Bloomin' Brands Dossier

What Connection Actually Sells Into a Multi-Brand Restaurant Company

Bloomin' Brands runs 1,448 restaurants across four brands, most of them company-owned, in 46 states plus Guam and 12 countries — a shape that rewards the same practice Connection runs for any distributed, high-transaction retail account: standardized store technology, PCI-grade payment security, and device lifecycle management at scale, not a single big build. Connection has a real, named retail practice behind that, not just a generic reseller catalog.

The identity to hold onto with Rafael Sanchez: Connection isn't pitching to replace Oracle MICROS, the POS, or the new guest-facing app. It's pitching to be the infrastructure and lifecycle layer underneath all of it — the network, the endpoints, the data center, the cameras, the power, and the security operations running behind whatever Bloomin's own IT team builds or buys next.

Retail PracticeStandardized Store Technology

Connection's Retail Technology practice positions the company as a strategic advisor across store systems — inventory, POS, and employee devices — rather than a transactional box-mover.
Preconfigured, ready-to-deploy store technology kits compress turn-up time for new openings and, more relevant here, for the remodel wave already underway.
Real, named expertise: Brian Gallagher, Connection's Retail Strategy & Business Development Director, spent 20+ years leading store operations before joining the practice.

Cybersecurity & PCIBuilt for a Payment-Card-Heavy Footprint

24×7 threat detection and response powered by Cisco XDR, sized for a distributed attack surface spread across 1,448 largely independent POS environments rather than one large campus.
Security Landscape Optimization — a vulnerability-and-strategy assessment that feeds a risk register, well suited to a freshly launched omnichannel ordering app and its delivery-partner integrations.
PCI DSS compliance services spanning assessment, documentation, and remediation for a company whose entire business model runs on card-present and card-not-present transactions.

Store & Kitchen MobilityEndpoints the Floor Actually Carries

Zebra rugged mobile computers, handheld POS, and scanners for servers, expo, and kitchen staff moving fast during a dinner rush.
OtterBox and UAG rugged cases for the curbside and to-go tablets that took on a bigger role as the new app pushed more orders off-premise.

Data Center & CloudInfrastructure Behind the New App

A dedicated Modern Infrastructure & Data Center practice covering hyperconverged infrastructure — Nutanix and VMware, including Cisco Compute HCI on Nutanix — for centralizing the data behind loyalty, ordering, and delivery across four brands.
Disaster Recovery Design and DRaaS, plus Backup-as-a-Service — relevant to any company running its own data center behind a guest-facing app that now has to stay up through dinner service, not just business hours.
Colocation reach through partner Expedient for capacity that doesn't need to be built in-house.

Physical SecurityCameras & Access for Cash-Handling, High-Turnover Sites

Full camera catalog from Axis (410+ SKUs), Motorola (337+ SKUs), and Verkada — a direct fit for restaurants managing cash drawers, inventory shrink, and a workforce with naturally high turnover.
Verkada access-control hardware for unifying badge and camera events across remodeled and newly reopened locations.

PowerUptime for a Gulf Coast-Headquartered, Southeast-Heavy Footprint

APC (Schneider Electric) — rack UPS to facility scale, and Eaton — BladeUPS, PDU G4, and Intelligent Power Manager software for remote battery-health visibility without a truck roll to a single restaurant.
Runs seasonal storm-preparedness content — directly relevant to a Tampa-headquartered company with a Southeast-heavy store base, where a POS outage during hurricane season is a lost dinner rush, not just an inconvenience.

LifecycleRefresh & Disposition for a Shrinking, Remodeling Footprint

Lifecycle and refresh services across the Dell, HPE, and Lenovo lines, plus certified asset disposition — directly relevant to roughly 40 locations closing a year, each one leaving POS terminals, servers, and payment devices that need to be retired, not just unplugged.
The same standardized kit that speeds up a remodel works in reverse for a closure: a repeatable, documented decommission instead of a one-off cleanup.

Who Bloomin' Brands Is Right Now

Bloomin' Brands was born in Tampa in 1988 and never left — and it's in the middle of the most consequential eighteen months in its recent history: an activist investor rewired its boardroom, its CEO retired, it sold most of its Brazilian business, and it hired a brand-new technology chief to help lead a public, funded turnaround. That's exactly the kind of moment a fresh infrastructure conversation lands well.

Who They AreFounded in Tampa, Still Headquartered There

Founded August 1988 in Tampa, Florida; the first Outback Steakhouse opened there that year. Went public in 1991, went private in 2007, then IPO'd again in 2012 as Bloomin' Brands, Inc. — renamed after the Bloomin' Onion — trading on NASDAQ as BLMN.
Headquartered at 2202 N. West Shore Blvd, Tampa, FL — the same market as the rest of this dossier series.
Four brands, 1,448 restaurants system-wide as of June 28, 2026: Outback Steakhouse (659: 544 company-owned, 115 franchised), Carrabba's Italian Grill (203: 186/17), Bonefish Grill (157: 155/2), and Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar (64, all company-owned) — across 46 states, Guam, and 12 countries.
Roughly 64,000 Team Members per the company's own site; other estimates put domestic headcount closer to 91,000 — treat the gap as a reporting-date and scope difference, not a contradiction, and verify before quoting either figure.

The MoneyA Real Public Company, Recently Reshaped

Q2 2026 revenue: $1,015.8 million; combined U.S. comparable sales +2.3%, though combined U.S. traffic was down 1.9% the same quarter — sales grew on check average, not visit count. Full-year EPS guidance was raised twice this cycle.
On December 30, 2024, Bloomin' completed the sale of 67% of its Brazil operations to Vinci Partners for roughly $243 million, keeping a 33% stake and an option to sell the rest in 2028 — a meaningful chunk of consolidated revenue left the balance sheet with that deal.
In November 2025, the company suspended its dividend to fund a publicly announced turnaround and pay down debt — a real signal about where free cash flow is going right now.

The Turnaround$50M Into Outback This Year

The November 2025 turnaround strategy rests on four platforms: a remarkable dine-in experience, brand relevancy, a culture of ownership and fun, and investing in the restaurants themselves.
Roughly $50 million goes into Outback in 2026 — $25M into steak quality and menu redesign, $7M into a new service model, $8M into managing-partner investment, and $10M into marketing, with the marketing mix shifting to 60% digital (from 33% in 2025).
Early signal: Outback posted its first quarter of positive traffic since Q4 2021 in Q4 2025 (+0.9%), even as same-store sales dipped 0.6% that same quarter — real, if fragile, momentum.

The FootprintClosing to Remodel, Not to Shrink

Bloomin' closed roughly 21 restaurants in 2025 and flagged about 22 more; Q2 2026 alone saw 9 closures against 5 openings, netting the system down to 1,448 locations.
Recent closures span brands and states — Outback in Pennsylvania and Iowa, Bonefish Grill in New Jersey and Virginia, several Carrabba's locations in New York — a pruning exercise running in parallel with the $50M Outback reinvestment, not a sign of a company in retreat.

Case File — A Brand-New CIO Still Auditing What He Inherited

Rafael Sanchez became SVP & Chief Information Officer effective June 30, 2025 — about fourteen months into the seat as of this dossier. He came from SVP of IT at Davidson Hospitality Group, and before that held CIO roles at Six Flags and Feld Entertainment, plus senior IT posts at LikeWize, Carnival Corporation, and Burger King Corporation — 25-plus years across restaurants, hospitality, retail, and entertainment. CEO Mike Spanos brought him in explicitly for "enterprise modernization, M&A integration, and cybersecurity enhancements."

A CIO this new, with this exact mandate, arriving in the middle of a funded turnaround, is someone actively re-evaluating what he inherited rather than someone locked into five-year vendor contracts. That's the account's real opening.

Case File — Activist Pressure Already Rewired the Boardroom

Starboard Value LP built a roughly 9.7% stake starting July 2023. On January 2, 2024, a cooperation agreement added Dave George (former COO of Darden Restaurants) and Jon Sagal (a Starboard partner) to the board and created an Operating Committee — George as chair, Sagal alongside Chairman Mike Mohan and director John Mahoney — to push operational improvement directly with management. CEO David Deno announced his retirement four months later; Mike Spanos, an outside hire from Delta Air Lines, took over January 1, 2025. The Brazil sale and the November 2025 turnaround plan both followed.

The whole company has been under a magnifying glass for cost discipline and demonstrable ROI for two years running. That cuts both ways for Connection: budget scrutiny is real, but a clean, quantified, low-drama infrastructure pitch is exactly the kind of thing this board wants to see land right now.

Revenue, comparable-sales, and restaurant-count figures above are from Bloomin' Brands' own Q2 2026 earnings release (SEC filing) and are the most current, primary-sourced numbers in this dossier — reconfirm against the next quarterly release before a live meeting, since both the footprint and the guidance are actively moving. Employee-count figures vary by source; the Brazil-stake sale materially changed consolidated revenue, so year-over-year comparisons should account for it.

Security & Risk — A Clean Record on a Business Built Entirely on Card Data

No evidence of a Bloomin' Brands or Outback data breach turned up anywhere in this research — the company's own SEC filings state only standard risk-factor language, that it maintains an incident response plan and does not believe it has been materially affected by a cybersecurity incident to date. That's genuinely worth leading with. What's also true is that a 1,448-site, payment-card-driven business with a brand-new omnichannel app is a wide and growing target, and the casual-dining industry's own recent history says so.

Case File — Payment Cards Are the Business Model

Every one of Bloomin's 1,448 restaurants runs its own point-of-sale environment processing dine-in, curbside, delivery, and gift-card transactions — PCI DSS scope multiplied across a footprint that size is enormous, and largely independent site to site. A structured, centralized asset-and-vulnerability baseline is the difference between "PCI compliant on paper" and actually knowing where the exposure sits today.

Case File — A New App, New Delivery Integrations, New Surface

Bloomin' recently built and launched a native app with fully integrated ordering across curbside, delivery, and dine-in, tied to the Dine Rewards loyalty program and described internally as a "true omni-channel architecture." That almost certainly means new API integrations with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub sitting alongside the core POS and loyalty data. New, fast-shipped integration surface is exactly where a proactive review pays for itself — before an incident forces the question, not after.

Case File — The Peer Pattern in Casual Dining

Bloomin's own record is clean, but its neighbors' isn't: Darden Restaurants disclosed a breach tied to its Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen brand in 2018 that exposed roughly 567,000 payment cards, and Landry's disclosed point-of-sale malware active across its restaurant portfolio from January to October 2019, stealing card data specifically from order-entry terminals that lacked end-to-end encryption. Restaurant POS environments are a recurring, well-documented target — not a hypothetical one.

For Context, Not a Pattern Claim — A 2015 Incident

A California Outback Steakhouse location reported a stolen POS computer containing employee data, not customer payment data, around 2015. It's old, narrow in scope, and included only for completeness — not evidence of an ongoing problem.

The absence of a public breach notification is not proof of a spotless history — it is the honest result of this research, no more. The Darden/Cheddar's and Landry's incidents are sourced from public reporting and are offered as industry context, not an allegation about Bloomin's own controls. No CISO is named publicly for Bloomin' Brands; the security-leadership structure beneath CIO Rafael Sanchez should be confirmed directly rather than assumed.

Who's in the Room

Rafael Sanchez is the right first call — he owns the technology mandate directly and is new enough to still be shaping it. CEO Mike Spanos and CFO Eric Christel sit above the budget; Chairman Mike Mohan and the Starboard-aligned board members shape the cost-discipline lens everything gets viewed through right now.

Name	Role	What they optimize for	LinkedIn
Rafael Sanchez	SVP & Chief Information Officer (target contact)	In seat since June 30, 2025. Prior CIO at Six Flags and Feld Entertainment, SVP IT at Davidson Hospitality Group, and senior IT roles at Carnival Corporation and Burger King. 25+ years across restaurants, hospitality, retail, and entertainment. Hired explicitly for enterprise modernization, M&A integration, and cybersecurity — still auditing the estate he inherited.	Verify before use
Mike Spanos	Chief Executive Officer · Tampa, FL	Joined September 3, 2024 from Delta Air Lines, where he was EVP & Chief Operating Officer; became CEO January 1, 2025, succeeding David Deno. Also sits on the board. Publicly owns the turnaround strategy and the guidance raises that followed it.	Verify before use
Eric Christel	EVP & Chief Financial Officer · Tampa, FL	Joined as CFO-elect, became full CFO around September 8, 2025. Where capital approval lives — frame any ask with a payback or margin argument he can carry.	Verify before use
R. Michael Mohan	Chairman of the Board (director since Oct 2017)	Chairman since August 2023. Former President & COO of Best Buy (2019–2021, with the company from 2004); also Petco's Lead Independent Director and, since March 2024, its Interim CEO. A retail-operations lens on the board, not a restaurant-lifer's.	Verify before use
Dave George	Director · Operating Committee Chair (since Jan 2024)	Former Chief Operating Officer of Darden Restaurants. Added to the board as part of the Starboard cooperation agreement; chairs the committee pushing operational improvement with management — a credible, insider casual-dining voice.	Verify before use
Jon Sagal	Director (since Jan 2024)	Partner at Starboard Value LP, the activist investor holding roughly 9.7% of the company. His presence on the board is the clearest signal of how closely spend is being scrutinized right now.	Verify before use

No LinkedIn URL in this table was independently confirmed to a single reliable profile — verify each before referencing it in a live conversation. There is no publicly named CISO, CTO, or Chief Digital Officer; treat Sanchez as the owner of the security decision until told otherwise. Titles and board composition move — reconfirm against Bloomin's own investor-relations site before a meeting.

Building Rapport, Responsibly

Two current, professional, and genuinely public openers — nothing drawn from anyone's personal life:

The Real OpenerSanchez's Own Cross-Industry Path

Six Flags, Feld Entertainment, Davidson Hospitality, Carnival, Burger King — Sanchez has run technology for guest experience in four different "people show up in person and expect it to just work" industries before this one. That's a real, public, professional throughline, and it means he's evaluated infrastructure partners before, more than once, recently.

The Second OpenerThe Turnaround Is Already Public and Already Working

Outback's first positive-traffic quarter since 2021 and two consecutive guidance raises are genuinely good news Bloomin's own leadership is talking about publicly. Congratulating specific, dated progress is a stronger opener than anything generic about "the restaurant industry."

Connection: Who's on Our Side

Unlike the healthcare accounts in this series, there's no dedicated restaurant-specific vertical team confirmed here — Connection's public retail practice is the closest fit, and it's a real one, not a stretch.

The RepLorie Tomlinson — a Clean-Slate Account

No prior Connection–Bloomin' Brands relationship turned up anywhere in this research — a clean-slate account, no incumbent to displace, much like Connection's early work with Gerdau. Lorie's six years at HPE ran deep in storage and server infrastructure, disaster recovery and backup, and Aruba networking — direct depth behind the data-center and lifecycle topics below.

Name	Role	Background	LinkedIn
Mickey Bland	President, Enterprise Solutions Group	Joined Connection in Nov. 2022 after ~24 years at Insight Enterprises, most recently SVP & GM of Major Accounts and Global Sales. Reports directly to CEO Tim McGrath — the executive-sponsor escalation path once this account carries real scope.	/in/mickey-bland
Brian A. Gallagher	Retail Strategy & Business Development Director	At Connection since 2016 as the Retail subject-matter expert, after 20+ years leading National Store Operations teams. The practice's lead strategist for a multi-site retail or restaurant account — bring him in for an executive-level conversation.	Verify before use

Bland is sourced from Connection's own investor-relations release and public LinkedIn profile. Gallagher's title and tenure come from his Connection author-page bio (community.connection.com); his LinkedIn profile was not independently confirmed to a single match — verify before looping him in. No dedicated restaurant sub-vertical practice or named restaurant strategist was found; the retail practice is the honest, best-available fit.

Where to Meet Them — One of Them Is in Two Weeks

A parallel channel to the direct call, and an unusually well-timed one this month.

Sep 23–25, 2026 · Grapevine, TXFSTEC — the Restaurant CIO's Own Conference

The Foodservice Technology Conference & Showcase, at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center — the restaurant industry's own technology-specific event, running over 30 years, built for exactly the audience Rafael Sanchez sits in.
This lands about two weeks from this dossier's date — the single most time-sensitive item in it. Worth checking immediately whether Sanchez or his team is attending or speaking.

May 22–25, 2027 · ChicagoNational Restaurant Association Show

The foodservice industry's flagship trade show at McCormick Place, with its own dedicated Technology EP (experience pavilion) — the broadest possible room to be visible in, alongside kitchen equipment, packaging, and menu-innovation vendors.

Apr 4–7, 2027 · PhoenixRestaurant Leadership Conference

At the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa — 1,700+ restaurant-industry executives, skewed toward operations and growth strategy rather than technology specifically, but a real room for Bloomin's C-suite.

Tampa · LocalHome-Market Advantage

Bloomin's headquarters sits in the same Tampa Bay market as Connection's other account-dossier targets in this series — no travel required for informal touchpoints, local business events, or a direct meeting request.

FSTEC, NRA Show, and Restaurant Leadership Conference dates and locations are drawn from each event's own site as of this research date — reconfirm before booking, since show calendars do shift. Whether Bloomin' Brands or Connection is currently registered to attend or exhibit at any of these was not confirmed in public sources; check internally.

The RACE Plan — Reach, Act, Convert, Engage

A cold, clean-slate account with an unusually good reason to open now: a CIO fourteen months into the seat, a funded turnaround under board scrutiny, and a restaurant-technology conference two weeks out. The sequence below turns that timing into a real first meeting, then a scoped engagement.

The research is done; Reach hasn't started yet. The next physical action is finding out whether Sanchez's team is at FSTEC this month.

01 · ReachOpen With Timing, Not a Cold Pitch

Objective: a credible first conversation with Rafael Sanchez, using real, dated context instead of a generic introduction.
Do this: check whether Bloomin's IT team is attending FSTEC (Sep 23–25); if so, request time there. If not, open by referencing the conference, his own cross-industry background, and the Q4 traffic turnaround as proof the homework is real.
Trigger: Sanchez is fourteen months into the CIO seat with an explicit modernization mandate, inside a board-scrutinized turnaround — a genuinely open moment, not a locked-in one.
Avoid: leading with the Starboard activism or the store closures as if either were a crisis — they're context for urgency and cost discipline, not talking points to open on.

02 · ActTurn the Open Into a Discovery Call

Objective: convert the open into a call with a low-friction, no-PO first ask already in hand.
Do this: bring a one-page scope for a PCI-focused asset-and-vulnerability baseline tied to the new omnichannel app and its delivery-partner integrations (Topic 03) — proactive, board-defensible, and cheap to say yes to.
Watch: anything with real capital behind it likely needs CFO Eric Christel's sign-off, given the current cost-discipline environment.

03 · ConvertTurn the Meeting Into a Signed Deal

Objective: one committed next step, framed in the payback and risk-reduction language this board already speaks.
Do this: pair the security baseline with a decommission scope for the year's closures (Topic 05) — two proactive, quantifiable engagements rather than one open-ended pitch.
Watch: Dave George and Jon Sagal's Operating Committee is actively looking for demonstrable ROI — a clean, numbers-first proposal travels further here than a relationship-first one.

04 · EngageBecome the Embedded Partner for the Remodel Wave

Objective: win the second and third engagement before a competitor gets a first look.
Do this: land the standardized store-technology track (Topic 06) as the default kit for the $50M Outback remodel program and whatever follows it.
Owner: Lorie, with Brian Gallagher looped in once the account carries real multi-track scope.
Success metric: a standing MSA spanning at least two of the tracks below — not one closed deal that goes quiet.

Twelve Conversations With Rafael Sanchez

Written as one continuous first call, broken into twelve movements. Each opens with why it lands specifically at Bloomin' Brands, then a rehearsal script — not real quotes from either person, built from public information about the account.

01 The inherited estate 02 PCI baseline 03 New app & delivery APIs 04 24×7 detection 05 Closure decommissioning 06 Remodel standardization 07 Kitchen & FOH mobility 08 Physical security 09 Storm-ready power 10 Data center for the app 11 Managed service desk 12 POS lifecycle refresh

LORIE —Rafael, I know you're fourteen months into a job that came with a pretty specific brief — modernize, integrate, harden. I'd rather use this call to understand where that's actually landing than pitch you a product on our first conversation.

SANCHEZ —That's a fair way to start. Most vendors skip straight to the pitch.

What Did You Actually Inherit?

DiscoveryInfrastructure

Sanchez is new enough that a straightforward, low-pressure discovery question is genuinely useful to him, not just to Connection — most incoming CIOs don't have a full picture of the estate on day 400.

LORIE —Fourteen months in, is your picture of the infrastructure across 1,448 sites complete, or are there pockets you're still mapping — especially anything that came in through an acquisition or predates standardization?
SANCHEZ —Mapping is the right word. The flagship-brand sites are well documented. The smaller-footprint or older locations, less so.
LORIE —That's a common gap at this stage, and a fast one to close with an outside pass. Worth a structured asset baseline across the estate while you're still building the map, rather than assembling it site by site internally?

A PCI-Focused Baseline Across 1,448 POS Environments

SecurityCompliance

Every location runs its own point-of-sale environment. A centralized, structured view of asset and vulnerability data across all of them is the difference between compliant-on-paper and actually knowing where risk sits.

LORIE —Do you have one current, centralized view of PCI-relevant assets and vulnerabilities across all 1,448 sites, or is that more of a rollup from individual site audits?
SANCHEZ —More of a rollup right now. Getting to one live view is on the list.
LORIE —That's exactly what our Security Landscape Optimization engagement is built for — a structured baseline that feeds a risk register instead of a folder of site reports. Worth a one-page scope? It doesn't need board approval to start.
SANCHEZ —Send it. That's the kind of thing I can move on quickly.

The New App and Its Delivery-Partner APIs

SecurityVendor Risk

A freshly built native app with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub integrations plus a new Dine Rewards architecture is exactly the kind of fast-shipped surface worth reviewing while it's still new.

LORIE —Congratulations on the new app — fully integrated ordering across curbside, delivery, and dine-in is a real lift. With DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub all plugged into it now, has the integration layer had an independent security review since launch, or has the team been focused on getting it live?
SANCHEZ —Mostly focused on getting it live and stable. An outside review hasn't happened yet.
LORIE —That's the right moment to do it — cheap to fix now, while the integration is still new, versus after it's carrying a full quarter of order volume. Worth scoping a focused review of just that layer?

24×7 Detection for an Industry That Keeps Getting Hit

SecurityStreamlining

Darden's Cheddar's breach and Landry's POS malware both hit casual-dining peers in the last decade. Bloomin's record is clean — worth keeping it that way with consistent coverage, not just at the flagship brand.

LORIE —Is threat monitoring consistent across all four brands and every site size, or does coverage thin out at the smaller-format Bonefish and Carrabba's locations compared to Outback?
SANCHEZ —It thins out at the edges, if I'm honest. Outback gets the lion's share of attention.
LORIE —That's what 24×7 detection on Cisco XDR is built for — one layer of telemetry regardless of brand or site size. Worth a coverage audit to see exactly where the gaps sit today?

Decommissioning ~40 Closures a Year, Cleanly

LifecycleCompliance

Roughly 21 restaurants closed in 2025 with more flagged for 2026. Every one leaves POS terminals, servers, and payment devices behind — equipment that held cardholder data and needs a documented, certified retirement.

