Flavor & Founders is a narrative-driven newsletter about the business of food—operator-grade stories and analysis where flavor meets funding, written for founders, operators, and investors in hospitality and foodtech.

About Flavor & Founders

Flavor & Founders is a newsletter about the business of food—where flavor meets funding, and hospitality meets hard numbers.

It’s written for people who live somewhere between the kitchen and the P&L: founders, operators, investors, and the quietly-obsessed folks trying to build real companies in food, beverage, and hospitality.

No trend-chasing, no “10 tips to boost your brand” fluff. Just honest, operator-grade writing about what it actually takes to build in this industry.

What this publication is about

Food is romantic. Payroll is not.
Most coverage stops at the romantic part.

Flavor & Founders sits in the middle:

• The stories behind restaurants, brands, and platforms—what really happened, not the PR.

• The mechanics under the hood—unit economics, incentives, operations, fundraising, tech.

• The people trying to scale something without losing the soul of it.

Think: narrative first, but with the spreadsheets left in. Essays that read like a story, then quietly stab you with a lesson you can actually use.

Who it’s for

If any of these sound like you, you’re in the right place:

• Founders & operators in food, beverage, CPG, hospitality, or restaurant tech

• Investors trying to make sense of what’s signal vs noise in this space

• Executives from other industries flirting with opening “just one little concept”

• Curious insiders—chefs, managers, suppliers—who care about more than tonight’s cover count

If you’ve ever stared at a P&L while still smelling like smoke from the grill, this is for you.

What you’ll get

The core of Flavor & Founders is deep-dive essays—usually 1,000–1,300 words—built around a single idea, question, or story.

You can expect:

• Essays from the trenches
  Real stories about growth, near-deaths, bad partnerships, good deals, and all the weird trade-offs that never make the LinkedIn victory lap.

• Breakdowns of models that actually work (or don’t)
  How certain concepts really make money (or pretend to), why some brands scale cleanly and others fall apart, and what the numbers would have to look like for something to make sense.

• Founder & operator spotlights
  Not hero worship—just honest looks at the people building interesting, resilient businesses in and around food.

• Tech & tools, from an operator lens
  AI, POS, loyalty, delivery, automation. What’s real, what’s gimmick, and how it changes the day-to-day grind for a 40-seat restaurant or a growing multi-unit group.

Cadence: roughly weekly, with room for the occasional extra piece when there’s something worth saying.

Who’s writing this?

My name is Luis Mata. I’ve spent my career bouncing between:

• Almost 15 years in corporate, living in decks, forecasts, and board packets

• And the last several years as a founder and operator in food and hospitality:

  • premium butcher shops

  • steakhouses

  • ecommerce

  • catering and events

  • plus the tech and infrastructure required to hold all of that together

I’ve been a CFO signing off on numbers, and I’ve also spent Saturdays cutting tomahawks and fixing problems that didn’t care what my title was.

I’m writing this because I’ve been lucky enough to sit at some very different tables—corporate, startup, investor, and operator—and I don’t see those worlds talking to each other honestly enough.

What this is not

• It’s not a general foodie newsletter.

• It’s not restaurant reviews.

• It’s not generic startup advice repackaged for hospitality.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. This just isn’t it.

This is for the people who read a story and immediately think: What were the margins? How did the deal get structured? What happened to the team?

How to get the most out of it

• Subscribe so you don’t miss new issues.

• Forward anything that hits home to a founder, operator, or investor who’d appreciate it.

• Reply or reach out if a piece sparks something—disagreement, an example, a story of your own. Some of the best writing will come from those conversations.

You can reach me at:
info@flavorsandfounders.com
or find me on LinkedIn: /in/luisematab/