Prosper Accelerate
October 28-30, 2026
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
7:00 AM - 6:00 PM
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Your Accelerate experience starts with the people you meet.
Designed exclusively for first-time attendees, this welcome reception is an opportunity to get connected before the full event begins. Meet fellow first-timers, connect with members of the Accelerate community, and get a feel for what to expect over the days ahead.
Whether you arrive knowing several people or no one at all, this is your chance to make those first introductions, ask questions, and start building relationships that can continue long after Accelerate ends.
Come as a first-timer. Leave already part of the community.
3:00 PM - 5:30 PM
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Susan Adzick, President, McLane Company, Inc.
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Hattie Hill, Board Member, Prosper Company
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
3:15 PM - 3:45 PM
Join us for a powerful keynote session where we unveil key takeaways from the Accelerate Assessment—a proprietary tool designed to illuminate leadership strengths and growth areas. Whether you’ve taken the assessment or not, this session will guide you through the value of the data, share trends and stories from your peers, and offer clear next steps for leveraging your results to fuel personal and professional growth. Don’t miss this opportunity to deepen your self-awareness and leadership impact.
Moderated by:
Hattie Hill, CEO, Hattie Hill Enterprises & Prosper Company Board Member
Panelists:
Jennifer King Ph.D., President, U.S. Operations, Schiller International University
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM
What happens when competitors recognize that some of the industry’s biggest challenges are better solved together? This conversation brings together perspectives from across contract foodservice to explore how leaders can compete fiercely in the marketplace while still investing in a stronger talent pipeline, sharing ideas and learning alongside one another. Against the backdrop of rising operating costs, workforce pressures, supply chain volatility and evolving guest expectations, the discussion will examine how collaboration can strengthen both individual organizations and the industry as a whole.
At the center is a bigger leadership question: Can community itself become a competitive advantage? Through leadership development, cross-industry relationships and intentional investment in emerging talent, this session explores how building the next generation of leaders together can create stronger organizations, a deeper leadership bench and a more resilient industry.
Moderated by:
TBA
Panelists:
Laurel R. Elliott, Director of Culinary Consulting, Entegra Procurement Services (a Sodexo company)
Angie Young, Director of Experience, Flik Hospitality Group
Presented By: Sodexo AALF, Sodexo EBRG
4:15 PM - 4:45 PM
Restaurant companies are investing faster than their organizations can absorb. In this live Prosper Pressure Test, three industry executives confront a series of real-world technology decisions—where to place the next bet, how to rescue a critical initiative that isn’t delivering, and what to stop funding altogether. Point B will challenge the choices and close with a practical framework every attendee can use to pressure-test their own technology agenda the very next week.
Presented By: Point B
4:45 PM - 5:30 PM
This isn’t just a keynote. It’s a live demonstration of what high performance really looks like in hospitality.
In an industry where every moment matters, how do great teams perform under pressure, adapt in real time, and consistently deliver exceptional guest experiences?
You’ll see it unfold live.
Two elite athletes will take on a Ninja Warrior style course on stage, where every leap, miss, and recovery becomes a powerful metaphor for what happens behind the scenes in hospitality. Because just like on the course, success isn’t about perfection. It’s about how quickly you adjust, support each other, and keep moving forward.
Drawing from his experience as an entrepreneur, CEO, and leadership researcher, and insights from his newly released book Redefining High Performance, based on a national research study, Ty Bennett connects these lessons directly to the realities of hospitality. Staffing challenges, high expectations, constant change, and the need to deliver excellence shift after shift.
This session challenges the outdated push harder approach to performance and replaces it with a smarter, more sustainable model. One built on alignment, energy, and purpose.
You’ll leave with practical strategies to elevate how you train your people, lead your teams, and create a culture where high performance is not just expected, but repeatable.
This is a high energy, immersive experience designed to help you build teams that don’t just keep up, but stand out.
Key Takeaways
Presenter:
Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented By: Keurig Dr. Pepper
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented By: Keurig Dr. Pepper
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Presented By: McLane Company, Inc.
Participating Sponsors: Beaver Street Fisheries, CIA, Datassential, Keurig Dr. Pepper, Kraft Heinz, Wow Bao, Jones Dairy Farm
Thursday, October 29, 2026
6:30 AM - 6:00 PM
6:30 AM - 8:15 AM
Presented By: First Watch
8:00 AM - 10:30 AM
8:00 AM - 8:05 AM
Presenter:
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
8:05 AM - 8:45 AM
Restaurant leaders are facing a structural reset: rising labor and food costs, changing consumer expectations, technology disruption, margin pressure and a supply chain that must become faster, smarter and more resilient. This CEO conversation explores where leaders are finding the next points of leverage—from menu and purchasing to labor, technology, capital and strategic partnerships—and what they are willing to change to protect profitability without sacrificing the guest experience or long-term growth.
Presented By: McLane Company, Inc.
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Every organization believes it handles disruption well. The reality is more complicated.
When crisis hits, markets shift, or unexpected disruption reshapes the landscape, leaders often default to familiar behaviors. Some steady the ship. Others unintentionally amplify confusion. The challenge is that few senior leaders receive honest feedback in the middle of the storm. No one tells them what they are missing. No one challenges how they are showing up.
This think tank creates space for candid reflection on how leaders truly respond under pressure. It explores why communication breaks down during disruption, how the inability to articulate direction in uncertain moments erodes trust, and how senior teams can develop a common language to navigate volatility with clarity.
Speaker: James Pogue, Ph.D., President/CEO, JP Enterprises
Track 2 Finance
Data informs decisions. Judgment determines outcomes.
This session helps finance leaders move beyond reporting into enterprise leadership. Participants explore how context, framing, and timing shape how insights are received and acted upon.
Finance is reframed as a strategic partner, not a scorekeeper.
Speaker: James McGehee, CFO, Dave’s Hot Chicken
Presented by: Dave’s Hot Chicken
Track 3 Operations / HR
People believe what they experience.
This session helps HR leaders examine how policies, decisions, and enforcement shape culture more than stated values. Participants explore how consistency builds trust and credibility across the organization.
Culture is reframed as behavior, not messaging.
Speaker: Lois Alexis-Collins, Chief People Officer, Field Operations, Chipotle Mexican Grill
Presented By: Chipotle Mexican Grill
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Resilient supply chains don’t emerge during disruption. They are designed long before it arrives.
This session explores how leaders proactively build flexibility, transparency, and trust into supply systems so they can absorb shock without breaking. Participants examine how planning, communication, and relationship management reduce risk and improve response when conditions change.
The focus is on leadership choices that strengthen resilience quietly and consistently over time.
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Technology doesn’t replace leadership — it reveals it. As systems automate more decisions, the human virtues of judgment, integrity, empathy, and accountability matter more than ever.
As our systems get smarter, our responsibility as leaders gets heavier and oftentimes comes with increased accelerated change and uncertainty. Technology can tell us what happened — but leadership still decides what matters. The future isn’t human or automated. It’s human-led, technology-enabled.
Speaker: Carl Orsbourn, SVP GTM Enterprise, Invisible Technologies
Presented by: Invisible Technologies
Track 6 Marketing
In today’s market, brands compete less on awareness and more on perceived value. This think tank explores how marketing leaders use creativity, customer insight, and performance data to design value intentionally — shaping how customers interpret price, experience, and differentiation.
The conversation centers on how innovation and storytelling work together to increase perceived value without relying solely on discounting or promotion. Participants will examine how leading brands identify what customers truly care about, translate data into clear positioning, and activate campaigns that strengthen trust while driving measurable growth.
