Every restaurant owner eventually asks the same question: do I hire this out, or do I bring it in-house? Marketing, training, finance, whatever the function, the instinct is usually the same. Find an agency or a consultant, hand them the keys, and wait for the magic. On this episode of the Ride or Die Restaurant Show, Greg Provance and Spiro Douvris make the case that the hand-off itself is the problem, and that the real question isn't agency versus in-house. It's whether you've defined what success actually looks like before you ever sign a contract.

Spiro draws the first hard line: an agency does the work for you, a consultant hands you the blueprint and you execute it. Confusing the two is where most outsourcing relationships go wrong before they even start. Greg goes further with the real root cause behind almost every failed agency relationship he's seen: a misalignment of expectations. Owners expect people to walk through the door holding the ad, while the agency is optimizing engagement metrics nobody agreed to define together. Nobody ever agreed on what success meant, so there's nothing to hold anyone accountable to. The same failure mode shows up with fractional CFOs and CMOs, a model built for owners who need senior-level expertise without a $150,000-$250,000 full-time salary, but it only works if both sides agree upfront on outcomes and timelines.

Greg shares a client story that captures the whole problem: a business owner on her third marketing agency, frustrated all over again, until Greg asked one question. "Who's creating your content? Who's telling your story?" Her answer: "That's what I hired them for." That's the moment the real issue surfaces. An outside agency can promote a story. They can't tell it, because they don't live inside the brand the way the owner does.

In this episode:

• Why "agency vs. consultant" isn't just semantics, and how confusing the two sets an outsourcing relationship up to fail
• The real root cause behind almost every failed marketing agency relationship: unnamed misalignment of expectations
• What a fractional CFO or CMO actually is, and when that model beats a full-time hire or a project consultant
• Why views and likes don't translate to transactions, and the leading indicators that actually matter
• How to vet any outside service with the right questions before signing anything
• Why treating an outsourced relationship as a partnership, not a hand-off, predicts whether it succeeds

Is the smartest move to build every function in-house, or bring in outside expertise? Greg and Spiro land on neither, arguing the real answer is agreeing on what success looks like before you pick a side. Agree? Disagree? Greg and Spiro want to hear it in the comments.

🎧 Catch every episode of Ride or Die at https://gphospitalitypartners.com/podcast, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon Music so you never miss one.

📈 Trying to figure out whether to bring in outside help or build it on your own team? That's exactly what we work through inside the Leadership Circle: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/leadership-circle

📖 Grab Greg's books: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/books

#RestaurantIndustry #RideOrDiePodcast #RestaurantMarketing #FractionalCFO #RestaurantLeadership #SmallBusiness #Hospitality

Most restaurants think onboarding ends the moment the paperwork is signed and the apron is handed over. Greg Provance and Spiro Douvris argue that’s exactly where it should start. On this episode of the Ride or Die Restaurant Show, Greg makes the case for retiring the word "orientation" altogether in favor of "integration," and lays out the exact three-phase framework he uses to turn a brand-new hire into a true believer in 90 days or less.

Greg draws a hard line between training and onboarding: training is about skills, onboarding is about culture, and most restaurants only ever do the first one on purpose. His framework breaks the first 90 days into three phases: turning a stranger into a teammate (days 1-30, learning names, superpowers, and how the team operates), turning a teammate into a contributor (days 30-60, mastering their station and demonstrating core values in a way that’s felt), and turning a contributor into a believer (days 60-90, someone who’s bought into the mission, not just punching a clock). Greg’s rule of thumb: by day 90, you should know whether someone is going to be the right fit, full stop.

Greg shares the "superpower lunch" from his own client work: within the first week, a GM or owner sits down one-on-one with a new hire to find out their unique strength, then shares it with the whole team. Spiro matches it with his own story of a quiet cashier who found his voice once he felt safe enough to be himself on the line, and years later drew a crowd of former coworkers on his last shift before joining the Coast Guard. The lesson: culture isn’t built by the employee handbook. It’s built by who gets picked to train the new hire, and whether anyone bothers to find out what that person is great at.

