Lance Salsman, SVP of Operations at Mike’s Red Tacos, has spent his career bouncing between pizza and taco brands while learning every level of restaurant operations along the way. Starting as a 16-year-old Pizza Hut employee in Kansas, Lance worked his way through leadership roles across Taco Bell, Blaze Pizza, and more before helping scale Mike’s Red Tacos into one of the industry’s fastest-growing experiential brands. In this conversation with Zack Oates, he explains how guest feedback, operational systems, and team culture all work together to create memorable hospitality.

Building a Cult Following Through Guest Feedback (05:18)

“He uses what he learned from his guests to tweak and adjust.”

Lance explains how founder Mike Mumolo built Mike’s Red Tacos by constantly refining the menu and experience based on guest feedback.

Why Team Member Experience Comes First (11:46)

“The guest experience will never exceed the team member experience.”

The conversation explores how operational systems and restaurant processes directly impact hospitality at the store level.

Turning a Food Truck Into a Scalable Brand (14:11)

“The equipment that you did when you started the food truck is not going to be the same when you scale it to 100 plus restaurants.”

Lance shares how Mike’s Red Tacos evolved its equipment, prep systems, and supply chain to support rapid growth.

Using Technology to Improve Accuracy (13:47)

“One of our biggest challenges was accuracy.”

From kiosks to kitchen display systems, Lance discusses how technology investments helped improve operational consistency and guest satisfaction.

Creating New Family Traditions (16:00)

“We love you guys so much and you’re now our weekly family tradition.”

Lance reflects on how birria, once reserved for celebrations and gatherings, is becoming part of everyday family experiences through Mike’s Red Tacos.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (17:33)

“Nothing’s more rewarding than watching people grow.”

Lance gives recognition to Carla Gutierrez, a team member turned general manager who helped open Mike’s Red Tacos’ newest high-volume location while building a strong culture and delivering operational excellence.

Links:

https://www.instagram.com/mikesredtacos/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lsalsman/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/mikes-red-tacos/posts/

https://www.mikesredtacos.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:10 – 00:00:25:13

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zack Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the AI feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Learn what’s actually happening in your restaurants and exactly how to improve while driving revenue.

00:00:25:17 – 00:00:49:20

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation. Com and today we have the legend. Besides Jim, probably the best looking guy in this industry. Lance Salsman He has such a unique background. He was store level then franchisee now corporate. And check out this. I’m going to just read through some of your logos here Lance. And by the way, I am wearing a taco shirt and I have my pizza neon sign behind me for a reason.

00:00:49:22 – 00:01:10:07

Zack Oates

Follow with me here. Here is his career progression Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, CCS pizza, Blaze Pizza, and now Mike’s Red tacos. The fact that there is not a single brand you’ve worked with that doesn’t have the name pizza or taco in it is, I think, unique to a career as illustrious as you are. So, Lance, welcome to the podcast, sir.

00:01:10:09 – 00:01:18:13

Lance Salsman

Thank you. And it’s funny to say that I never actually put that together, but you’re right, pizza and taco are in every brand that I’ve worked for. That’s funny right?

00:01:18:14 – 00:01:35:23

Zack Oates

I mean, you did have back to back pizzas with the season blaze, but other than that you’ve swapped back and forth between pizza and taco. So tell me, what do you love about the fast casual industry that’s kind of kept you in it? Just hopping back between the shell and the crust?

00:01:35:24 – 00:01:53:17

Lance Salsman

Yeah. So I mean, it started with Pizza Hut as a kid, 16 years old, and got a job at pizza. I literally a new the store manager name was Sherry Green and Sedan, Kansas, where I grew up. It was the only brand name that we had in town and I was like, I want to work there, I want to work there.

00:01:53:17 – 00:02:11:21

Lance Salsman

So leading up to my 16th birthday, I would go see Sherry and I’m like, I’m ready to work, I’m ready to work. And then on my 16th birthday, I went there and I’m like, I’m ready. And she hired me on the spot. So that started this very long career in the restaurant industry. That was the kicking point for everything.

00:02:11:21 – 00:02:30:14

Lance Salsman

So I went from there to I was with them for several years throughout high school and college. I actually got promoted to general manager my senior year. I remember I had that old flip phone and texting had just became a thing. And so like I got a text message one day I was like in history class or something.

00:02:30:14 – 00:02:50:02

Lance Salsman

And it’s like the auditors here, and it’s like, I leave, I just get up and leave glass and go to that. That’s how early in I was involved in restaurants. But that evolved throughout my career. So I ended up going to I moved to Houston, Texas, interviewed with multiple different brands, one of them being Taco Bell. I loved the guy that interviewed me.