Key themes include:
9:45 AM - 10:15 AM
Presented by: Healthy Menu’s R&D Collaborative
10:15 AM - 11:00 PM
Track 1 Leadership Development
High performance isn’t just about what your team does. It’s about how they think while they do it.
In this interactive think tank, we’ll explore the three core mindsets from Redefining High Performance, based on a national research study: Confident Curiosity, Relaxed Intensity, and Empathic Drive. These aren’t just ideas. They are the mental disciplines that allow leaders and teams to stay adaptable, focused, and connected under pressure.
Through guided discussion, you’ll reflect on where these mindsets show up in your leadership and where they may be missing. Together, we’ll unpack how to balance results and relationships, urgency and composure, confidence and humility, the tensions that define leadership in hospitality.
You’ll leave with practical insights and simple shifts you can apply immediately to elevate how you lead, develop people, and create a culture where high performance is sustainable, not exhausting.
Speaker: Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented by: Keurig Dr. Pepper
Track 2 Finance
Risk misunderstood is risk ignored.
This session helps leaders communicate financial risk in ways that drive informed decisions rather than fear or avoidance. Participants explore how clarity and narrative improve risk awareness.
The focus is on enabling action, not caution alone.
Speaker: Shideh Ovaysikia, Managing Director, CohnReznick
Presented by: CohnReznick
Track 3 Operations / HR
Human communication is far more than words. In fact, much of what people interpret in conversations comes from facial expressions, posture, tone, eye contact, and subtleshifts in energy. Yet decades of research show that people are surprisingly poor atinterpreting these signals accurately. We routinely overread body language,misinterpret emotional cues, and assume meaning where none exists.The session begins with an exploration of the neuroscience and psychology behindnonverbal perception. Participants will then engage in a collaborative think-tank format,analyzing real-world scenarios and practicing a simple Signal Check framework thatimproves accuracy, reduces assumption-driven conflict, and strengthens interpersonalunderstanding.
Speaker: Dr. Melissa Hughes, Keynote Speaker, Author & Human Potential Alchemist
Presented by: Founding Farmers Restaurant Group
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Supply chain leadership often means choosing between imperfect options.
This session helps leaders navigate moments when cost, speed, quality, and availability cannot all be optimized at once. Participants explore how to prioritize trade-offs, communicate decisions clearly, and maintain trust with internal teams and external partners under pressure.
The emphasis is on clarity and credibility when ideal outcomes aren’t possible.
Speaker: Jeff Burrus, Vice President of Supply Chain, El Pollo Loco, Inc.
Presented by: El Pollo Loco, Inc.
Track 5 Tech/Innovation
Technology succeeds or fails based on how people experience it.
This session helps leaders consider the human impact of technology decisions, including training, communication, and trust. Participants explore how adoption improves when people feel included and supported rather than replaced.
The emphasis is on empathy as an accelerant to innovation.
Speaker: Adam Dumey, Global Vice President Retail, World Wide Technology
Presented by: World Wide Technology
Track 6 Sales
Sales has changed. Service hasn’t. What happens when a high performing individual contributor is suddenly called to lead people? In this session, Amy Mrozinski explores the shift from personal performance to people development—and what she learned when she realized the best sales principles were actually leadership principles all along. If there are truly only two roles inside any enterprise—building the business or building the organization—then the leader’s job is clear: acquire, develop, and retain the very best talent. Just like sales.
Speaker: Amy Mrozinski, Senior Director of Sales-West, Grande Cheese Company
Presented by: Grande Cheese Company
11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Presenter:
Scott Klososky, Founder & CEO, Industry Defenders
Presented by:
Toast, Inc.
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM
Greg Creed, Global Marketer, Author, and Retired CEO
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Susan Adzick, President, McLane Foodservice, Inc.
Hattie Hill, CEO, Hattie Hill Enterprises and Prosper Company Board Member
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
Luke Kircher, Co-Founder & President, Prosper Company
Alayna Sullivan, Senior Director, Corporate Communications + Brand Marketing, Olo Inc
Presented By: Olo
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Presented by: DataDelivers, LLC
1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
1:45 PM - 2:30 PM
What does it take to lead one of the world’s most influential restaurant companies through a period of extraordinary change—and emerge stronger on the other side?
In a candid conversation between two leaders helping shape Yum!’s future, Sean Tresvant sits down with CEO Chris Turner to explore the choices, convictions and leadership principles behind the company’s next chapter. From growth and consumer relevance to technology, franchisee success, culture and the changing economics of the restaurant business, this is a rare look inside how Yum! is thinking about what matters now, what comes next, and what it will take to win.
Moderator:
Sean Tresvant, Global Chief Executive Officer, Taco Bell, Chief Consumer Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Panelist:
Chris Turner, Chief Executive Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Presented by: YUM! Brands, Inc.
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
What happens when the doors close and one of the world’s largest restaurant companies has to make the decisions that will shape its future?
For a rare Accelerate experience, Prosper brings Yum!’s senior leadership together on one stage for a candid conversation unlike a traditional executive panel. James Fripp takes the audience inside the leadership room with Chris Turner, Ranjith Roy, Erika Burkhardt, Scott Mezvinsky, Catherine Tan-Gillespie, Sean Tresvant, Shannon Hennessy, Jim Dausch and Ken Muench.
This isn’t nine executives giving nine presentations. It’s a conversation about how a leadership team actually leads: where they agree, where they challenge one another, how enterprise strategy becomes brand-level action, how competing priorities get resolved, and how leaders build the trust required to make consequential decisions at extraordinary scale.
From people, culture and consumers to technology, capital, growth and operations, Accelerate attendees will get an unusually candid look at the people behind Yum!—and how they work together to build what comes next.
Presented by: YUM! Brands, Inc.
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
At Accelerate, leadership is about more than advancing our own careers. It’s about using our influence to create opportunities and make an impact beyond ourselves.
In this special Charity Spotlight, No Kid Hungry will share how its work is helping ensure children across the country have access to the food they need to grow, learn, and thrive. Together, we’ll recognize the power of the restaurant and foodservice community to rally around a shared mission and help build a future where every child has the opportunity to succeed.
Presented by: No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strengh
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Presented by: Mi-Benefits
3:45 PM - 4:30 PM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Consumers want to eat better, but they aren’t willing to sacrifice flavor, experience, or value to do it. That creates a challenge for restaurant leaders: how do you make nutrition an opportunity for menu innovation rather than a compromise?
Led by the Culinary Institute of America, this Think Tank will explore the intersection of nutrition, culinary innovation, and changing consumer expectations. Participants will examine how ingredients, preparation, portioning, flavor, and menu design can evolve to create options that are both better for you and genuinely craveable.
Together, the group will challenge traditional assumptions about what “healthy” looks like on a restaurant menu, identify where consumer expectations are headed, and explore practical opportunities to bring the next generation of nutritious menu innovation to life.
The goal isn’t simply to put healthier items on the menu. It’s to create food guests actually want to order.
Presented by: Healthy Menu’s R&D Collaborative
Track 2 Marketing
Confidence follows understanding.
This session explores how finance leaders bring clarity to complex decisions through storytelling, prioritization, and relevance. Participants examine how clarity accelerates alignment across functions.
Clarity is framed as a leadership responsibility.
Presented by: Datassential
Track 3 Operations / HR
Trust isn’t built through a mission statement or a leadership retreat. It’s built in the everyday moments that tell people whether they are heard, valued, and safe enough to speak honestly.