In this episode:

• Why "orientation" is the wrong word, and what changes when you call it "integration" instead
• The three-phase 90-day framework: stranger to teammate, teammate to contributor, contributor to believer
• Why picking the best employee as your trainer is often the wrong call, and what to look for instead
• How the "superpower lunch" gets new hires to feel seen and heard in their first week
• Why tying the "why" behind every task and every menu item to your culture changes how guests experience the food
• How to shift an existing team’s culture without just replacing everyone at once
• Why core values have to be genuinely non-negotiable, not just a poster on the break room wall

Is onboarding a paperwork event or a 90-day culture-building process? Greg and Spiro land firmly on the latter. Agree? Disagree? Greg and Spiro want to hear it in the comments.

🎧 Catch every episode of Ride or Die at https://gphospitalitypartners.com/podcast, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon Music so you never miss one.

📈 Struggling to turn new hires into long-term believers instead of quick exits? Learn about Greg’s Leadership Circle: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/leadership-circle

📖 Grab Greg’s books: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/books

#RestaurantIndustry #RideOrDiePodcast #Onboarding

#RestaurantCulture #TeamBuilding #RestaurantLeadership #Hospitality

Eighty percent of first-time franchisees are buying their very first business, and 91% come in with zero restaurant management experience. So why do franchisors keep signing five-unit development deals with people who've never run a single shift? On this episode of the Ride or Die Restaurant Show, Greg Provance and Spiro Douvris make the case that the franchise model isn't broken because of who's buying in, it's broken because of what franchisors are measuring.

Spiro lays out the data: 70% of first-time franchisees have no prior industry experience at all, 21% come from hourly staff roles like server or line cook, and only 9% have actual restaurant management experience under their belt, decades of consistent data pointing the same direction. Meanwhile, the industry's success metric has drifted from "is this location profitable and well-run" to "how many units are under development." Greg connects it to real brand history: Quiznos chased explosive unit growth and collapsed, while Jersey Mike's, per a friend deeply involved in that system, built its growth on rigorous franchisee vetting rather than taking anyone's check. The stats say the typical franchisee hasn't changed much in decades. What's changed is what franchisors decided to reward.

Greg shares the story of a friend, deeply embedded in the Jersey Mike's system for decades, who was blunt about the lesson: "Don't just take anybody's money." It's tempting to sign the big check for a five-location territory deal, but the operator writing that check still has to run the stores, and an under-supported first-time owner with a five-unit deal is a five-unit problem waiting to happen. The difference isn't the size of the check. It's whether the franchisor invests as much in developing the franchisee as they did in closing the deal.

In this episode:
- Why 80% of first-time franchisees are buying their first business ever, and what that means for franchisor support
- The real stats behind franchisee experience levels, and why "first time in business" is a bigger risk factor than "first time in restaurants"
- What Quiznos' collapse and Jersey Mike's growth reveal about unit-growth-first vs. franchisee-first models
- Why multi-unit development deals put inexperienced operators on timelines seasoned operators would struggle to hit
- How franchisors and franchisees both fall into "victim mentality" instead of fixing the real communication gap
- What a healthy franchisor-franchisee relationship actually requires: alignment on what success looks like, not just a signed agreement
- Why investing in franchisee development (not just the initial training window) is the real growth lever

Is the franchise model itself broken, or is it the incentive structure built on top of it? Greg and Spiro land on the latter, but the debate is worth having for yourself. Agree? Disagree? Greg and Spiro want to hear it in the comments.

🎧 Catch every episode of Ride or Die at https://gphospitalitypartners.com/podcast

or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon Music so you never miss one.

📈 Struggling to build a team (or a franchisee network) that actually executes your standards without you standing over their shoulder? Learn about Greg's Leadership Circle: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/leadership-circle

📖 Grab Greg's books: https://gphospitalitypartners.com/books

#RestaurantIndustry #RideOrDiePodcast #FranchiseModel #FranchiseDevelopment #RestaurantLeadership #SmallBusiness #Hospitality