00:02:50:02 – 00:03:10:16

Lance Salsman

I loved his energy and I just it felt like the right pick. And so I joined Taco Bell franchisee. And then it’s kind of the rest is history. And I started as a manager, their work my way up and then led multiple area manager, our first training manager, area manager, then regional manager, franchise business consultant, franchise business director.

00:03:10:16 – 00:03:17:16

Lance Salsman

And so I mean, just every position in ops I think you can think of, I had the opportunity to be a part of it. So.

00:03:17:18 – 00:03:37:12

Zack Oates

Well, it’s cool because you’ve you’ve done everything. You’re not just you, you’re the senior VP of ops at Mike’s Red tacos, which, by the way, I want to get to that in a second because that is blowing up. But it’s like you’ve done it all. And so in the operations standpoint, it’s not like like you understand what a ninth pan is and like how do you do that?

00:03:37:13 – 00:03:59:03

Zack Oates

Whereas some people who come in from out of industry, they’re like, oh yeah, it’s just like retail. I mean, how many people have we seen Lance in our careers here? I mean, I’ve been ten years with ovation, and prior to that I worked in restaurants. Right. And how many people have we seen come in from other industries thinking that they could run their same playbook here and it just doesn’t work, right?

00:03:59:04 – 00:04:06:22

Zack Oates

Like, you have to understand the soup to nuts of how a restaurant runs. Yeah.

00:04:06:23 – 00:04:30:23

Lance Salsman

You have to be on the drive through at Taco Bell at five in the morning after working at 12 hours shift to truly understand what the business is like and the complexities and how to make systems and processes work for the frontline employees. So yeah, you can’t come from retail. You could, but maybe get some reps in first and really understand the restaurant industry.

00:04:31:00 – 00:04:31:11

Lance Salsman

Yeah. If you’re.

00:04:31:11 – 00:04:35:20

Zack Oates

Going to come in you at least you got to come in with curiosity as opposed to a playbook, right?

00:04:35:22 – 00:04:40:17

Lance Salsman

That’s right. Absolutely. Learn first and then adjust your playbook.

00:04:40:19 – 00:05:11:17

Zack Oates

Yeah. And for those who don’t know, my trade Taco, first of all, I had the privilege to go. This is a few weeks ago for the first time. It is unreal. And I find people talking about it at trade shows because y’all are so experiential, which people are looking for right now. It is messy. It is delicious. You have a menu that you can like right on the palm of your hand with a Sharpie marker, like you’ve done very few things extremely well and people love you.

00:05:11:18 – 00:05:18:13

Zack Oates

Looking at your online reviews and what people are saying, like it’s amazing. Talk to us about the magic of Mike’s Red tacos.

00:05:18:15 – 00:05:38:05

Lance Salsman

Yeah, I mean, it starts with Mike. So to know Mike’s Red tacos is to know my tumor. Our founder. And he started this as a food truck. And it was kind of the experiment. Let’s try it out in a food truck. Let’s see if it works. Let’s play out the menu and everything, and then let’s grow it into something else.

00:05:38:05 – 00:06:06:03

Lance Salsman

And he did that. But he’s a perfectionist. Who and that when it comes to guests feedback, he’s the champion of guest feedback. He uses what he learned from his guest to tweak and adjust. And that’s the menus you see today. That menu used to be much larger. There used to be a lot of different offerings, but he focused on a small percentage of the menu that the guests interacted and felt, you know, the most connection with, and he perfected them throughout the years.

00:06:06:03 – 00:06:21:17

Lance Salsman

So that’s a big part of our brand today. He started his food truck 2021. Within a year, he opened his first brick and mortar location, which did gangbusters, and it was 900ft², which is insane. So like because.

00:06:21:18 – 00:06:25:02

Zack Oates

The size of two food trucks. Yeah, basically.

00:06:25:07 – 00:06:51:15

Lance Salsman

I mean, they yeah, they had to get very creative with the space. There was not even restrooms or the gas and just extremely high volume. And he had a breakthrough scenario, kind of like Dave saw chicken. When the blogger came to the pop up, he actually got named yelps 100 restaurants his first year, and I think he was number 40, which catapult on the line started forming immediately, like the attention he got from that.

