Food Porn

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

The original iPhone was released in June 2007 and was exclusively sold in partnership with AT&T for $499. At that time and according to Deepwater Asset’s Gene Munster, “I remember talking to investors after that first weekend, and the general sense was that this product, in one investor’s words, was dead on arrival.” Apple sold 1.4mm iPhones in 2007. In the same year Nokia, the maker of the iconic Nokia 3310, sold 7.4mm mobile phones in Q4 alone.

According to CNBC tech reporter Kif Leswing, “Nokia was seen as unstoppable, unbeatable.”

By the early 2010s, the iPhone, along with other smartphones, experienced explosive growth and these phones became mainstream. By 2013, worldwide smartphone sales exceeded feature phones, and a permanent market change was established. By 2016, smartphone adoption in the US surpassed 80% of mobile users, a universal embracement of technology like nothing we’d ever seen before (including the TV).

These were just some of the factoids I learned at the front end of a lecture I attended with psychologist and author Dr. Jean Twenge where she discussed her highly acclaimed book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. Dr. Twenge shared practical, evidence-based strategies for managing technology in family life. And you can get a free copy of Dr. Twenge’s book by clicking the link and using Schatzy’s personal credit card (the number is included at the bottom of this week’s newsletter). 😊

Video might have killed the radio star, but it was the smartphone that killed (demoted) the restaurant critic!

From 2007 to 2014, we witnessed a power shift from institutional authority to distributed attention and restaurant critics stopped being the primary influencers and social media took over. During this window (with the gravity shifting decisively around 2011 to 2012), professional critics lost monopoly power and user-generated content reached critical mass. Restaurants, needing to respond to the changing landscape of influence, began optimizing for visibility as opposed to validation.

Before diving into this influencer economy and its impact on the hospitality industry, let’s take a walk down memory lane (which doesn’t require much a walk at all)

Before Instagram, TikTok, other social media platforms, and food influencers, restaurants still filled dining rooms, but they did it very differently.

So how did our guests discover restaurants before the feed and what did we lose (and gain) along the way?

Great questions!

The OG of algorithms was called TRUST and before we had likes and follows, discovery ran on word of mouth. Restaurant discovery was slower, more analog and more trust based. The most important “recommendation engine” were the folks we called our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors.

Outside of our respective “inner circles,” food critics held real power, and we followed them in local papers and magazines. Among the leading influencers at this time, Zagat Guides (the famous dining guide started by Tim & Nina Zagat in 1979), the NY Times restaurant reviews, magazines such as Time Out, Chicago Magazine and LA Weekly and the Sunday food sections in our newspapers. A review from any of these sources could make (or break) a restaurant, fill a dining room for months and cement a reputation for years.

Away from critics and the above-mentioned publications, restaurants lived or died by being on a busy corner, near offices, theaters, or transit. Discovery happened by having a compelling storefront and our “feed” was to attract people walking by, smelling the food, or peeking through the window. Other trusted curators, and this is particularly relevant in major cities, included hotel concierges, cab drivers, doormen and bartenders. Marketing was done in a physical and analogue way with menus being slipped under doors, mailbox flyers, local coupon books, and neighborhood bulletin boards.

Yes, by today’s standards, these are all primitive tools, but they were also hyper-local and were wonderfully effective.

Before social media and smartphones, restaurants were discovered through trust, proximity, and reputation. But all that changed with social media and smartphones. Today, restaurants are discovered through visibility, velocity, and validation.

To be crystal clear, social media didn’t invent discovery, but it accelerated it, democratized attention, and compressed decision-making. All that seems pretty cool, right?

Slow down, young Jedi.

Social media also reduced loyalty, increased comparison, and shifted focus from consistency to virality.

Hmmm, maybe not so cool.

The good news is that today attention is easier to get, but on the other side of this coin, it’s also harder to keep.

Discovery is now primarily driven by feeds, algorithms, engagement loops, and short-form video. Meanwhile, authority (not necessarily the same thing as expertise) comes from reach, repetition, and resonance. This wasn’t all just a media shift; it was a shift in trust.

These changes in the discovery landscape have massive implications when it comes to brand building, consistency, and capital allocation. Restaurant critics optimized for craft, context, and longevity, while influencers optimize for attention, speed, and shareability.

But here’s what many people might miss, neither what’s old nor what’s new alone will win. The best brands today understand the importance of both the analogue and the digital and build businesses that can go viral, while still stand scrutiny and can survive when the feed moves on. The winners going forward won’t choose one or the other, they will blend digital discovery with real-world trust and operational excellence.

The future of restaurant discovery is neither purely digital nor purely nostalgic. It’s human, consistent, and amplified with technology. The brands that will still matter 10 years from now aren’t the ones chasing influence, they’re out there earning trust and letting technology and influencers amplify their craft.

Yes, the influencer economy requires menus to be more visual, more extreme and more trend-driven. Many restaurants have become louder, brighter and more camera ready. We’ve seen operators shift their marketing from earning trust to chasing moments, but they’ve done this at the risk of building restaurants optimized for the first visit as opposed to the fiftieth.

