Speakers

Rev Ciancio is a New York City restaurant owner and knows exactly how hard it is to operate and brand a hospitality business. He is a hospitality marketing consultant, customer and technology evangelist at Branded Strategic Hospitality, with more than 20 years experience in B2B digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content, local SEO, reputation management and demand generation. He helps technology companies, brands and restaurants to acquire and retain more customers. Rev is known as an “expert burger taster,” pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio, as well as his LinkedIn Profile and hosts the Restaurant Marketing Podcast. He believes that Pizza is a religion.

Larissa Caballero is a growth-focused restaurant marketer. As Director of Advertising, she leads go-to-market strategy for new restaurant openings and drives sustained same-store growth through audience insight, localized media strategy, and high-performing creative. With more than a decade of digital marketing experience, Larissa specializes in building awareness, trial, and loyalty in competitive, student-dense markets. She is especially energized by turning grand-opening buzz into lasting customer relationships and long-term brand affinity.

Cherryh Cansler is VP of Events for Networld Media Group and publisher of FastCasual.com. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

Srishti Handa is the Vice President of Marketing - Brand and Growth at Dave’s Hot Chicken. For nearly five years, she’s helped shape the voice, identity, and growth of one of the fastest-growing restaurant brands in the country, driving national campaigns, menu innovation, and global expansion. Before joining Dave’s, she led marketing for a female-founded produce company, managing retail partnerships with Whole Foods, Kroger, and Bristol Farms. Her career spans food, retail, and consumer brands, including leading marketing for a lifestyle company acquired by India’s largest retailer and overseeing brand strategy for a plant-based frozen food company across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. That journey eventually led her to launch her own frozen food brand, The Temperamental Chef, sold in premium Indian grocery stores and is rooted in her belief that vegetables deserve better PR. Her work has earned her recognition from Forbes 30 Under 30 and, more recently, AdAge 40 Under 40.

Stacey Kane has more than 25 years of experience working with multi-unit restaurant chains as a Head of Marketing and Marketing Consultant. She has worked with such brands as California Tortilla, ThinkFood Group (now Jose Andres Group), Subway and East Coast Wings. Known for her incredible creativity and obsession with data she was one of the pioneers of using social media in the restaurant space and has been named a Top 20 Movers and Shakers by Fast Casual Magazine six times. Her passion is leading emerging brands as they scale for growth and mentoring small teams. Currently, Stacey is a fractional CMO for several fast casual brands including Fresh Baguette, Garden Catering, Mahana Fresh, Mamoun's Falafel and Ziggi's Coffee. Kane is passionate about the industry. She has been a National Pro-Start Judge for 5 years and after serving as a consultant, she was asked to sit on the board of CORE is a national non-profit that is dedicated to providing support to the food & beverage service industry in times of crisis.

Abhinav Kapur is the co-founder and CEO of Bikky, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) built exclusively for multi-unit restaurants. Bikky integrates across all in-store and off-premise channels to help brands understand how marketing, menu, and operational decisions impact guest frequency and lifetime value. This empowers everyone from the C-Suite to the marketing team to make better, data-driven decisions across the guest experience. Bikky powers data-based decisions for brands like MOD Pizza, Dave's Hot Chicken, SPB Hospitality, Krystal, and Eggs Up Grill, and thousands of other locations across the U.S.

Zack Oates is an author, husband, father, entrepreneur, and hot tub aficionado (but not in that order, necessarily). He grew up in restaurants before getting into startups. He was voted Top 100 Entrepreneurs, rang the NASDAQ bell, won the world’s biggest business competition, has been to 50 countries, and started 3 companies. He went on over 1,000 dates before he got married and wrote a book, “Dating Never Works…Until it Does.” He currently is Founder and CEO of Ovation, the no. 1 restaurant feedback platform in America, voted Top 50 Most Influential Supplier by Nation’s Restaurant News, and host of “Give an Ovation: A Podcast for Restaurants.”

Evan Pardue is the Director of Brand & CX at Condado Tacos, one of the fastest-growing brands in the Next Gen restaurant space. Under his leadership, Condado has earned national recognition—named to the Inc. 5000’s Top Private Companies, Chain Store Age’s Breakout Retailers, and FastCasual.com’s Top 100 Movers & Shakers. Pardue has tripled the brand's loyalty program, earning top industry honors including PARTech Punchh’s 2024 All Star Loyalty Program and the 2023 Digital Innovator Award. Before joining Condado, he led digital marketing strategy for Chick-fil-A operators across the Houston metro, while consulting owner-operators navigating multi-unit expansion. Outside of hospitality, he contributes as a guest critic for PaperCity Magazine, covering museum exhibitions outside Texas.

Dan Sokolik serves as the Vice President of Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken, a distinguished 130-unit chain lauded as the #1 Fast Food Fried Chicken in the 2023 USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards. Sokolik’s journey with Lee’s began through his role as the brand manager on their account with a prior ad agency until he officially joined the Lee’s team at the outset of 2022. His tenure has been marked by spearheading a comprehensive brand overhaul. This refresh has unveiled an updated visual identity, alongside the introduction of a new mobile app and loyalty program. With a career spanning over 20 years in QSR marketing, Sokolik has valuable experience across corporate, ad agency, and franchisee levels. He served over ten years at Subway in various capacities, including corporate field marketing and as an agency account director. Prior to Subway, Sokolik also managed a creative agency team for McDonald’s and served as the marketing director for a multi-unit Domino’s Pizza franchise.

Shelly Swanson is a Brand Growth Strategist at direct2you, helping restaurant and multi-location brands turn real customer data into smarter decisions and measurable growth. With decades of experience in restaurant marketing, she partners closely with brand leaders to build targeted programs that drive traffic, improve ROI, and deliver lasting results. Shelly is passionate about building strong relationships and helping marketers move beyond guesswork by using real performance insights to refine strategy, strengthen customer connections, and make every marketing dollar work harder.

Julie Wade is a senior marketing strategist and operator with 20+ years of experience building and scaling restaurant and retail brands across franchise and corporate systems. She is the founder of Barrago Marketing and currently serves as Fractional CMO for Crazy Pita, helping brands align strategy, systems, and execution into measurable growth. She has led marketing for 100+ locations in 17 states, managed multimillion-dollar budgets, teams of dozens, and driven sustained growth through brand strategy, digital innovation, loyalty, and new restaurant openings—including as Head of Marketing at Taziki’s Mediterranean Café. Julie is known for blending creativity with operational rigor and is a recognized industry leader and multi-time honoree.