Rachael Nemeth on Scalable Training Solutions for the Restaurant Workforce and Beyond

#96.
This week on The meez Podcast, host Josh Sharkey sits down with Rachael Nemeth, CEO and co-founder of Opus, for a candid and insightful conversation that challenges outdated ideas about restaurant training and explores what truly drives team performance, profitability, and sustainable business growth. 

Drawing on her early experiences in bakeries, fine dining, and building an ESL training tool for restaurants, Rachael shares how these foundations led to Opus’s broader mission: empowering the deskless workforce through goal-based, interactive, and micro-training. She argues that the traditional “train everything upfront” model is not only inefficient, but actively harms productivity and retention. 

Instead, she advocates for contextual, real-time learning that evolves alongside your business, focusing on skill application, behavior change, and coaching over memorization.

Throughout the episode, Josh and Rachael explore how great training starts with clear goals and ends with measurable outcomes, emphasizing the importance of content that mimics familiar formats like social media to boost engagement. 

They unpack the psychology of goal setting and knowledge retention, the value of tools like AI, Loom, video, and Scribe, and why perfection in training content can often be the enemy of progress.

Links and resources 📌

Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com
Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez
Follow Josh on instagram: @joshlsharkey
Visit Opus: https://www.opus.so/
Visit Rachael: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-nemeth

Chapters

• 0:00 The Importance of Goal Setting in Knowledge Retention
• 1:02 Navigating Profitability in the Restaurant Industry
• 6:00 From ESL Training to Opus: A Journey in Learning
• 17:37 Understanding Micro Learning and Its Impact
• 19:00 Introducing Opus: A Training Operating System
• 21:16 Implementing Opus Internally: A Case Study
• 30:23 Strategies for Effective Learning and Retention
• 33:19 The Importance of Skill Development in Restaurants
• 36:14 Training Essentials for Restaurant Operators
• 40:55 Contextual Learning and Decision Making
• 44:28 Navigating Decision-Making as Founders
• 52:31 Leveraging AI for Personal Productivity
• 58:22 The Future of Jobs in the Age of AI