Courtney Mankin is president of and partner in The Social Order Dining Collective, the company that includes The Jones Assembly and Spark, as well as franchise locations of Fuzzy's, and Dave's Hot Chicken. For the past two years, she's participated in a Leadership OKC hospitality panel at Jones, and in both cases, I've been uber impressed by her grasp of the issues and her ability to articulate complex ideas clearly. I asked her to come on the episode to talk about the numbers that matter in restaurants, which we get to in the second half, but her story is interesting enough that we barely got to the ostensible main point, which is completely my fault, and honestly, completely fine given the conversation.

After the mic was off, she told us how she became president of Social Order, because it's a question I should have asked when the "tape" was rolling. The story of an OU student becoming a cocktail waitress at Seven47 (RIP) and then working her way up to president of the company is more than an inspirational story; it's evidence of her grasp of the issues, her people skills, her diplomacy and competence, and her confidence in the path she chose, which includes her husband, Hunter, who is also a partner in Spark, and their three sons. She admits to preferring the anonymity of the president's role, while also missing the human interactions, especially with the team, that comes from working hospitality. The pull of the front of house took her from speech pathology major to president of one of the state's most successful and socially conscious hospitality companies.