
A college food account taught Brice Gumpel what restaurant owners fear after the dinner rush. He turned the empty table into a product, then had to reinvent that product when every dining room closed.
Restaurants cannot save tonight's empty table for tomorrow. Seated built a marketplace around that perishable inventory - then survived the shutdown that made every table empty at once.
Qdoba built its counter-service identity around a small act of abundance: the guacamole and queso are included. Now the 31-year-old chain is turning that promise into a franchise-led campaign to nearly double its footprint.