News Briefs

SeaWorld Entertainment Inc.  has hired Marisa Thalberg Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, effective April 24.

In this role, Thalberg will be responsible for brand and marketing strategies that drive revenue, increase visitation across the organization's award-winning portfolio of 12 parks, and elevate the company's conservation mission. Thalberg a is a globally recognized brand-builder and pioneer of digital, social and eCommerce marketing. She is a five-time honoree on Forbes' "World's Most Influential CMOs" list, among other industry accolades.

Trailblazing Executive

Thalberg was the first Executive Vice President, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer for Lowe's Companies Inc. from 2020-2022. At Lowe's, she was responsible for the transformation of marketing during which she helped drive record sales and brand growth for the company.

Prior to Lowe's, Marisa was the Global Chief Brand Officer at Taco Bell, where she achieved category-beating same store sales growth every quarter and captured the highest passion index among fans of any QSR brand. She also provided global brand stewardship for Taco Bell's rapid international expansion.

In 2002,  Thalberg founded Executive Moms (www.executivemoms.com), an organization created to connect and support accomplished women who are both professionals and moms. She currently serves as a Strategic Advisor to the VC firm Composite Ventures and is on the boards of the Blumenthal Center of the Arts and the MMA. She has served on the boards of the AdCouncil, International Women's Media Foundation, TheatreworksUSA and the Orange County School of the Arts.  

QSR Automations earned recognition for excellence in customer service and support.

At MURTEC, QSR Automations’ VP of Hardware Solutions and Support, Kathi Klein, received fHospitality Technology ’s 2023 Top Women in Technology Lifetime Achievement Award. 

During her more than 30 years in the restaurant technology industry – half of those at QSR Automations–Klein has amassed incomparable knowledge in understanding and troubleshooting kitchen display, front-of-house, and the associated hardware and networking platforms needed to run them. 

But what truly sets Klein apart is her natural ability to nurture relationships and foster talent, which has made her an effective leader in QSR Automations’ Support Services Team. During her long tenure at QSR Automations, Klein has built one of the industry’s strongest and most effective support teams. In fact, under Klein’s guidance, the team has received a 99 percent satisfaction rate from customers in 2021, and last year handled more than 16,000 inbound and outbound calls, which earned them a bronze award for Excellence in Customer Service from the 2022 Stevie Awards. 

This was the third bronze Stevie award for the team, as last fall, Klein accepted two additional bronze awards from the Stevie Women in Business Awards on behalf of QSR Automations–one for excellence in customer service, and the other for growth. QSR Automations was selected for these honors from more than 1,500 nominations from around the world.

“Just as our technology is the heart of a restaurant kitchen, our people are truly the heart of this business,” said Angela Leet, CEO of QSR Automations. “My colleagues are passionate about innovation both in and out of the office, and it’s immensely gratifying to see them recognized for these achievements.”

QSR Automations, headquartered in Louisville, Ky., with offices in the United Kingdom, is a global industry leader in kitchen automation and guest management services.

Up and coming QSR  Salad and Go  is expanding in Texas with three new locations opening in February in the Houston markets of Katy, Richmond and League City.

The Katy store located opened February 1, the Richmond location at  is set to open February 17, and the League City store plans to open its doors on February 22. These new locations will mark the start of rapid brand expansion across the Greater Houston area.

These suburbs were strategically selected as ideal markets for Salad and Go as some of the fastest growing communities in the region. Conveniently located in some of Houston's most popular suburbs, the new locations will provide fresh, high-quality meals with quick and easy convenience at an affordable price.

As Salad and Go continues growing its national presence with a strong focus on Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada, the brand's expansive growth has it on a positive trajectory to provide fresh and affordable food to communities in more than 125 locations by the end of 2023. Houston is the next step in the brand's expansion across Texas with plans to open additional stores in the market throughout the new year.

Salad and Go's chef-curated menu provides guests with food for any time of the day by offering a variety of delicious and healthy items including salads, wraps, breakfast burritos and soup as well as beverages including hand-crafted lemonades, teas and cold brew coffees.

Salad and Go ensures each meal contains fresh, quality ingredients while keeping prices low by vertically integrating operations and distribution, and sourcing ingredients directly from high-quality local farmers and suppliers whenever possible. The brand's mission to make fresh, nutritious food convenient and affordable for ALL extends beyond its stores and is demonstrated in the work the brand does to donate 4,000 meals every week to those in need, as well as in partnerships with nonprofits to support and fundraise for various worthy causes.

sweetgreen released its first 2022 Impact Report, detailing the company’s ongoing initiatives to build a sustainable food system and responsible business.

The report highlights sweetgreen’s Fiscal Year 2022 progress towards their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals, including their commitments to becoming carbon neutral by 2027 and broadening workforce representation across all levels by the end of 2025.