00:06:51:15 – 00:07:20:06

Lance Salsman

And that’s kind of the beginning of the story. And since then, locals just absolutely love it. And for me, coming from some of these more established brands, blaze, I kind of joined midway. But the other established brands, something really unique about Mike is we just opened Mira mesa. The brand itself just has an immediate following. You may open a very successful chain and it has this big, you know, week, and then you kind of taper off from it.

00:07:20:07 – 00:07:45:04

Lance Salsman

Mike’s isn’t like that, you know. Mike’s continues. They come and they come back. And as for I think the things you said, it’s unique, has a vibe in the restaurant that people love. They love the salsa bar, right? Being able to have that person, you know, individuality with how they want to spice their food. We have the drippy taco, which I don’t know about you, but I actually hadn’t tried birria until I went to Mike’s Red tacos.

00:07:45:04 – 00:07:46:10

Lance Salsman

It was my first time.

00:07:46:10 – 00:08:04:15

Zack Oates

I think I tried bird tacos one time and I was like, not really a fan of it. And so anyway, when we were talking, I was honestly, to be totally truthful, I was a little bit nervous because I was like, oh no, what if I don’t like this? Because it’s like, you know, the first one I had was a dry tortilla.

00:08:04:17 – 00:08:25:16

Zack Oates

It just the dipping stuff was just greasy and it was so good. Lance. It was flavorful. It was delicious. And I think the only piece of feedback that I had on the entire experience from beginning to end, was I wanted the trash can to be a little bit bigger, to put my trash away.

00:08:25:18 – 00:08:49:15

Lance Salsman

You know, it’s hilarious. You say that because speaking of ovation, that is feedback we get. So if you search our ovation, you’ll see again, you make the hole bigger in the trash can. So we’re working on our prototype now and something we’ve actually it’s a perfect example actually, of listening to the guest feedback and designing something that works a little bit better for the guest, but that is actually feedback that we get so well.

00:08:49:15 – 00:09:01:12

Zack Oates

And think of how many hundreds of thousands of restaurants there are that wish that having a bigger opening for their trash can was their problem? Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:01:13 – 00:09:24:19

Lance Salsman

I mean, yeah, and you know, what’s really cool about me coming from these other brands is I’ve always been with brands that have, I would say 300 plus restaurants. And at either a director or VP level, you can’t read every comment. There’s just impossible, right? Coming to a startup, I see every single guest concern or not concern, but comments right there emailed to me every day.

00:09:24:20 – 00:09:43:14

Lance Salsman

I get them as they come in. I have the app. I can, you know, I see the managers responding to them because right now it’s enough volume that I can actually do that. And that’s really cool because in the moment, every day I get to see feedback like you’re sharing, right? And it makes you think about things that you’re working on.

00:09:43:14 – 00:10:08:17

Lance Salsman

And maybe, for example, we’ve built a recipe over time. And so like there’s times where let’s adjust actually cases. A good example, we made a small adjustment to case. So for the recipe. And within a week I saw one. And then I saw another. And so we reverted right. So it’s really unique to be able to see them as they come in, but also have the high level ability to be able to pull the analytics.

00:10:08:17 – 00:10:10:18

Lance Salsman

So yeah, it’s great.

00:10:10:19 – 00:10:17:03

Zack Oates

Well, I appreciate that. I normally I wouldn’t ask them at this point in the podcast, but yeah. How has a ovation been helpful for you?

00:10:17:09 – 00:10:45:11

Lance Salsman

Yeah, I mean in that way a lot. And I think for Mike to so Mike is obsessed with the perfect experience, which is the core of who our brand is. And I think you probably saw it when you visited the restaurant. He has high standards and he really focuses on getting the right people. And so I think ovation for me is the end result is about the guests experience recovering them and or engaging with them.

00:10:45:11 – 00:11:04:16

Lance Salsman

And I think our guests vary a lot these days. Right. You have Gen Alpha now who are becoming consumers or 16 I think they just turned 16. Then you have Gen Z and then you have millennials and they all like interact differently, right? Some of them don’t want a lot of interaction, but if something goes wrong, they do.

00:11:04:17 – 00:11:27:05

Lance Salsman

So being on top of your game and having a tool like ovation to be able to immediately respond to them and give them the love and attention that they need is amazing. I see it all the time. Our managers that are not our managers, but Mike’s managers, they’re really good at responding to guests. I don’t know if you’ve had any preview to our platform, but they do a really good job of responding with empathy.

00:11:27:05 – 00:11:46:16

Lance Salsman

They care. You can tell there’s no pride around, you know, saying we made a mistake and they do a really good job of taking care of our guests through the platform. I would say the other thing, I’ve always been driven, and I think this kind of goes back to Taco Bell days, is the guest experience will never exceed the team member experience.

