Jason D. Berkowitz — Restaurant Operations Expert, Speaker & Author

About Jason

Jason D. Berkowitz has opened and scaled 50+ restaurants in California. He’s served as VP of Operations at Umami Burger and Sweet Lady Jane, COO at Tocaya Organica, and consulted for global brands including José Andrés Group.

He’s built training and operating systems for mom-and-pop shops, James Beard-nominated teams, and Michelin star-winning concepts like GUCCI Osteria.

As founder of Arrow Up Training and a board member of the Independent Hospitality Coalition, Jason works at the intersection of operator advocacy and practical training.

The Mission

Strong restaurants make strong neighborhoods.

Main Street runs on small business. Most are running without a proven playbook. We’re fixing that.

Restaurants anchor communities.

Restaurants are America’s #1 first job. When a restaurant closes, a community loses a foundation in local values.

Independents don’t fail from lack of heart.

They fail from lack of systems. Hiring, training, safety, accountability, the operational muscle the big groups take for granted. The playbook is real, and it’s learnable. We’ve spent thirty years inside the groups that wrote it.

So we’re handing it over, out of the box.

The systems the best restaurant groups run on, packaged so any independent can run them without corporate overhead.

In Motion

Where the work lives

Live Now

Arrow Up Training

The operating systems of the best restaurants, out of the box: compliance handled, training delivered, standards held. Running in restaurants today.

arrowuptraining.com →

Launching

The Restaurant Opening Toolkit

Fifty openings, distilled into the critical path from lease to opening day. So the hardest thing in this business stops being a guessing game. Keeping everyone on the same page.

restaurantopening.com · coming soon

Advocacy

Independent Hospitality Coalition

Board member. Fighting for the independents at the policy table in Los Angeles, where the rules that squeeze small restaurants get written.

ihcla.org →

The Book

Please Don’t Sleep With The Host

The cult favorite on what actually happens inside restaurants, and how to lead through it. Every rule in it was earned the hard way.

Buy on Amazon →

Writing

Nation’s Restaurant News

Contributor. Taking the operator’s side of the story to the industry’s biggest room.

On Air

Podcasts & Stages

Telling the mission everywhere operators and their allies listen. Stories from the floor, and a point of view worth arguing with.

Let’s talk →