130 Restaurants! How CMO Jennifer Bell markets RPM Italian, R.J. Grunts, Aba, Wildfire, M Burger, Shaw’s Crab House, Mon Ami Gabi, Beatrix and 100+ more | Ep. 378

Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson l Presented By Marigold

GURU Media Hub

Growth, Education, Email, Business, Revenue, How To, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Profit, B2b, B2c

5 • 715 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You might not think running marketing for over 130 wildly different restaurants sounds like fun, but Jay Schwedelson finds out that for Jennifer Bell, it’s exactly that. From Michelin-starred fine dining to casual pizza joints, Jennifer has spent 25 years at Lettuce Entertain You, mastering how to scale loyalty, storytelling, and strategy without turning everything into a bland, one-size-fits-all experience.

Jennifer oversees the marketing for Lettuce Entertain You...

As a culinary-driven company, our restaurants - including R.J. Grunts, Aba, Wildfire, RPM Italian, M Burger, Shaw’s Crab House, Mon Ami Gabi, Beatrix and more - offer diverse opportunities. But we all share the same goal: a desire to be the best we can be. If you want to be part of a progressive company with a firm commitment to its people, join the creative team of Lettuce partners and employees. Please visit https://www.lettucejobs.com to learn more about Lettuce and view our current openings.

Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants is an independent, family-owned restaurant group based in Chicago that owns, manages and licenses more than 110 restaurants in Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Washington D.C. with Tennessee coming soon. We were founded in June 1971 by Richard Melman and Jerry A. Orzoff with the opening of R.J. Grunts and today, thanks to the creativity of our partners, we proudly serve guests at more than 60 concepts ranging from fast casual to fine dining restaurants.ㅤ

Download the LettuceEats app: https://www.lettuce.com/lettuceeats-app/

Visit Lettuce Entertain You: https://www.lettuce.com/

Connect with Jennifer Bell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferleberbell/

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Best Moments:

(01:30) Why the company’s founder never wanted to be the biggest—just the best

(03:45) How marketing is structured across 60+ brands without losing individuality

(06:19) The “scary” shift from total flexibility to standardized tech platforms

(08:58) The Scratch Off promo that moved from mailers to the app (and why servers loved it)

(10:45) How they test and scale new tools without forcing every restaurant into it

(11:31) Loyalty isn’t just a program—it’s their biggest strategic asset

(13:45) Why they had to reinvent loyalty metrics across wildly different concepts

(15:00) The matchmaking magic of pairing the right influencers with the right restaurants

(17:39) Jennifer’s favorite way to use AI (and how it makes guest experiences better)

(20:45) Why two drinks help her stop analyzing every menu when dining out

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Check out our 100% FREE + VIRTUAL EVENTS! ->

Guru Conference - The World's Largest Virtual EMAIL MARKETING Conference - Nov 6-7!

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Check out Jay’s YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelson

Check out Jay’s TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@schwedelson

Check Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/

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MASSIVE thank you to our...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. Each episode is packed with quick tips.
0:07.9	They're super short, and at the end, we have some fun. Let's jump into it, and thanks for being here.
0:15.0	We are back for Do This, Not That podcast, presented by Marigold, and we have a very cool human being here. So who's here?
0:22.0	We got Jennifer Bell. Now, Jennifer is the chief marketing officer at Let Us Entertain You.
0:28.3	So Jennifer's been at Let Us Entertain you for over 25 years, leading branding and marketing and
0:33.7	loyalty and digital and guest experience, all this stuff. And you're like, well, what does Let Us
0:37.4	Entertain you? You probably know their brands because they manage and license
0:42.0	more than 60 brands and 130 restaurants in a dozen states. And it's wild what Jennifer S oversees
0:48.4	because everything from Michelin Star stuff, fine dining to, you know, fast, casual, all the
0:54.1	RPM restaurants that you know, like RPM steak and Italian, all that, down to things like Wow, Bow, and Frankie's by the slice. I mean, you name it. They've got it all. So Jennifer is going to share with us, how do you handle marketing? All these brands that are so different. How do you build loyalty? It's going to be amazing. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jay. What an intro.
1:11.2	Thank you. You should intro. are so different. How do you build loyalty? It's going to be amazing. Jennifer, welcome to the show.
1:16.8	Oh, thank you, Jay. What an intro. Thank you. You should intro me in every case I have.
1:18.4	I will. I'll follow you around. I manage it with a very large group of very smart people as we all manage it. But I think the best
1:26.4	part of my career is starting my career with Lettuce
1:29.5	when I was, you know, I was 23 years old. So I got to see it in a stage what's very different
1:36.9	than what it is today. And I got to grow up essentially with the company. And the company is now 54 years old and let us entertain you yes
1:46.5	our biggest distinctive strength that we have is our variety of brands and it makes us unique
1:53.4	we're not going to open a thousand wildfires or a thousand r pms that's not our business model
1:59.0	rich melman who's our founder his motto is not to be the biggest or the richest, but to be the best we can be. And working for a company who just strives to be better every day and pursues excellence is what kept me here all those years. Plus, I got to really flex so many different parts of my brain.
2:20.9	I started as the assistant to the vice president of marketing. I went into PR. Then I went into
2:27.4	web development and I brought a web team in house. Then I went into loyalty and gift cards and building apps. And, you know,
2:36.0	the 25 year journey that I have has just been full of wonderful learnings, a lot of failures,
	...

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