In this Think Tank, leaders will explore what it takes to create cultures of trust across teams, especially as organizations grow and leaders become further removed from the front line. The conversation will examine how listening, consistency, accountability, and psychological safety shape the employee experience and ultimately influence performance.
Through candid discussion and shared experiences, participants will explore how trust moves through an organization, where it can break down, and what leaders can do differently to strengthen it.
Presented by: First Watch
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Strong relationships outperform perfect forecasts.
This session explores how trust with suppliers, distributors, and internal stakeholders accelerates problem-solving, improves flexibility, and reduces friction during disruption. Participants examine how consistency, transparency, and follow-through strengthen collaboration across the supply network.
Trust is reframed as a strategic asset, not a soft benefit.
Presented by: Mclane Foodservice Inc.
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Ideas only matter when they’re adopted.
This session explores how leaders move innovation out of pilot mode and into everyday workflows. Participants examine adoption barriers, change fatigue, and communication strategies that help teams embrace new tools without resistance.
The focus is on execution, not experimentation.
Speaker: Scott Klososky, Scott Klososky, Founder & CEO, Industry Defenders
Presented by: Network Distribution
Track 6 Sales
The best salespeople don’t just know how to sell. They know how to build relationships people want to stay in.
Being a great partner requires more than understanding your product or delivering the perfect pitch. It means knowing when to listen, when to challenge, how to read the room, how to understand what your partner actually needs, and how to create value even when there isn’t an immediate sale on the table.
In this Think Tank, Accelerators will explore the nuances that separate transactional relationships from trusted partnerships. The conversation will examine how credibility is earned, how expectations are managed, how great partners navigate difficult conversations, and the small behaviors that can strengthen or undermine a relationship over time.
Participants will challenge themselves to think beyond “How do I win the business?” and ask a more important question: “How do I become someone people want to do business with again?”
Presented by: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
4:30 PM - 5:15 PM
4:30 PM - 5:15 PM
The focus on creating connected workplace cultures has been building momentum over the past few years, and now is the time to create a fusion between why it is important and how to do it, and that is at the heart of this energizing and soulful presentation from Liz Bohannon. Participants learn from Liz’s experiences as a leader of a global brand and what it takes to create meaningful connection across your organization that is grounded in a sense of purpose and driven by impact. Growing your company as a connected community is the only way to inspire the kind of collaboration and innovation that will keep you rising to the next level even in the face of change and uncertainty.
Presenter:
Liz Bohannon, Forbes Top 20 Keynote Speaker / Bestselling Author / Podcaster
Presented By: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
5:15 PM - 6:15 PM
Liz Bohannon, Forbes Top 20 Keynote Speaker / Bestselling Author / Podcaster
Presented by: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
5:15 PM - 6:15 PM
Presented by: Mars Snacking
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Presented by: Point B & Venatrust
Friday, October 30, 2026
6:45 AM - 12:30 PM
6:45 AM - 8:00 AM
Presented by: C.H. Guenther & Son
8:00 AM - 8:20 AM
8:00 AM - 8:20 AM
As we begin today’s General Session, we’ll take time to reflect on the insights, breakthroughs, and connections that have defined the first two days of the Accelerate Conference and yesterday’s Think Tank Breakouts. This is a moment to come together as a community—sharing what inspired you, what challenged you, and what you’ll take back to strengthen your teams and organizations. Together, we’ll turn key takeaways into lasting transformation.
Presenters:
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Luke Kircher, Co-Founder & President, Prosper Company
8:30 AM - 9:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
High-impact leadership comes with invisible pressure.
In this deeply human and honest conversation, Atul Sood shares his experience navigating intense executive pressure while managing bipolar disorder, including lessons learned during periods of hypergrowth and burnout. This session moves beyond theory and into lived experience, exploring how leaders maintain clarity, stability, and effectiveness while carrying significant responsibility.
Participants will explore:
Speaker: Atul Sood, CEO, Sood Advisories
Presented by: Sood Advisories
Track 2 Finance
When a brand isn’t performing to plan, knowing the numbers is only the beginning. The real challenge is deciding what to do about them.
In this interactive Think Tank, Accelerators will step into the CFO seat and confront the kinds of decisions that can change the trajectory of a business. Faced with a brand that needs to course correct, participants will evaluate the numbers, identify where the real problems lie, and determine which moves they would make next.
Where do you invest and where do you pull back? What do you protect? What needs to change now, and what requires patience? How do you balance short-term financial performance against the investments needed to build a healthier brand for the future?
Working through competing priorities and imperfect information, participants will experience what executive-level decision-making looks like when there isn’t one obvious answer.
The challenge isn’t simply understanding what the numbers are telling you. It’s having the judgment to decide what happens next.
Presented by: CEC Entertainment
Track 3 Operations / HR
Growth feels different in a mid-size organization. Resources are tighter, systems are still evolving, and leadership remains closely connected to day-to-day execution. This session explores the practical realities of scaling culture while expanding locations, teams, and operational complexity. From Steve Sturm’s perspective, the conversation moves beyond theory to disciplined leadership: how organizations maintain clarity of standards, build leadership depth quickly, and reinforce values in environments where infrastructure is still being constructed.
Participants will engage in candid dialogue around hiring for alignment without slowing momentum, embedding accountability into performance expectations, sustaining communication across growing leadership layers, and protecting culture when pressure rises. The discussion reframes culture as a practical operating discipline. When culture is visible in decisions, reinforced through systems, and modeled consistently, mid-size organizations can grow with strength, consistency, and long-term performance.
Speaker: Steve Sturm, COO, Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Presented by: Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Supply chains are no longer preparing for disruption. They are operating inside it.
This think tank convenes supply chain leaders to explore how resilience is being designed into sourcing, logistics, and partnerships in real time. Participants will share how they’re balancing efficiency, flexibility, and trust across increasingly complex networks.
The conversation centers on what leaders are doing differently today to stay responsive without destabilizing operations.
Presented by: ezCater, Inc.
Track 5 Sales
The profile of a sales executive has changed.
Today’s leaders are expected to drive revenue, build culture, mentor talent, and operate with integrity under constant pressure. Success is no longer just about closing deals. It is about building durable relationships, developing high-performance teams, and creating long-term trust in the market.
In this candid think tank, Ali Templin draws from her journey from early cold-calling roles to building mentorship programs at scale. She shares lessons on resilience, embracing failure, and doing the hard work when no one is watching. The conversation explores what it takes to lead modern revenue organizations, where credibility, character, and consistency matter as much as quota attainment.
Speaker: Ali Templin, VP of Enterprise Sales, Palona AI
Presented by: Palona AI
Track 6 Marketing
Technology doesn’t replace leadership — it reveals it. As systems automate more decisions, the human virtues of judgment, integrity, empathy, and accountability matter more than ever.
As our systems get smarter, our responsibility as leaders gets heavier and oftentimes comes with increased accelerated change and uncertainty. Technology can tell us what happened — but leadership still decides what matters. The future isn’t human or automated. It’s human-led, technology-enabled.
Speaker: Jen Kern, CMO, Qu
Presented by: Qu
9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Trust grows through repetition.
This session explores how small, consistent leadership behaviors build credibility over time. Participants examine how reliability, follow-through, and integrity compound influence.
Leadership is framed as a long game.
Presented by: Keurig Dr. Pepper
Track 2 Finance
Influence follows value.
