, from dish pit to multi-unit growth. Expect honest conversations about restaurant technology, specialized accounting, resilience, financial clarity, and sustainable growth.
Host: Xavier Mariezcurrena
Website: overeasyoffice.com/86-reason-podcast
More honorable Mentions Worth Adding to Your Playlist
Beyond the top ten, the market is rich with niche content, particularly in the areas of front-line experience and back-office systems.
Stories from the Floor: Resilience and Reality
These are rotating-guest style podcasts featuring former dishwashers, line cooks, managers, and multi-unit owners, covering resilience, failures, successes, and pivot stories.
The Post Shift Podcast: Hosted by veteran bartender and consultant Shawn Soole, this show dives into the life, culture, and transformation of hospitality professionals.
Peon Podcast: A grounded show focusing explicitly on the lives and labor issues of food service workers—a crucial, bottom-up perspective for ethical leadership.
🎧 Turning Listening Into Leadership Advantage
The smartest operators don’t just listen, they apply what they hear:
Assign weekly “listening topics” to managers.
Pull one actionable insight from each episode into pre-shift or weekly meetings.
Set quarterly goals tied to ideas learned.
Use tech, financial, or operational tips to guide strategy at the unit or group level.
Whether you’re tightening margins, adopting new tech, improving accounting workflows, or preparing to scale, there’s always someone who’s already lived that chapter—and shared the story.
When conversations touch automation, AP processing, or financial intelligence, this resource consistently helps leaders make sense of what’s changing:
AI for Restaurants: Powering the Future of Hospitality and Financial Intelligence — essential reading before diving into more advanced tech-focused podcasts.
Why We Believe in This, From Where We Sit
Podcasts offer a rare thing in this chaos: time-efficient, wisdom-rich, no-fluff learning. You don’t need to block a full day for a seminar; you just tune in while closing up, prepping for next service, or commuting between sites. The insight depth rivals many conferences or MBA-level classes, but tailored specifically for hospitality operations. And best of all—it’s free.
The Over Easy Office Difference
We wrote this guide because we’ve lived it. As a global team of former restaurant operators and financial professionals, we intimately understand the daily pressures: payroll crunches, vendor chaos, fluctuating demand, and tech adoption challenges. Our bread and butter is bookkeeping, specialized accounting, inventory control, and restaurant tech implementations. While there is great content discussing menu trends, experiential dining, and even high-level HR and supply chain issues, we saw a need to provide insight from the perspective of the people managing the back-of-house financials and operations. We noticed a distinct gap in detailed knowledge about technology, accounting, and inventory controls, the complex reality of the restaurant operation’s engine room.
That's why we launched The 86 Reason Podcast. It gives voice to restaurateurs, operators, chefs, and financial leads, and restaurant tech leaders, people who started as dishwashers and built multi-unit empires. It is designed to help F&B businesses like yours grow smart, scale profitably, and build operations that last.
Interested in appearing as a guest on our podcast? Contact us today and give voice to your hospitality brand.