Before co-founding Plein Air, Jason Abelkop sat for a Tastemakers interview covering a career
spent almost entirely on the client side of restaurant marketing.

The operator résumé

The roles are the point: CMO runs at Krystal, Ovation Brands and Fiesta Restaurant
Group, and SVP of Marketing at Arby’s. That is four brands across quick-service and
casual dining, at the level where the marketing budget and the P&L meet.

Why this belongs in the archive

Agencies are usually founded by agency people, and it shows in what they build — beautiful work,
sold to marketers, priced by the project. A founder who has spent a career as the client tends to
build something different, because they have been on the receiving end of the pitch and know which
parts of it did not survive contact with an operations team.

Read against what Plein Air became — a platform deployed across 15,000 locations rather than a
campaign shop — the interview looks like the thesis stated before the company existed. It was
recorded when Abelkop was a subject rather than a founder, which is exactly what makes it worth
keeping.

Listen

Episode 56, on ListenNotes,
player.fm
or Podbay.