Is there a tipping point? Is this an attention trap?

Yes, there most certainly is! Influencer-led discovery has the ability to create an illusion that packed opening weeks, and viral clips means you’re winning. But attention is not the same as loyalty and traffic is not a business model.

Here’s what hasn’t changed for restaurants, the fundamentals! The food quality, the service consistency, the unit economics, repeat guests and operational discipline. These fundamentals don’t trend, they compound (and they often do so quietly).

Operators, friends, I’m not remotely suggesting you be anti-influencer, but I am arguing for you to be influence-agnostic.

The great restaurant brands know that winning is about trust, consistency and reputation and combining these with the reach and discovery that comes from influencers and technology. The future belongs to restaurants that can live in both worlds, earning the trust the old-fashioned way, and then leveraging technology to amplify it.

Despite all the above, my message to operators is that influencers can help get you discovered, but that it’s quality that will get you remembered.

Restaurants and influencers may have found themselves needing one another or even having a reliance on the other in this digital world. As we all know, trends will come and go but trust never goes out of style and is always a key ingredient for longevity and success, whether you’re a restauranteur or a food influencer.

Stay interesting my friends.

It takes a village.

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It was 1995 and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” along with TLC’s “Waterfalls”, Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” and Hootie & the Blowfish’s “Hold My Hand” were the artists and songs that topped the charts.

That was also the year that California Pizza Kitchen (“CPK”) opened its first unit in New York City, with a location near Bloomingdale’s on 60th Street off 3rd Avenue.

Quick story about Bloomingdale’s, a store that was a favorite of my mother, and was also the place of childhood nightmares for me as I have distinct memories of shopping annually for new school cloths and needing to select from the offerings in the “huskie” section of the department store. The quick story is about an elderly woman from Brooklyn that decided to prepare her will and make two final requests. She made it clear that (i) she wanted to be cremated, and (ii) she wanted her ashes to be scattered over Bloomingdale’s. When asked why she wanted her ashes scattered at Bloomingdales, she answered, that way she’d be sure her daughters would visit her twice a week. 😊

In 1995, I lived on 58th street and 3rd Avenue and in a city that prides itself on its pizza offerings, CPK was different. This brand was founded in Beverly Hills in 1985, and was known for its fast-casual, California-style dishes and for pioneering the BBQ Chicken Pizza. This specific unit on East 60th street also earned my loyalty as an important in-person dining destination during my time as a young adult in that neighborhood.

CPK has been owned by its lenders since it recovered from bankruptcy in 2020 because of pandemic-driven financial issues. The company consists of over 120 restaurants across 10 countries and operates a consumer-packaged goods platform, distributing frozen foods like pizza to over 10,000 grocery stores worldwide.

This week, it was announced that Consortium Brand Partners in partnership with our friends from Aurify Brands, a leading independent restaurant operator in New York (which among other brands is a franchisee of Wingstop, Five Guys and Le Pain Quotidien), along with Eldridge Industries (stakeholders among a number of companies including DraftKings, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Fanatics) and Convive Brands, acquired CPK.

California Pizza Kitchen sells itself.

Why does this deal matter? Great question.

First, I’m hoping now that loyalty has advanced and gone digital, I’m looking for Aurify to grant me some past due credit for my patronage from the mid-1990s. 😊

Second, this CPK’s post-bankruptcy acquisition goes far beyond one brand. This is an important signal to operators, investors, and the broader restaurant & CPG ecosystem that smart capital is not abandoning restaurants, but is targeting brands with durability, nostalgia, and flexibility. CPK was early to create and embrace an omnichannel (and did so before it was what all the cool kids were trying to accomplish). CPK launched as premium casual dining, offered menu innovation and CPG extensions.

This acquisition reinforces that restaurant brands with retail adjacency have a second or even a third life. Even if restaurant growth is modest, grocery, licensing, and digital channels can materially move enterprise value.

CPK’s journey is also a cautionary tale for operators (and investors) about mall-heavy real estate, debt-fueled expansion, and delayed tech adoption. The takeaway here might be one of evolve early or expect to restructure later.

For Branded, we look at this acquisition as the value of operator-centric thinking, the importance of capital discipline and why brands that can live on-prem, off-prem and on shelves deserve a premium lens.

CPK’s acquisition out of bankruptcy isn’t a failure story, it’s a second-act story. It shows the restaurant industry isn’t broken, and legacy brands aren’t obsolete, but that capital structure, real estate and strategy must match modern realities.

Self-interest comment follows, Branded continues to be excited about our own portfolio company that plays on-prem, off-prem and on retail shelves - Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (“BDS”). These “triple-threats” don’t come around often, but when they do, we get excited and we get involved!

So, cheers to the investors and operators that have taken over an old favorite of mine (CPK) and here’s to Branded’s own efforts as we work to help support and accelerate “BDS”.

Interested in talking about Brooklyn Dumpling Shop or our deal flow? Click here.

Don’t just scroll—click! Congratulate everyone on making the B List and send some LinkedIn love their way.