Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast with Zack Oates
Jun 22, 2026 · 21 min · 12 segments
Send us Fan Mail Lance Salsman, SVP of Operations at Mike’s Red Tacos, joins Zack Oates to talk about scaling an experiential restaurant brand while…
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Lance SalsmanGuest
Zack OatesHost
And for those who don't know Mike's Red Taco, first of all, I had the privilege to go to see a few weeks ago for the first time.
It is unreal, and I find people talking about it at trade shows because y'all are so experiential, which people are looking for right now.
You have a menu that you can, like, write on the palm of your hand with a Sharpie marker.
So to know Mike's Red Tacos is to know Mike Tuma, our founder, and he started this as a food truck, and it was kind of the experiment.
Let's play out the menu and everything, and then let's grow it into something else.
And he did that, but he's a perfectionist, too, in that when it comes to guest feedback, he's the champion of guest feedback.
He uses what he learns from his guests to tweak and adjust, and that's the menus you see today.
There used to be a lot of different offerings, but he focused on a small percentage of the menu that the guests interacted and felt, you know, the most connection with, and he perfected them throughout the years.
Within a year, he opened his first brick-and-mortar location, which did gangbusters, and it was 900 square feet, which is-
And for those who don't know Mike's Red Taco, first of all, I had the privilege to go to see a few weeks ago for the first time.
It is unreal, and I find people talking about it at trade shows because y'all are so experiential, which people are looking for right now.
You have a menu that you can, like, write on the palm of your hand with a Sharpie marker.
So to know Mike's Red Tacos is to know Mike Tuma, our founder, and he started this as a food truck, and it was kind of the experiment.
Let's play out the menu and everything, and then let's grow it into something else.
And he did that, but he's a perfectionist, too, in that when it comes to guest feedback, he's the champion of guest feedback.
He uses what he learns from his guests to tweak and adjust, and that's the menus you see today.
There used to be a lot of different offerings, but he focused on a small percentage of the menu that the guests interacted and felt, you know, the most connection with, and he perfected them throughout the years.
Within a year, he opened his first brick-and-mortar location, which did gangbusters, and it was 900 square feet, which is-
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