00:11:46:16 – 00:12:13:20

Lance Salsman

So when I think about ovation, I don’t think of it as just a guest based platform. I think of it as how do we take guest feedback to build the best systems in the restaurants so that our team can deliver, because you can go after complaints and issues, but if you don’t get to the root of the cause, which is probably a process system scheduling, it could be a lot of different things.

00:12:13:21 – 00:12:34:04

Lance Salsman

If you don’t work on solutions to drive the overall issue, then you’re not creating a great experience for your team member. And there’s no way a team member that isn’t given the right tools or you’re something in your processes is making it harder for them. There’s no way they’re going to be able to deliver the guest experience that you want them to deliver.

00:12:34:04 – 00:12:52:10

Lance Salsman

So I think of it as full circle with ovation. Ovation is a tool to help us get the guest result, but we do it by taking their feedback to build systems to help our team members have a really great experience when they come to Mike’s, and you’ll see that in Mike’s restaurants for sure.

00:12:52:14 – 00:13:19:09

Zack Oates

Oh, and I love that because it’s not just about it’s wonderful when you can fix a problem in the moment and your team does an amazing job of that, but then what you do such a good job of, and your team is ensuring that the consistent problems are fixed. And I think that you do a good job of getting the noise from the trends, because you don’t want to make a big change just because one person gets really, really mad about something.

00:13:19:10 – 00:13:40:20

Zack Oates

Maybe that’s their preference and that’s okay. But when you look at the trends and it’s like, oh, okay, we’re having several people complain about the queso, this obviously is not working out that well. And so that’s okay. But it’s about the trends as opposed to just the noise. And I think you do a good job of understanding that balance and making sure that you’re fixing in the moment and making it right forever.

00:13:40:20 – 00:13:47:20

Zack Oates

As you think about that guest experience, are there any any strategies, tactics that you use to improve the guest experience? We’re doing.

00:13:47:20 – 00:14:11:22

Lance Salsman

A lot. We’re in startup mode. So I could pull out a laundry list of things that we’re doing. But really investing in technology has been a big one from the beginning. Since I joined in November, we launched Q in our newest restaurant with full suite of CDF kiosks. Order ready board for the guests and something as simple as chips, the sticky chips that go on to orders.

00:14:11:22 – 00:14:32:19

Lance Salsman

That’s not something that they were doing prior, and that was driven a lot by just being accurate, right? That is one of our biggest or was I guess one of our biggest challenges was accuracy. And the biggest thing for us is don’t forget my sources on my to go order, right. Nothing worse than getting your burrito and you’re obsessed with our sauce and it doesn’t come.

00:14:32:19 – 00:15:01:16

Lance Salsman

So having the ability to add that technology solved and we see it in Mira mesa, our newest location, more accuracy is better than the other two locations because they haven’t converted yet, right? So from technology to equipment, all of our food. Think of a food truck evolving into a chain. The equipment that you did when you started the food truck is not going to be the same when you scale it to 100 plus restaurant.

00:15:01:16 – 00:15:26:13

Lance Salsman

So we’ve invested in really heavy equipment that can cook in a in a much quicker way, because if you don’t know, it’s from the holistic region of Mexico, which is like Guadalajara area. And it goes back actually 400 years and it was traditionally made with goat, but it’s stewed, it’s blended with a bunch of spices and it’s stewed all day.

00:15:26:14 – 00:15:34:11

Lance Salsman

It’s usually an all day love affair that you do and you serve it at traditionally at weddings, quinceanera, things like that.

00:15:34:12 – 00:15:37:15

Zack Oates

Places where you don’t care if you get a little bit messy. Right?

00:15:37:21 – 00:16:00:17

Lance Salsman

That’s right. Exactly. And you have the time. Right. Like you think of, like if you have a cookout or you roast something all day in the barbecue or something, it’s very similar, right? It’s like an event. So it’s a traditional family moment, an experience that has moved its way to the north, changed from goat to beef, and now is something you can celebrate every day.

00:16:00:18 – 00:16:22:03

Lance Salsman

And we just got a ovation comment the other day that said, we love you guys so much and you’re now our weekly family tradition. And it’s kind of cool, right? To see like you come full circle. It’s coming from Mexico. It’s rooted in tradition of being a celebratory dish. And now it’s Mike’s is bringing it to families and they love it.

