Structured chaos: highlights from Giggling Squid’s scale-up journey
- S1E13
- 13:27
- December 9th 2025
Giggling Squid didn’t scale by playing it safe.
In this episode’s highlights, Ops Director Darko Salaj shares what it really takes to grow a hospitality brand - through delays, chaos, and curveballs.
You’ll hear:
>> Why resilience, not perfection, is the key to successful openings
>> The value of championing individuality (even at 50+ sites)
>> How tech should support and never replace great operators
>> Why hands-on leadership still wins
Hosted by Conor Sheridan, CEO of Nory.
Connect with Darko Salaj on LinkedIn.
What's Cooking? | A Podcast from Nory
What's Cooking? is the podcast for hospitality operators scaling smart. Hosted by Conor Sheridan – CEO and co-founder of Nory, and a former operator who built and ran multi-site restaurant brands himself – each episode goes behind the scenes of fast-growing restaurant groups to explore the operational challenges that actually matter - like disconnected systems, staffing chaos, and margin pressure.
Through honest conversations with industry leaders you’ll get practical insight into what’s working on the ground right now - from automation and AI to culture, data, and waste reduction. No fluff. No forecasts. Just the blueprint for better hospitality operations at scale.
New episodes every two weeks.