This session helps finance leaders align insight with business reality, strengthening their voice in enterprise decisions. Participants explore how credibility, partnership, and communication elevate influence.
Leadership is framed as contribution, not proximity.
Presented by: TipHaus Inc.
Track 3 Operations / HR
The guest experience begins long before the first bite. Sound, scent, lighting, temperature, energy, and atmosphere are constantly sending signals that shape how guests perceive a restaurant, often without them realizing it.
In this interactive Think Tank, Brad Newberger, President & Co-Founder of Ambiance IQ, takes leaders inside the science of sensory experience to explore how the brain processes an environment and how those signals influence emotion, behavior, memory, and connection. Participants will experience these principles firsthand through sensory exercises involving sound, scent, temperature, and limited visual cues, then turn the lens on their own brands.
The session challenges leaders to ask a different question: What does your restaurant actually feel like to your guest? Participants will identify where their experience is reinforcing the brand, where sensory friction may exist, and where intentional changes could create a more memorable and differentiated experience.
Think Tank Exploration: Participants will experience different sensory environments, explore how sensory inputs influence perception and behavior, map the sensory experience of their own restaurants, and identify one or two opportunities to intentionally improve what guests see, hear, smell, feel, and remember.
Speaker: Brad Newberger, President & Co-Founder, Ambiance IQ
Presented by: Ambiance IQ
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Lowest cost is not always lowest risk.
This session examines how efficiency-focused decisions can unintentionally introduce fragility into supply systems. Leaders explore how to evaluate efficiency through a broader lens that includes resilience, redundancy, and long-term stability.
Participants leave with a more balanced framework for assessing cost versus continuity.
Presented by: Craftable
Track 5 Tech/Innovation
Faster isn’t always better.
This session examines how leaders pace innovation to protect teams, systems, and long-term outcomes. Participants explore how to recognize readiness gaps and slow down strategically without losing momentum.
Innovation is reframed as sequencing, not acceleration.
Speaker: Jackie Walker, Chief Experience Officer, Creative Realities, Inc.
Presented by: Creative Realities, Inc.
Track 6 Marketing
When budgets tighten, trust matters more.
This session explores how marketing leaders communicate value without racing to the bottom on price or eroding brand equity. Participants examine how storytelling, clarity, and empathy shape perception when consumers are more selective and cost-conscious.
Leaders will gain perspective on how to position value as meaning, not just discounting, and how loyalty is preserved through consistency and relevance during challenging economic moments.
Presented by: Paradox
10:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Great leadership doesn’t always translate the same way across borders.
As organizations expand into new countries and cultures, leaders face a different level of complexity. How you communicate, build trust, develop talent, make decisions, and motivate a team in one market may not work the same way in another. The challenge becomes knowing which parts of your leadership should remain consistent and which need to adapt.
In this interactive Think Tank, Accelerators will explore what it takes to lead across cultures, markets, and geographies. Drawing on Alsea’s experience operating global brands across multiple international markets, the conversation will examine how leaders navigate cultural differences, balance global strategy with local realities, and build teams that can succeed across borders.
Participants will work through scenarios that challenge them to rethink their own leadership instincts and consider how they would respond when the cultural context changes.
Because becoming a global leader isn’t simply about expanding your reach. It’s about developing a leadership approach that can travel.
Presented by: Alsea
Track 2 Finance
Finance leaders often see risk and opportunity first, but influence depends on how insight is shared.
This think tank convenes finance leaders to discuss how they translate financial insight into enterprise-level influence. Participants will explore how storytelling, timing, and partnership shape decision-making at the leadership table.
The focus is on moving from reporting outcomes to shaping direction.
Track 3 Operations / HR
Leadership does not thrive by accident. It thrives when inclusion and development are intentionally designed into the system.
This think tank brings together leaders responsible for cultivating inclusive leadership and development excellence to examine how organizational conditions either enable leaders to lead equitably and effectively, or quietly limit their impact. Participants will explore how role clarity, feedback structures, advancement pathways, and cultural signals shape behavior more powerfully than standalone training programs.
The conversation centers on how leaders in development excellence act as architects of leadership ecosystems. How do we build systems that expand access to opportunity, strengthen accountability, and foster belonging while maintaining high performance standards? How do we ensure inclusion is embedded in talent pipelines, succession planning, and daily leadership behaviors, not treated as an initiative on the side?
Rather than addressing isolated leadership gaps, this session focuses on identifying systemic patterns and design choices that consistently produce stronger, more inclusive leaders across the organization. The objective is to move from reactive development to proactive architecture, where inclusion and excellence are inseparable drivers of performance.
Presented by: DataDelivers, LLC
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Disruption reveals leadership posture.
This session focuses on how leaders respond when original plans break down. Participants examine how decision-making, communication, and presence shape outcomes during moments of uncertainty.
The emphasis is on steadiness, adaptability, and trust when the path forward isn’t clear.
Presented by: Buyers Edge Platform
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Most conversations about AI in the restaurant industry start with the same question. “Will this replace my team?” The more useful question is different. What does my team actually spend their time on, and what would we do instead if that work took an hour instead of a week?
This Think Tank session moves past AI as a tool-adoption exercise and into what it actually changes about how leadership work gets done. When the bottlenecks that used to define a role start to dissolve, the roles themselves shift- and the shift cuts across every function, not just the obvious ones. Coverage that used to be impossible- hyper-local performance analysis, individual coaching plans for every manager, store-by-store menu engineering- starts to look reasonable. That opens strategic questions most operators haven’t had to answer yet.
This session will challenge leaders to move beyond basic adoption and begin thinking creatively about how AI can augment judgment, reveal unseen opportunities, and reshape how work gets done at scale. The session is interactive by design. Bring what your team is stuck on. You’ll leave with two or three concrete opportunities to test in the next 30 days, and a sharper sense of what the shift means for how you hire, coach, and structure your organization going forward.
Speaker: Jesse Maddox, Strategic Partnerships Manager, DoorDash
Presented by: DoorDash
Track 6 Marketing
Data shows behavior. Leadership determines direction.
This session helps marketing leaders distinguish between signals that require response and noise that demands restraint. Participants explore how to combine consumer insight, intuition, and brand conviction to make confident decisions that guide rather than chase the market.
The focus is on developing judgment that balances responsiveness with leadership, ensuring marketing efforts shape the future instead of reacting to it.
Presented by: Thanx
11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
“Top-performing restaurant brands are not succeeding by chance. They are leveraging operational intelligence, labor optimization, marketing and experience design in ways that consistently outperform the market.
In this session, Victor Fernandez of Black Box Intelligence will present a rigorous analysis of five macro-level trends shaping performance across workforce, guest experience, and financial outcomes. Backed by proprietary data direct from restaurant brands, this session will expose the structural and behavioral differences between the top and bottom quartiles of the industry.
The discussion will explore how seemingly incremental improvements, such as targeted onboarding adjustments or slight shifts in operational focus—can generate meaningful financial returns. More importantly, it will unpack how high-performing brands build systems that link employee engagement, guest loyalty, and unit economics into a sustainable performance model.
This session is designed for executives seeking to pressure test their current assumptions, benchmark against best-in-class operators, and identify performance levers that are often overlooked but critical to long-term growth.”
Speaker: Victor Fernandez, Chief Insights Officer, Black Box Intelligence
Presented By: Black Box Intelligence
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM
7:00 AM - 6:00 PM
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Your Accelerate experience starts with the people you meet.