00:16:22:03 – 00:16:46:09

Lance Salsman

And they’ve made it part of their family tradition. So going back to the equipment, we’ve made a way to make Berea and not have to wait eight hours to do it. Some heavy equipment that we use that pressurized cooks it, gets it ready. And then the other thing that we’re doing is we’ve worked with vendors. I mean, it used to be, for example, you may have to cut up all the beef and to cubes and all of that to do it.

00:16:46:10 – 00:17:04:06

Lance Salsman

We’re able to work with suppliers to make that done at the manufacturer, so that it comes ready to relieve that extra work on the employee. So by doing all those things, we’re simplifying it, which is creating that better team member experience so that they can deliver a really good experience to our guests.

00:17:04:11 – 00:17:25:17

Zack Oates

I love that and working in partnership, I know that, you know, our team has loved working with you and your team, and I think that you do such a great job of having that partnership, because understanding that the end goal for all of us is to create a great guest experience and to make a better pal. And I think that if we can figure out how we work to those goals, then great.

00:17:25:17 – 00:17:33:19

Zack Oates

And I think that you do a great job and so does your team. So Lance, who is someone that deserves an ovation, who should we be following?

00:17:33:20 – 00:17:54:08

Lance Salsman

I have so many that I would love to give an ovation to, but I want to call out someone at the restaurant level because nothing in our career is more valuable than watching people grow and seeing them start from a team member and work their way up, kind of like the trajectory of my career. Nothing’s more rewarding than being part of that.

00:17:54:10 – 00:18:14:05

Lance Salsman

And so we have a manager in Mira mesa. Her name’s Carla Gutierrez. She started as a team member at the first brick and mortar with Mike, and she’s started as a team member, and she worked her way up all the way to general manager. She opened our newest location, which is also our highest volume location. It opened really big.

00:18:14:06 – 00:18:38:14

Lance Salsman

She built the entire team, and on top of that, she’s also kind of our little star. She just starred in our introduction to the brand video that we just made for Cool Kernel use. She was on San Diego News last week, actually sharing the food with the newscaster, which was really awesome. And actually, two days ago they got their first unannounced food safety audit and she got 100%.

00:18:38:14 – 00:18:57:17

Lance Salsman

So that’s just she’s just killing it. I mean, I also want to give thanks to Mike and Jim, who helped introduce me to the brand, but really want to give Carla a shout out. And if anyone that’s listening to this Stops by Mira mesa, ask for Carla if you get great service or if you don’t. Either way, give her a shout out.

00:18:57:23 – 00:19:01:11

Lance Salsman

Give her ovation as well. I think she would really appreciate it.

00:19:01:13 – 00:19:13:02

Zack Oates

I love that because really, at the end of the day, it’s GM or bus baby because sitting in corporate lance could come up with all the great ideas, but they need to be executed the right way.

00:19:13:04 – 00:19:35:21

Lance Salsman

Yeah, I was going to say we’re opening our first company store in a couple months, and I sit down with my team. I’m like, we’re about to hire the most important position in this company, the general manager. More important, no offense to anyone in this room, more important than all of our roles. This person is going to be not only our general manager, but at our flagship training location.

00:19:35:21 – 00:19:39:22

Lance Salsman

So this is the role that’s the heart of our business.

00:19:39:24 – 00:20:08:14

Zack Oates

Well, and we talk all the time about like last mile, last mile, last mile. Well, the GM is in charge of the last foot. Right. And and that is what’s so critical because an entire supply chain and years of SOP perfecting and training and everything doesn’t matter if the guest gets the wrong stuff. Right. That’s and and so at the end of the day, and it’s the GM who has the biggest influence over that.

00:20:08:14 – 00:20:23:10

Zack Oates

So yeah, I’ve always been a huge proponent of how do we make the GM’s life better, easier to allow them to do their superpower, which is jamming. So, Lance, how do people find and follow you and Mike’s Red tacos?

00:20:23:12 – 00:20:45:00

Lance Salsman

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Lance Salzman and then also with Mike’s the same. So Mike’s Red tacos is on LinkedIn. And then please follow us on Instagram. We’re building our following. And if you want to get hungry, you definitely want to see our LinkedIn. And it’s at Mike’s Red tacos as well as TikTok. So if you want to follow us on TikTok, it’s at Mike’s Red tacos.

00:20:45:02 – 00:20:57:21

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, Lance, for reminding us that whether it’s from taco fillings to pizza toppings, the most important ingredient is always hospitality. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation.

00:20:58:02 – 00:20:58:22

Lance Salsman

Thank you. Zach.

00:20:58:22 – 00:21:21:24

Zack Oates

Appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovation.