Sharing the Love, One Taco at a Time: Eric Knott on Scaling TikiTaco the Right Way
In this episode of Restrocast, Ashish Tulsian interviews Eric Knott, CEO of TikiTaco, discussing his three decades in restaurants, from Outback to PDQ, and how he is scaling TikiTaco with people, purpose, and a carefully built tech stack.
Eric Knott
CEO, TikiTaco
Eric Knott is the CEO of TikiTaco, the scratch-made, Southern California-inspired taqueria growing across Kansas City. With nearly three decades in restaurants, he rose through the ranks to managing partner at Outback Steakhouse and spent 14 years helping build PDQ, serving as COO. His expertise lies in scaling emerging brands, building people-first cultures, and putting the right technology behind operators.
In this episode of Restrocast, host Ashish Tulsian sits down with Eric Knott, CEO of TikiTaco, for a lively conversation about growing a restaurant brand without losing its soul. Eric’s restaurant story started early, helping out at his grandfather’s social club in Buffalo, New York as a kid. From there, he rose through the ranks at Outback Steakhouse to become a managing partner in his early twenties, then spent 14 years helping build PDQ from its very first restaurant into a multi-state brand, eventually serving as its COO.
Eric shares how he joined TikiTaco in 2024, when it had three stores and just two pieces of technology, and has since helped grow it to seven Kansas City locations powered by 22 carefully chosen tools. He talks candidly about the lessons of growing too fast, why TikiTaco is building density in one city before looking beyond it, and how weekly pop-ups at hospitals and corporate offices turned into a revenue stream of their own. He also explains why kiosks often lift check averages, why he caps tech contracts at 36 months, and why every new tool has to prove its value in a pilot first.
From moving away from top-down leadership to believing that the best ideas come from the people doing the work every day, Eric’s approach is refreshingly human. This episode is a must-listen for restaurant operators planning their next stage of growth, and for anyone who believes restaurants are still a people business that happens to serve food, now with a lot more technology behind it.