Sep 29, 2026 · 47 min · 11 segments
Josh Kern’s leadership journey has taken him from Capitol Hill to marketing to the CEO seat, with plenty of restaurants along the way. Now CEO of Snooze, Josh brings a marketer’s curiosity to leading…
And, you know, I think you've hit on exactly what we talk about with the failure gap, where it's easy to agree that a pineapple upside down pancake is a great idea.
And it's tough to get everyone aligned to get it done and put it on someone's plate because there's so many different people that have to be involved.
so many steps along the way you kind of have to hold that vision of you know a consumer is going to love this or they're not and they'll let us know and then we'll fix it right
yeah we're going to get there and we've got to get all these different pieces and parts of the organization aligned to make that happen to bring that vision to life and it's one thing for a It's actually more complicated, I think, than most consumers realize for a pancake.
But it's also on a bigger scale, like opening a new restaurant or changing the brand or expanding into a new geography.
These all require at a CEO level the hard work of getting people aligned to that vision and getting them comfortable but also ambitious about where you're going.
I wonder when you think about your role as CEO, which it seems like you're just fully enjoying, which is awesome.
What for you is sort of the first step when you realize that there's something big that you're going to undertake as a brand or as a company and you need to get the team aligned to that? Where do you start?
You know, there's, you know, with anything, I think it's the number of priorities.
And so, you know, when I first came in, I did an old kind of fashion, you know, just I sent out to the organization a stop, start, continue.
Because one thing that I knew from just being around snooze in particular, that there was a you know, somewhat of a culture, a phenomenon.
There was some sort of magic to the brand that was different from other restaurants.
And some of that is because, you know, we have the highest AUVs average unit volume than most of our cohorts in the restaurant category.
And so you know that there's something, you know, a little bit special to the brand.
And so I needed to get to the root cause of, okay, well, why is that? And so asking those questions was hugely important.
And then you get all of that information, but there was a very distinct reason why I was brought in and there was a change in leadership.
The private equity firm needed some new leadership and there needed to be a change at the top.
And, you know, I think you've hit on exactly what we talk about with the failure gap, where it's easy to agree that a pineapple upside down pancake is a great idea.
And it's tough to get everyone aligned to get it done and put it on someone's plate because there's so many different people that have to be involved.
so many steps along the way you kind of have to hold that vision of you know a consumer is going to love this or they're not and they'll let us know and then we'll fix it right
yeah we're going to get there and we've got to get all these different pieces and parts of the organization aligned to make that happen to bring that vision to life and it's one thing for a It's actually more complicated, I think, than most consumers realize for a pancake.
But it's also on a bigger scale, like opening a new restaurant or changing the brand or expanding into a new geography.
These all require at a CEO level the hard work of getting people aligned to that vision and getting them comfortable but also ambitious about where you're going.
I wonder when you think about your role as CEO, which it seems like you're just fully enjoying, which is awesome.
What for you is sort of the first step when you realize that there's something big that you're going to undertake as a brand or as a company and you need to get the team aligned to that? Where do you start?
You know, there's, you know, with anything, I think it's the number of priorities.
And so, you know, when I first came in, I did an old kind of fashion, you know, just I sent out to the organization a stop, start, continue.
Because one thing that I knew from just being around snooze in particular, that there was a you know, somewhat of a culture, a phenomenon.
There was some sort of magic to the brand that was different from other restaurants.
And some of that is because, you know, we have the highest AUVs average unit volume than most of our cohorts in the restaurant category.
And so you know that there's something, you know, a little bit special to the brand.
And so I needed to get to the root cause of, okay, well, why is that? And so asking those questions was hugely important.
And then you get all of that information, but there was a very distinct reason why I was brought in and there was a change in leadership.
The private equity firm needed some new leadership and there needed to be a change at the top.
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