Sustainability Matters

Sustainability matters to today's consumers and restaurant operators. Two out of three (66%) consumers surveyed feel it’s important that restaurants are open about their practices to limit food waste. According to the National Restaurant Association’s annual What’s Hot Culinary Forecast, sustainability will continue to influence menus and how restaurants make decisions.   Just last week, Chipotle revealed its new sustainable restaurant design.

sweetgreen's Progress

•  Together with  Watershed, sweetgreen calculated the emissions of their menu items and published the emissions data and methodology on their website.
• Introducing carbon-friendly items: The Hummus Crunch Salad at 0.3 kg CO2e is their lowest carbon meal to date.
• Reducing emissions intensity: Since announcing its commitment to becoming carbon neutral in February 2021, sweetgreen has decreased emissions intensity by 12% from their 2019 baseline while maintaining company growth.
• Investing in clean energy: 100% of operations are powered by clean electricity purchased from solar farms in North Carolina certified by Watershed, reducing their Scope 2 emissions to zero.
• Mitigating environmental impacts: 79% of waste was composted or recycled based on restaurants where their partner, Rubicon, manages landfill, compost, and recycling streams.

 

Business software consultancy, Percipient, announced that hospitality start-up, The Other House, has deployed Sage Intacct. As well as providing intelligence to support the customer experience, track profitability, and expedite operational processes, the platform will facilitate greater transparency around energy consumption and costs, while scaling to support ambitious growth plans for the company. 

The Other House initially used Xero for its accounting needs. However, as it geared up to launch, the executive team needed a platform which would integrate with all key systems, deliver high-level business insights, and support the lifestyle brand’s plans to open 15 sites in the next few years. Having conducted an extensive review process, The Other House selected Sage Intacct based on the fact it was the best system on the market and could efficiently integrate with other best-in-class systems.

Now live, The Other House is benefitting from automation across the entire business. Because of the impressive integration via APIs, business users can view pretty much anything via an easy-to-navigate dashboard, daily, weekly, monthly, or by any other configuration they choose. This unprecedented level of speed and intelligence means that the team is able to distil key data in minutes rather than days.

“Crucially, Sage Intacct can be used by anyone, not just finance, which promotes transparency and allows intelligence to be applied where relevant,” comments Tom Haley, CFO at The Other House. “Our quarter-end accounts are produced at a click of a button and we are able to plot and compare any insight we need to create a comprehensive picture, so that when viewing, say, profit and loss, we can look at the numerous variables associated with that. Sage Intacct delivers truly end-to-end finance, but in reality, it does so much more than that. It allows us to have a high-level business conversation based on statistical insights, which in turn, give us an in-depth understanding and control of our numbers in real-time.”

 

“Digital is, without doubt, a crucial aspect of any modern hospitality business, and we see it as a competitive advantage. While our app will play a significant role in helping to deliver the Resident experience, it’s all of the intelligence generated in the back office, powered by Sage Intacct, which ultimately delivers the magic.”

 

Attensi, a global training tech provider, launched a new insight paper, 'The Leadership Delta: How challenging the norm is helping the hospitality & retail industry to train exceptional leaders.' The paper reveals three of the most common and fundamental leadership ‘deltas,’ which they believe are the most difficult to solve using traditional training methods.

Frontline organizations in the hospitality & retail sector have had to face big challenges head on over the last three years, from global shut down to high consumer demand and financial crisis. But according to Attensi, one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is the ‘leadership delta’.

What does Attensi mean by leadership delta?

A leadership delta is a vast gap in knowledge and capability that is exposed when individual contributors are promoted into senior roles where they have responsibility for overseeing multiple areas of the business. One of the reasons this happens is because many of those leading teams within the sector are promoted because they are great at their ‘day job’ -- they are amazing baristas, superstar bar tenders or fantastic store assistants -- but now they find themselves with a new set of expectations and responsibilities. The step up is a giant skills leap. With so much responsibility at the hands of these leaders, Attensi is challenging the industry to look at how leaders are trained within the sector and asking the question: Are you challenging training tradition to develop exceptional leaders and beat the leadership delta?

With a global outlook, the whitepaper identifies three key leadership ‘deltas’ the sector should address:

• Coaching for performance
• Having difficult conversations
• Effectively communicating culture

Greg Hull SVP Commercial Operations US and Global Head of Hospitality & Leisure, said: “In this paper we explore the leadership delta in detail and discuss how organizations can challenge traditional learning methods to give leaders the opportunity to drive performance and become exceptional.

“For every frontline organization, fighting against a backdrop of challenges, understanding and addressing the ‘leadership delta’ in their organization and defining the skills gap they need to close to set leaders up for success is now critical for sustained success.

“There are key takeaways that every organization can take from the learnings of these global organizations, firstly to take the time to better understand the real-life impact and effectiveness of your training, secondly to explore how your team feel about your approach to training and its effectiveness for them as individuals and finally to rethink and reimagine your approach to traditional leadership training. Learning strategies must continuously evolve.”

To find out more, download Attensi’s whitepaper: Whitepaper | Hospitality Industry | Attensi