Designed exclusively for first-time attendees, this welcome reception is an opportunity to get connected before the full event begins. Meet fellow first-timers, connect with members of the Accelerate community, and get a feel for what to expect over the days ahead.
Whether you arrive knowing several people or no one at all, this is your chance to make those first introductions, ask questions, and start building relationships that can continue long after Accelerate ends.
Come as a first-timer. Leave already part of the community.
3:00 PM - 5:30 PM
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Susan Adzick, President, McLane Company, Inc.
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Hattie Hill, Board Member, Prosper Company
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
3:15 PM - 3:45 PM
Join us for a powerful keynote session where we unveil key takeaways from the Accelerate Assessment—a proprietary tool designed to illuminate leadership strengths and growth areas. Whether you’ve taken the assessment or not, this session will guide you through the value of the data, share trends and stories from your peers, and offer clear next steps for leveraging your results to fuel personal and professional growth. Don’t miss this opportunity to deepen your self-awareness and leadership impact.
Moderated by:
Hattie Hill, CEO, Hattie Hill Enterprises & Prosper Company Board Member
Panelists:
Jennifer King Ph.D., President, U.S. Operations, Schiller International University
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM
What happens when competitors recognize that some of the industry’s biggest challenges are better solved together? This conversation brings together perspectives from across contract foodservice to explore how leaders can compete fiercely in the marketplace while still investing in a stronger talent pipeline, sharing ideas and learning alongside one another. Against the backdrop of rising operating costs, workforce pressures, supply chain volatility and evolving guest expectations, the discussion will examine how collaboration can strengthen both individual organizations and the industry as a whole.
At the center is a bigger leadership question: Can community itself become a competitive advantage? Through leadership development, cross-industry relationships and intentional investment in emerging talent, this session explores how building the next generation of leaders together can create stronger organizations, a deeper leadership bench and a more resilient industry.
Moderated by:
TBA
Panelists:
Laurel R. Elliott, Director of Culinary Consulting, Entegra Procurement Services (a Sodexo company)
Angie Young, Director of Experience, Flik Hospitality Group
Presented By: Sodexo AALF, Sodexo EBRG
4:15 PM - 4:45 PM
Restaurant companies are investing faster than their organizations can absorb. In this live Prosper Pressure Test, three industry executives confront a series of real-world technology decisions—where to place the next bet, how to rescue a critical initiative that isn’t delivering, and what to stop funding altogether. Point B will challenge the choices and close with a practical framework every attendee can use to pressure-test their own technology agenda the very next week.
Presented By: Point B
4:45 PM - 5:30 PM
This isn’t just a keynote. It’s a live demonstration of what high performance really looks like in hospitality.
In an industry where every moment matters, how do great teams perform under pressure, adapt in real time, and consistently deliver exceptional guest experiences?
You’ll see it unfold live.
Two elite athletes will take on a Ninja Warrior style course on stage, where every leap, miss, and recovery becomes a powerful metaphor for what happens behind the scenes in hospitality. Because just like on the course, success isn’t about perfection. It’s about how quickly you adjust, support each other, and keep moving forward.
Drawing from his experience as an entrepreneur, CEO, and leadership researcher, and insights from his newly released book Redefining High Performance, based on a national research study, Ty Bennett connects these lessons directly to the realities of hospitality. Staffing challenges, high expectations, constant change, and the need to deliver excellence shift after shift.
This session challenges the outdated push harder approach to performance and replaces it with a smarter, more sustainable model. One built on alignment, energy, and purpose.
You’ll leave with practical strategies to elevate how you train your people, lead your teams, and create a culture where high performance is not just expected, but repeatable.
This is a high energy, immersive experience designed to help you build teams that don’t just keep up, but stand out.
Key Takeaways
Presenter:
Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented By: Keurig Dr. Pepper
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented By: Keurig Dr. Pepper
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Presented By: McLane Company, Inc.
Participating Sponsors: Beaver Street Fisheries, CIA, Datassential, Keurig Dr. Pepper, Kraft Heinz, Wow Bao, Jones Dairy Farm
6:30 AM - 6:00 PM
6:30 AM - 8:15 AM
Presented By: First Watch
8:00 AM - 10:30 AM
8:00 AM - 8:05 AM
Presenter:
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
8:05 AM - 8:45 AM
Restaurant leaders are facing a structural reset: rising labor and food costs, changing consumer expectations, technology disruption, margin pressure and a supply chain that must become faster, smarter and more resilient. This CEO conversation explores where leaders are finding the next points of leverage—from menu and purchasing to labor, technology, capital and strategic partnerships—and what they are willing to change to protect profitability without sacrificing the guest experience or long-term growth.
Presented By: McLane Company, Inc.
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Every organization believes it handles disruption well. The reality is more complicated.
When crisis hits, markets shift, or unexpected disruption reshapes the landscape, leaders often default to familiar behaviors. Some steady the ship. Others unintentionally amplify confusion. The challenge is that few senior leaders receive honest feedback in the middle of the storm. No one tells them what they are missing. No one challenges how they are showing up.
This think tank creates space for candid reflection on how leaders truly respond under pressure. It explores why communication breaks down during disruption, how the inability to articulate direction in uncertain moments erodes trust, and how senior teams can develop a common language to navigate volatility with clarity.
Speaker: James Pogue, Ph.D., President/CEO, JP Enterprises
Track 2 Finance
Data informs decisions. Judgment determines outcomes.
This session helps finance leaders move beyond reporting into enterprise leadership. Participants explore how context, framing, and timing shape how insights are received and acted upon.
Finance is reframed as a strategic partner, not a scorekeeper.
Speaker: James McGehee, CFO, Dave’s Hot Chicken
Presented by: Dave’s Hot Chicken
Track 3 Operations / HR
People believe what they experience.
This session helps HR leaders examine how policies, decisions, and enforcement shape culture more than stated values. Participants explore how consistency builds trust and credibility across the organization.
Culture is reframed as behavior, not messaging.
Speaker: Lois Alexis-Collins, Chief People Officer, Field Operations, Chipotle Mexican Grill
Presented By: Chipotle Mexican Grill
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Resilient supply chains don’t emerge during disruption. They are designed long before it arrives.
This session explores how leaders proactively build flexibility, transparency, and trust into supply systems so they can absorb shock without breaking. Participants examine how planning, communication, and relationship management reduce risk and improve response when conditions change.
The focus is on leadership choices that strengthen resilience quietly and consistently over time.
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Technology doesn’t replace leadership — it reveals it. As systems automate more decisions, the human virtues of judgment, integrity, empathy, and accountability matter more than ever.
As our systems get smarter, our responsibility as leaders gets heavier and oftentimes comes with increased accelerated change and uncertainty. Technology can tell us what happened — but leadership still decides what matters. The future isn’t human or automated. It’s human-led, technology-enabled.
Speaker: Carl Orsbourn, SVP GTM Enterprise, Invisible Technologies
Presented by: Invisible Technologies
Track 6 Marketing
In today’s market, brands compete less on awareness and more on perceived value. This think tank explores how marketing leaders use creativity, customer insight, and performance data to design value intentionally — shaping how customers interpret price, experience, and differentiation.
The conversation centers on how innovation and storytelling work together to increase perceived value without relying solely on discounting or promotion. Participants will examine how leading brands identify what customers truly care about, translate data into clear positioning, and activate campaigns that strengthen trust while driving measurable growth.
