The Fast Casual Nation Podcast offers exclusive interviews with experts ranging from top chefs and brand makers to executives and restaurants who work in one of the fastest-growing segments of the restaurant industry. In this episode, Pepe chats with Graham Humphreys, Chief Executive Officer, and Haley Kabus, Associate Director of Strategy at The Culinary Edge, about creating new fast casual concepts, launching virtual brands and how cryptocurrency can impact a restaurant’s bottom line.

Humphreys brings an extensive design experience background to The Culinary Edge. He talks about creating branding that not only engages the user's sense of sight, touch and sound, but smell and taste as well. He talks about the diverse team at the company that he collaborates with everyday from design experts, anthropologists, researchers and MICHELIN Star Chefs. He says, “We're an innovation agency for the food and food service industries.” He adds, “If you haven't heard our name, you've probably tasted our food.”

Kabus talks about her history working with big brands in the advertising and marketing space and how her real love and passion for working in the food and beverage industry led her to The Culinary Edge. She talks about driving food to the forefront of culture. She shares that this is definitely an area that has been propelled by COVID because it brought people back into the kitchens or into the kitchen for the first time, igniting a new passion for cooking. She says, “For the vast majority of us, our relationship with food has never been more personal or more fun and engaging.”

When Pepe asks Humphreys about the advantages and disadvantages of trying new concepts versus tried and true mainstream brands, Humphrey shares that the company actually spends a lot of time on both. He talks about how virtual brands and ghost kitchens have given brands more direct access to the market than ever before and can therefore scale more quickly. He provides an example with MRBEAST BURGER,  a virtual brand that was able to open out of the back line of an existing restaurant and it managed to scale to over 1000 locations within 18 months. He says, “That kind of growth, scale and reach, it might have been possible before, but it certainly didn't happen very much. But it's all being facilitated now by big changes in what makes a restaurant a restaurant.”

Pepe asks Kabus about what she has seen with regard to cryptocurrency and the restaurant industry. Kabus shares that crypto is becoming another way that people are looking at what it means to be a restaurant, and what payment looks like today. She shares that according to Yahoo Finance almost 50% of people aged between 24-40, already own cryptocurrency. Major mainstream companies like Yum Brands, Taco Bell and KFC are starting to accept these payments. She says, “But for the most part what we love about embracing crypto is really the signal it sends to your customers about your brand being modern and adaptable and built for the future.”

To hear more from Humphreys and Kabus about cryptocurrency, how TikTok is shaping user experience, and what’s next for The Culinary Edge, listen to this episode of Fast Casual Nation on Apple Podcasts.