Episode 185- Building an Empire with Lisa Gasparian

Building an Empire with Lisa Gasparian: How She Turned a Crisis into a Multi-Million Dollar Brand

What do you do when everything you’ve built gets turned upside down?

You build something even bigger.

In this episode of The Restaurant Coach Podcast, Donald Burns sits down with entrepreneur and restaurateur Lisa Gasparian, founder of Cafe Cremerie, to share the remarkable story of how she transformed one of the most difficult seasons of her career into the foundation of a thriving multi-million-dollar café brand.

Like so many operators, Lisa watched the restaurant landscape change dramatically during COVID. The business she had invested years building was no longer the business she wanted to own. Instead of clinging to what was, she made the difficult decision to start over.

That decision led to the birth of Cafe Cremerie—a brand built with intention, systems, leadership, and a vision that extends far beyond a single location.

This isn’t just another success story.

It’s a masterclass in resilience, reinvention, and what it really takes to build a restaurant business that can scale.

Throughout the conversation, Lisa shares the lessons she learned while navigating uncertainty, building a brand from the ground up, creating a culture people want to be part of, and making decisions that position her company for long-term growth instead of short-term survival.

She also opens up about something many successful entrepreneurs rarely discuss: the importance of having a coach.

Lisa explains how implementing The Restaurant Coach® (TRC) Method helped reshape the way she thinks as a business owner, gave her greater clarity as a leader, and provided the accountability and strategic perspective needed to build the company she envisioned.

As she says during the interview, having an experienced coach in her corner became one of the foundational pieces behind the business she’s building today.