Jul 16, 2026 · 34 min · 15 segments
She showed up in Vegas with $800, slept on a mattress off the back of a truck, and turned a theater degree into one of the sharpest marketing tech voices in restaurants. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech…
Erin LevzowGuestJustinHostwell.
So tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're obviously in restaurants now.
What have you brought from that background in gaming into the restaurant industry, if anything? And what perspective did you gain over there that you feel like might be a little secret weapon for you or just gives you a little bit of an edge? Things that people might not normally see that have been in restaurants their entire career?
Well, I think back then, right, this is years ago, we were already focused solely on data, right? And everything was that marketing technology pull of like focusing just on the data of the average Theo of a guest, the average daily rate, the occupancy.
So everything was analytics, right? We wanted to know, like a host would know, They used to have the little black books to keep their VIP clients.
And so when you walked up to the front desk, they were able to know everything about you when you came there, whether you wanted to pay cash because, well, that's not your wife, or if whatever else might be happening.
We, as the restaurant industry, just got there not long ago, right? And there's questionable if we are already really there yet.
So we were doing personalization back then with email and SMS and all these things.
this says about the restaurant industry? Because I totally concur with you.
I feel like travel, hospitality, like those industries are the bleeding edge of personalization, MarTech, data, data warehousing, all of that stuff.
And then you've got retail kind of following, fast following that.
And then you've got restaurants definitely like the laggard.
Why do you think it is that this industry is so slow at adopting technology?
don't think they've had to.
And I think for a long time there was this idea of like, well, of course hotels have better technology.
well.
So tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're obviously in restaurants now.
What have you brought from that background in gaming into the restaurant industry, if anything? And what perspective did you gain over there that you feel like might be a little secret weapon for you or just gives you a little bit of an edge? Things that people might not normally see that have been in restaurants their entire career?
Well, I think back then, right, this is years ago, we were already focused solely on data, right? And everything was that marketing technology pull of like focusing just on the data of the average Theo of a guest, the average daily rate, the occupancy.
So everything was analytics, right? We wanted to know, like a host would know, They used to have the little black books to keep their VIP clients.
And so when you walked up to the front desk, they were able to know everything about you when you came there, whether you wanted to pay cash because, well, that's not your wife, or if whatever else might be happening.
We, as the restaurant industry, just got there not long ago, right? And there's questionable if we are already really there yet.
So we were doing personalization back then with email and SMS and all these things.
this says about the restaurant industry? Because I totally concur with you.
I feel like travel, hospitality, like those industries are the bleeding edge of personalization, MarTech, data, data warehousing, all of that stuff.
And then you've got retail kind of following, fast following that.
And then you've got restaurants definitely like the laggard.
Why do you think it is that this industry is so slow at adopting technology?
don't think they've had to.
And I think for a long time there was this idea of like, well, of course hotels have better technology.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