LORIE —When a location closes, is there a standardized process for retiring the POS terminals and back-office gear, with a documented chain of custody, or does it vary by site and by who's closing it out?
SANCHEZ —It varies more than I'd like. Some of it's handled locally without a lot of documentation.
LORIE —Given how many locations that's touching this year, that's worth standardizing now — certified asset disposition with a sanitized, documented chain of custody, so equipment that held cardholder data doesn't just end up in a storage unit or a dumpster.

Standardizing the $50M Remodel Wave

GrowthInfrastructure

$50 million is going into Outback this year alone. Every remodeled location is a chance to standardize network and POS infrastructure to one template instead of whatever a given site accumulated over time.

LORIE —As the $50 million remodel investment rolls out, is there a standardized network and technology build every remodeled site gets, or does it depend on what that location already had?
SANCHEZ —We have a target state. Getting every site to it consistently during a remodel window is the harder part.
LORIE —That's what a preconfigured store-technology kit is built for — network, POS infrastructure, and security bundled to one standard, so a remodel closes the gap instead of just repainting around it. Worth building that template with the remodel calendar you already have?

Kitchen & Front-of-House Mobility

MobilityField Ops

Off-premise volume grew with the new app, which means more curbside and to-go tablets living outside the dining room, plus the usual handheld POS and kitchen-expo devices taking a beating during service.

LORIE —With more off-premise volume moving through the new app, what does device reliability look like for the curbside and to-go tablets specifically — are they holding up to being outside and handled constantly?
SANCHEZ —Not as well as I'd like. That's consumer-grade hardware doing a commercial job.
LORIE —We standardize fleets like that on Zebra rugged devices with OtterBox or UAG cases, plus a repair-or-replace depot so a cracked screen doesn't take a device out of service during a dinner rush. Worth pricing against the current fleet?

Physical Security & Loss Prevention

Physical SecurityAccess

Cash handling and a naturally high-turnover restaurant workforce make camera coverage and access control a direct loss-prevention lever, not just a security checkbox.

LORIE —Are cameras and access control standardized across all four brands, or does it vary depending on when a location was built out?
SANCHEZ —Varies quite a bit, honestly, across brands that came from different eras of buildout.
LORIE —We carry Axis, Motorola, and Verkada cameras plus Verkada access control, and it folds naturally into the same remodel-standardization work as the last topic — one deployment touching each site instead of two separate projects.

Storm-Ready Power for a Gulf Coast-Headquartered Company

PowerResilience

A Southeast-heavy footprint anchored in Tampa means hurricane season is a real, recurring operational risk — and a POS outage during dinner service is a direct revenue hit, not just an inconvenience.

LORIE —With hurricane season hitting your Southeast footprint every year, how confident are you in UPS runtime and generator readiness at the smaller-format sites, not just the flagship Outback locations?
SANCHEZ —Flagship sites are in good shape. The smaller locations are where visibility gets thin, same pattern as the security question.
LORIE —That's an APC-and-Eaton conversation — both in our catalog, plus Eaton's Intelligent Power Manager for remote battery-health visibility without a truck roll to every site. A site-by-site audit before the next storm season seems worth prioritizing.

Data Center Infrastructure Behind the New App

Data CenterCloud

A new app with real-time ordering, loyalty, and delivery integration puts new load on whatever's running behind it. My HPE years were mostly storage and DR design, so this is the part I know cold.

LORIE —With the new app now handling live orders, loyalty, and delivery integration across every brand, is the infrastructure behind it consolidated on a modern hyperconverged core, or still spread across legacy systems from before the app existed?
SANCHEZ —Somewhere in between. The app itself is modern; a lot of what feeds it isn't, yet.
LORIE —That's exactly where a hyperconverged core paired with DRaaS shortens the gap — instead of the app outrunning its own infrastructure, the backend catches up on a template. Worth scoping now, while the app's growth is still fresh?

Managed Service Desk for a Lean Corporate IT Team

StreamliningCost

A turnaround under cost discipline usually means corporate headcount isn't growing even as store-level technology (the new app, remodels) gets more complex.

LORIE —As the app and the remodel program both add complexity, is your support organization growing with that, or is the same team covering more ground than it was a year ago?
SANCHEZ —Same team, more ground — that's the honest answer in this environment.
LORIE —Our Managed Service Desk is built for exactly that — coverage that scales with site count and complexity instead of headcount, which is usually an easier conversation with Eric's team than a string of new hires.

POS & Back-Office Lifecycle Refresh

LifecycleStreamlining

A four-brand system with sites built out across different eras is exactly the kind of estate where aging, unsupported POS and back-office hardware quietly accumulates at the locations that aren't up for a remodel yet.

LORIE —Outside the sites getting the $50 million remodel, is there a standard refresh cycle for POS and back-office hardware, or does it depend on when that location last got attention?
SANCHEZ —Depends on the location, more than I'd like. Some gear is well past where I'd want it.
LORIE —That's precisely what a standardized lifecycle program solves — Dell, HPE, or Lenovo, staged rollout, and it quietly retires end-of-support gear before it becomes a PCI finding, independent of which sites are up for a full remodel this year.

SANCHEZ —You clearly looked at where we actually are, not just the org chart. Most of this is already on my list — bandwidth to chase all of it at once is the real constraint.

LORIE —Then let's not chase all of it. Start with the one that costs the least to say yes to — the PCI baseline tied to the new app. One page, no PO. Everything else can wait behind that.

The Close

Leave with one committed next step, not twelve open threads.

LORIE —Here's what I'll do: scope the PCI-focused asset-and-vulnerability baseline for the new app and delivery integrations as one proposal, since it's proactive and doesn't need a big approval chain. I'll pair it with a decommission scope for this year's closures. The remodel-standardization concept I'll draft separately once I know more about the site calendar. Everything else — mobility, physical security, storm power, service desk, lifecycle — I'll leave as one-pagers ready whenever budget opens.
SANCHEZ —Send the baseline and the decommission scope first. Those I can move on without a lot of internal selling.
LORIE —Done — end of week. And genuinely, congratulations on the traffic turnaround. That's not an easy thing to deliver fourteen months into a new seat.

This week: confirm whether Bloomin's IT team is attending FSTEC (Sep 23–25) and, either way, send Sanchez a one-page scope for a PCI-focused asset-and-vulnerability baseline tied to the new app and delivery integrations — no PO, no board.
Paired ask: a certified decommission scope for this year's roughly 40 closures — documented, sanitized chain of custody for POS and payment equipment.
Parallel track: draft the remodel-standardization concept once the site calendar is known, positioned as the default kit for the $50M Outback investment.
Parallel one-pagers: 24×7 XDR detection across all four brands, managed service desk, storm-ready power, kitchen and off-premise mobility, physical security, and POS lifecycle refresh — sized for whenever budget cycles open.
Finance: bring Eric Christel's organization into any ask with real capital behind it — this board is actively watching for demonstrable ROI.
Escalation: Mickey Bland is Connection's executive-sponsor path once the account carries multi-track scope; Brian Gallagher for retail-strategy-level conversations.

Sources

Rafael Sanchez, Mike Spanos, Eric Christel, R. Michael Mohan, Dave George, and Jon Sagal are real people with public professional profiles, Bloomin' Brands' own investor-relations pages, and industry press coverage. Every fact about Bloomin's people, financials, or programs below is built from those public sources and Bloomin's own SEC filings. The dialogue is a rehearsal script for Lorie to practice with — not a transcript of anything either person has said to Connection. No public Bloomin' Brands or Outback data breach was found in this research; that is not proof one never happened. No LinkedIn URL in this dossier was independently confirmed to a single profile — verify each before use. No dedicated restaurant-specific vertical practice or named restaurant strategist was found at Connection; the retail practice and Brian Gallagher are the honest, best-available fit. Deliberately not used: anything drawn from named executives' personal lives.