Key themes include:
9:45 AM - 10:15 AM
Presented by: Healthy Menu’s R&D Collaborative
10:15 AM - 11:00 PM
Track 1 Leadership Development
High performance isn’t just about what your team does. It’s about how they think while they do it.
In this interactive think tank, we’ll explore the three core mindsets from Redefining High Performance, based on a national research study: Confident Curiosity, Relaxed Intensity, and Empathic Drive. These aren’t just ideas. They are the mental disciplines that allow leaders and teams to stay adaptable, focused, and connected under pressure.
Through guided discussion, you’ll reflect on where these mindsets show up in your leadership and where they may be missing. Together, we’ll unpack how to balance results and relationships, urgency and composure, confidence and humility, the tensions that define leadership in hospitality.
You’ll leave with practical insights and simple shifts you can apply immediately to elevate how you lead, develop people, and create a culture where high performance is sustainable, not exhausting.
Speaker: Ty Bennett, Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur, Leadership Inc.
Presented by: Keurig Dr. Pepper
Track 2 Finance
Risk misunderstood is risk ignored.
This session helps leaders communicate financial risk in ways that drive informed decisions rather than fear or avoidance. Participants explore how clarity and narrative improve risk awareness.
The focus is on enabling action, not caution alone.
Speaker: Shideh Ovaysikia, Managing Director, CohnReznick
Presented by: CohnReznick
Track 3 Operations / HR
Human communication is far more than words. In fact, much of what people interpret in conversations comes from facial expressions, posture, tone, eye contact, and subtleshifts in energy. Yet decades of research show that people are surprisingly poor atinterpreting these signals accurately. We routinely overread body language,misinterpret emotional cues, and assume meaning where none exists.The session begins with an exploration of the neuroscience and psychology behindnonverbal perception. Participants will then engage in a collaborative think-tank format,analyzing real-world scenarios and practicing a simple Signal Check framework thatimproves accuracy, reduces assumption-driven conflict, and strengthens interpersonalunderstanding.
Speaker: Dr. Melissa Hughes, Keynote Speaker, Author & Human Potential Alchemist
Presented by: Founding Farmers Restaurant Group
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Supply chain leadership often means choosing between imperfect options.
This session helps leaders navigate moments when cost, speed, quality, and availability cannot all be optimized at once. Participants explore how to prioritize trade-offs, communicate decisions clearly, and maintain trust with internal teams and external partners under pressure.
The emphasis is on clarity and credibility when ideal outcomes aren’t possible.
Speaker: Jeff Burrus, Vice President of Supply Chain, El Pollo Loco, Inc.
Presented by: El Pollo Loco, Inc.
Track 5 Tech/Innovation
Technology succeeds or fails based on how people experience it.
This session helps leaders consider the human impact of technology decisions, including training, communication, and trust. Participants explore how adoption improves when people feel included and supported rather than replaced.
The emphasis is on empathy as an accelerant to innovation.
Speaker: Adam Dumey, Global Vice President Retail, World Wide Technology
Presented by: World Wide Technology
Track 6 Sales
Sales has changed. Service hasn’t. What happens when a high performing individual contributor is suddenly called to lead people? In this session, Amy Mrozinski explores the shift from personal performance to people development—and what she learned when she realized the best sales principles were actually leadership principles all along. If there are truly only two roles inside any enterprise—building the business or building the organization—then the leader’s job is clear: acquire, develop, and retain the very best talent. Just like sales.
Speaker: Amy Mrozinski, Senior Director of Sales-West, Grande Cheese Company
Presented by: Grande Cheese Company
11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Presenter:
Scott Klososky, Founder & CEO, Industry Defenders
Presented by:
Toast, Inc.
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM
Greg Creed, Global Marketer, Author, and Retired CEO
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Susan Adzick, President, McLane Foodservice, Inc.
Hattie Hill, CEO, Hattie Hill Enterprises and Prosper Company Board Member
David Jobe, Co-Founder & CEO, Prosper Forum
Luke Kircher, Co-Founder & President, Prosper Company
Alayna Sullivan, Senior Director, Corporate Communications + Brand Marketing, Olo Inc
Presented By: Olo
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Presented by: DataDelivers, LLC
1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
1:45 PM - 2:30 PM
What does it take to lead one of the world’s most influential restaurant companies through a period of extraordinary change—and emerge stronger on the other side?
In a candid conversation between two leaders helping shape Yum!’s future, Sean Tresvant sits down with CEO Chris Turner to explore the choices, convictions and leadership principles behind the company’s next chapter. From growth and consumer relevance to technology, franchisee success, culture and the changing economics of the restaurant business, this is a rare look inside how Yum! is thinking about what matters now, what comes next, and what it will take to win.
Moderator:
Sean Tresvant, Global Chief Executive Officer, Taco Bell, Chief Consumer Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Panelist:
Chris Turner, Chief Executive Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Presented by: YUM! Brands, Inc.
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
What happens when the doors close and one of the world’s largest restaurant companies has to make the decisions that will shape its future?
For a rare Accelerate experience, Prosper brings Yum!’s senior leadership together on one stage for a candid conversation unlike a traditional executive panel. James Fripp takes the audience inside the leadership room with Chris Turner, Ranjith Roy, Erika Burkhardt, Scott Mezvinsky, Catherine Tan-Gillespie, Sean Tresvant, Shannon Hennessy, Jim Dausch and Ken Muench.
This isn’t nine executives giving nine presentations. It’s a conversation about how a leadership team actually leads: where they agree, where they challenge one another, how enterprise strategy becomes brand-level action, how competing priorities get resolved, and how leaders build the trust required to make consequential decisions at extraordinary scale.
From people, culture and consumers to technology, capital, growth and operations, Accelerate attendees will get an unusually candid look at the people behind Yum!—and how they work together to build what comes next.
Presented by: YUM! Brands, Inc.
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
At Accelerate, leadership is about more than advancing our own careers. It’s about using our influence to create opportunities and make an impact beyond ourselves.
In this special Charity Spotlight, No Kid Hungry will share how its work is helping ensure children across the country have access to the food they need to grow, learn, and thrive. Together, we’ll recognize the power of the restaurant and foodservice community to rally around a shared mission and help build a future where every child has the opportunity to succeed.
Presented by: No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strengh
3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Presented by: Mi-Benefits
3:45 PM - 4:30 PM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Consumers want to eat better, but they aren’t willing to sacrifice flavor, experience, or value to do it. That creates a challenge for restaurant leaders: how do you make nutrition an opportunity for menu innovation rather than a compromise?
Led by the Culinary Institute of America, this Think Tank will explore the intersection of nutrition, culinary innovation, and changing consumer expectations. Participants will examine how ingredients, preparation, portioning, flavor, and menu design can evolve to create options that are both better for you and genuinely craveable.
Together, the group will challenge traditional assumptions about what “healthy” looks like on a restaurant menu, identify where consumer expectations are headed, and explore practical opportunities to bring the next generation of nutritious menu innovation to life.
The goal isn’t simply to put healthier items on the menu. It’s to create food guests actually want to order.
Presented by: Healthy Menu’s R&D Collaborative
Track 2 Marketing
Confidence follows understanding.
This session explores how finance leaders bring clarity to complex decisions through storytelling, prioritization, and relevance. Participants examine how clarity accelerates alignment across functions.
Clarity is framed as a leadership responsibility.
Presented by: Datassential
Track 3 Operations / HR
Trust isn’t built through a mission statement or a leadership retreat. It’s built in the everyday moments that tell people whether they are heard, valued, and safe enough to speak honestly.
