Restaurant Owners Uncorked - By Schedulefly

Wil  sits down with Emily Williams Knight, CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association (TRA), which represents 58,000 restaurants, 1.4M employees, and nearly $137B in annual sales. Emily explains how the TRA protects a pro-business regulatory environment so operators can focus on guests and teams, not red tape. She shares a pandemic origin story: brand-new in the role, she built a “war room,” forged bipartisan relationships, helped shape PPP/RRF fixes, and pushed for one of the earliest statewide re-opens, becoming a nightly “north star” for Texas restaurants.Today’s headwinds: uncertainty across demand patterns, labor/immigration constraints disrupting the full “plant-it to plate-it” chain, protein inflation (beef unlikely to ease until ~2028 due to shrunken herds, import frictions, and disease risk), and looming seafood import tightening. Emily flags swipe fees (3–4%+), opaque delivery chargebacks/penalties, and rising insurance/rent/cleaning costs that small operators can’t keep passing to guests. TRA’s approa