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

#97.
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sits down with Rachael Nemeth, CEO and co-founder of Opus, for a candid and insightful conversation that challenges outdated ideas about restaurant training and explores what truly drives team performance, profitability, and sustainable business growth.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:

00:00 – The Importance of Goal Setting in Knowledge Retention
 01:02 – Navigating Profitability in the Restaurant Industry
 06:00 – 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