In this Think Tank, leaders will explore what it takes to create cultures of trust across teams, especially as organizations grow and leaders become further removed from the front line. The conversation will examine how listening, consistency, accountability, and psychological safety shape the employee experience and ultimately influence performance.
Through candid discussion and shared experiences, participants will explore how trust moves through an organization, where it can break down, and what leaders can do differently to strengthen it.
Presented by: First Watch
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Strong relationships outperform perfect forecasts.
This session explores how trust with suppliers, distributors, and internal stakeholders accelerates problem-solving, improves flexibility, and reduces friction during disruption. Participants examine how consistency, transparency, and follow-through strengthen collaboration across the supply network.
Trust is reframed as a strategic asset, not a soft benefit.
Presented by: Mclane Foodservice Inc.
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Ideas only matter when they’re adopted.
This session explores how leaders move innovation out of pilot mode and into everyday workflows. Participants examine adoption barriers, change fatigue, and communication strategies that help teams embrace new tools without resistance.
The focus is on execution, not experimentation.
Speaker: Scott Klososky, Scott Klososky, Founder & CEO, Industry Defenders
Presented by: Network Distribution
Track 6 Sales
The best salespeople don’t just know how to sell. They know how to build relationships people want to stay in.
Being a great partner requires more than understanding your product or delivering the perfect pitch. It means knowing when to listen, when to challenge, how to read the room, how to understand what your partner actually needs, and how to create value even when there isn’t an immediate sale on the table.
In this Think Tank, Accelerators will explore the nuances that separate transactional relationships from trusted partnerships. The conversation will examine how credibility is earned, how expectations are managed, how great partners navigate difficult conversations, and the small behaviors that can strengthen or undermine a relationship over time.
Participants will challenge themselves to think beyond “How do I win the business?” and ask a more important question: “How do I become someone people want to do business with again?”
Presented by: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
4:30 PM - 5:15 PM
4:30 PM - 5:15 PM
The focus on creating connected workplace cultures has been building momentum over the past few years, and now is the time to create a fusion between why it is important and how to do it, and that is at the heart of this energizing and soulful presentation from Liz Bohannon. Participants learn from Liz’s experiences as a leader of a global brand and what it takes to create meaningful connection across your organization that is grounded in a sense of purpose and driven by impact. Growing your company as a connected community is the only way to inspire the kind of collaboration and innovation that will keep you rising to the next level even in the face of change and uncertainty.
Presenter:
Liz Bohannon, Forbes Top 20 Keynote Speaker / Bestselling Author / Podcaster
Presented By: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
5:15 PM - 6:15 PM
Liz Bohannon, Forbes Top 20 Keynote Speaker / Bestselling Author / Podcaster
Presented by: DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS®
5:15 PM - 6:15 PM
Presented by: Mars Snacking
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Presented by: Point B & Venatrust
6:45 AM - 12:30 PM
6:45 AM - 8:00 AM
Presented by: C.H. Guenther & Son
8:00 AM - 8:20 AM
8:00 AM - 8:20 AM
As we begin today’s General Session, we’ll take time to reflect on the insights, breakthroughs, and connections that have defined the first two days of the Accelerate Conference and yesterday’s Think Tank Breakouts. This is a moment to come together as a community—sharing what inspired you, what challenged you, and what you’ll take back to strengthen your teams and organizations. Together, we’ll turn key takeaways into lasting transformation.
Presenters:
James Fripp, Chief Culture, Opportunity, and Belonging Officer, YUM! Brands, Inc.
Luke Kircher, Co-Founder & President, Prosper Company
8:30 AM - 9:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
High-impact leadership comes with invisible pressure.
In this deeply human and honest conversation, Atul Sood shares his experience navigating intense executive pressure while managing bipolar disorder, including lessons learned during periods of hypergrowth and burnout. This session moves beyond theory and into lived experience, exploring how leaders maintain clarity, stability, and effectiveness while carrying significant responsibility.
Participants will explore:
Speaker: Atul Sood, CEO, Sood Advisories
Presented by: Sood Advisories
Track 2 Finance
When a brand isn’t performing to plan, knowing the numbers is only the beginning. The real challenge is deciding what to do about them.
In this interactive Think Tank, Accelerators will step into the CFO seat and confront the kinds of decisions that can change the trajectory of a business. Faced with a brand that needs to course correct, participants will evaluate the numbers, identify where the real problems lie, and determine which moves they would make next.
Where do you invest and where do you pull back? What do you protect? What needs to change now, and what requires patience? How do you balance short-term financial performance against the investments needed to build a healthier brand for the future?
Working through competing priorities and imperfect information, participants will experience what executive-level decision-making looks like when there isn’t one obvious answer.
The challenge isn’t simply understanding what the numbers are telling you. It’s having the judgment to decide what happens next.
Presented by: CEC Entertainment
Track 3 Operations / HR
Growth feels different in a mid-size organization. Resources are tighter, systems are still evolving, and leadership remains closely connected to day-to-day execution. This session explores the practical realities of scaling culture while expanding locations, teams, and operational complexity. From Steve Sturm’s perspective, the conversation moves beyond theory to disciplined leadership: how organizations maintain clarity of standards, build leadership depth quickly, and reinforce values in environments where infrastructure is still being constructed.
Participants will engage in candid dialogue around hiring for alignment without slowing momentum, embedding accountability into performance expectations, sustaining communication across growing leadership layers, and protecting culture when pressure rises. The discussion reframes culture as a practical operating discipline. When culture is visible in decisions, reinforced through systems, and modeled consistently, mid-size organizations can grow with strength, consistency, and long-term performance.
Speaker: Steve Sturm, COO, Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Presented by: Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Supply chains are no longer preparing for disruption. They are operating inside it.
This think tank convenes supply chain leaders to explore how resilience is being designed into sourcing, logistics, and partnerships in real time. Participants will share how they’re balancing efficiency, flexibility, and trust across increasingly complex networks.
The conversation centers on what leaders are doing differently today to stay responsive without destabilizing operations.
Presented by: ezCater, Inc.
Track 5 Sales
The profile of a sales executive has changed.
Today’s leaders are expected to drive revenue, build culture, mentor talent, and operate with integrity under constant pressure. Success is no longer just about closing deals. It is about building durable relationships, developing high-performance teams, and creating long-term trust in the market.
In this candid think tank, Ali Templin draws from her journey from early cold-calling roles to building mentorship programs at scale. She shares lessons on resilience, embracing failure, and doing the hard work when no one is watching. The conversation explores what it takes to lead modern revenue organizations, where credibility, character, and consistency matter as much as quota attainment.
Speaker: Ali Templin, VP of Enterprise Sales, Palona AI
Presented by: Palona AI
Track 6 Marketing
Technology doesn’t replace leadership — it reveals it. As systems automate more decisions, the human virtues of judgment, integrity, empathy, and accountability matter more than ever.
As our systems get smarter, our responsibility as leaders gets heavier and oftentimes comes with increased accelerated change and uncertainty. Technology can tell us what happened — but leadership still decides what matters. The future isn’t human or automated. It’s human-led, technology-enabled.
Speaker: Jen Kern, CMO, Qu
Presented by: Qu
9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Trust grows through repetition.
This session explores how small, consistent leadership behaviors build credibility over time. Participants examine how reliability, follow-through, and integrity compound influence.
Leadership is framed as a long game.
Presented by: Keurig Dr. Pepper
Track 2 Finance
Influence follows value.
This session helps finance leaders align insight with business reality, strengthening their voice in enterprise decisions. Participants explore how credibility, partnership, and communication elevate influence.
Leadership is framed as contribution, not proximity.
Presented by: TipHaus Inc.
Track 3 Operations / HR
The guest experience begins long before the first bite. Sound, scent, lighting, temperature, energy, and atmosphere are constantly sending signals that shape how guests perceive a restaurant, often without them realizing it.
In this interactive Think Tank, Brad Newberger, President & Co-Founder of Ambiance IQ, takes leaders inside the science of sensory experience to explore how the brain processes an environment and how those signals influence emotion, behavior, memory, and connection. Participants will experience these principles firsthand through sensory exercises involving sound, scent, temperature, and limited visual cues, then turn the lens on their own brands.
The session challenges leaders to ask a different question: What does your restaurant actually feel like to your guest? Participants will identify where their experience is reinforcing the brand, where sensory friction may exist, and where intentional changes could create a more memorable and differentiated experience.
Think Tank Exploration: Participants will experience different sensory environments, explore how sensory inputs influence perception and behavior, map the sensory experience of their own restaurants, and identify one or two opportunities to intentionally improve what guests see, hear, smell, feel, and remember.
Speaker: Brad Newberger, President & Co-Founder, Ambiance IQ
Presented by: Ambiance IQ
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Lowest cost is not always lowest risk.
This session examines how efficiency-focused decisions can unintentionally introduce fragility into supply systems. Leaders explore how to evaluate efficiency through a broader lens that includes resilience, redundancy, and long-term stability.
Participants leave with a more balanced framework for assessing cost versus continuity.
Presented by: Craftable
Track 5 Tech/Innovation
Faster isn’t always better.
This session examines how leaders pace innovation to protect teams, systems, and long-term outcomes. Participants explore how to recognize readiness gaps and slow down strategically without losing momentum.
Innovation is reframed as sequencing, not acceleration.
Speaker: Jackie Walker, Chief Experience Officer, Creative Realities, Inc.
Presented by: Creative Realities, Inc.
Track 6 Marketing
When budgets tighten, trust matters more.
This session explores how marketing leaders communicate value without racing to the bottom on price or eroding brand equity. Participants examine how storytelling, clarity, and empathy shape perception when consumers are more selective and cost-conscious.
Leaders will gain perspective on how to position value as meaning, not just discounting, and how loyalty is preserved through consistency and relevance during challenging economic moments.
Presented by: Paradox
10:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Track 1 Leadership Development
Great leadership doesn’t always translate the same way across borders.
As organizations expand into new countries and cultures, leaders face a different level of complexity. How you communicate, build trust, develop talent, make decisions, and motivate a team in one market may not work the same way in another. The challenge becomes knowing which parts of your leadership should remain consistent and which need to adapt.
In this interactive Think Tank, Accelerators will explore what it takes to lead across cultures, markets, and geographies. Drawing on Alsea’s experience operating global brands across multiple international markets, the conversation will examine how leaders navigate cultural differences, balance global strategy with local realities, and build teams that can succeed across borders.
Participants will work through scenarios that challenge them to rethink their own leadership instincts and consider how they would respond when the cultural context changes.
Because becoming a global leader isn’t simply about expanding your reach. It’s about developing a leadership approach that can travel.
Presented by: Alsea
Track 2 Finance
Finance leaders often see risk and opportunity first, but influence depends on how insight is shared.
This think tank convenes finance leaders to discuss how they translate financial insight into enterprise-level influence. Participants will explore how storytelling, timing, and partnership shape decision-making at the leadership table.
The focus is on moving from reporting outcomes to shaping direction.
Track 3 Operations / HR
Leadership does not thrive by accident. It thrives when inclusion and development are intentionally designed into the system.
This think tank brings together leaders responsible for cultivating inclusive leadership and development excellence to examine how organizational conditions either enable leaders to lead equitably and effectively, or quietly limit their impact. Participants will explore how role clarity, feedback structures, advancement pathways, and cultural signals shape behavior more powerfully than standalone training programs.
The conversation centers on how leaders in development excellence act as architects of leadership ecosystems. How do we build systems that expand access to opportunity, strengthen accountability, and foster belonging while maintaining high performance standards? How do we ensure inclusion is embedded in talent pipelines, succession planning, and daily leadership behaviors, not treated as an initiative on the side?
Rather than addressing isolated leadership gaps, this session focuses on identifying systemic patterns and design choices that consistently produce stronger, more inclusive leaders across the organization. The objective is to move from reactive development to proactive architecture, where inclusion and excellence are inseparable drivers of performance.
Presented by: DataDelivers, LLC
Track 4 Supply Chain / Culinary / Purchasing
Disruption reveals leadership posture.
This session focuses on how leaders respond when original plans break down. Participants examine how decision-making, communication, and presence shape outcomes during moments of uncertainty.
The emphasis is on steadiness, adaptability, and trust when the path forward isn’t clear.
Presented by: Buyers Edge Platform
Track 5 Tech / Innovation
Most conversations about AI in the restaurant industry start with the same question. “Will this replace my team?” The more useful question is different. What does my team actually spend their time on, and what would we do instead if that work took an hour instead of a week?
This Think Tank session moves past AI as a tool-adoption exercise and into what it actually changes about how leadership work gets done. When the bottlenecks that used to define a role start to dissolve, the roles themselves shift- and the shift cuts across every function, not just the obvious ones. Coverage that used to be impossible- hyper-local performance analysis, individual coaching plans for every manager, store-by-store menu engineering- starts to look reasonable. That opens strategic questions most operators haven’t had to answer yet.
This session will challenge leaders to move beyond basic adoption and begin thinking creatively about how AI can augment judgment, reveal unseen opportunities, and reshape how work gets done at scale. The session is interactive by design. Bring what your team is stuck on. You’ll leave with two or three concrete opportunities to test in the next 30 days, and a sharper sense of what the shift means for how you hire, coach, and structure your organization going forward.
Speaker: Jesse Maddox, Strategic Partnerships Manager, DoorDash
Presented by: DoorDash
Track 6 Marketing
Data shows behavior. Leadership determines direction.
This session helps marketing leaders distinguish between signals that require response and noise that demands restraint. Participants explore how to combine consumer insight, intuition, and brand conviction to make confident decisions that guide rather than chase the market.
The focus is on developing judgment that balances responsiveness with leadership, ensuring marketing efforts shape the future instead of reacting to it.
Presented by: Thanx
11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
“Top-performing restaurant brands are not succeeding by chance. They are leveraging operational intelligence, labor optimization, marketing and experience design in ways that consistently outperform the market.
In this session, Victor Fernandez of Black Box Intelligence will present a rigorous analysis of five macro-level trends shaping performance across workforce, guest experience, and financial outcomes. Backed by proprietary data direct from restaurant brands, this session will expose the structural and behavioral differences between the top and bottom quartiles of the industry.
The discussion will explore how seemingly incremental improvements, such as targeted onboarding adjustments or slight shifts in operational focus—can generate meaningful financial returns. More importantly, it will unpack how high-performing brands build systems that link employee engagement, guest loyalty, and unit economics into a sustainable performance model.
This session is designed for executives seeking to pressure test their current assumptions, benchmark against best-in-class operators, and identify performance levers that are often overlooked but critical to long-term growth.”
Speaker: Victor Fernandez, Chief Insights Officer, Black Box Intelligence
Presented By: Black Box Intelligence
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM
