Chief Development Officer
Playa Bowls
Jayson Tipp, Chief Development Officer of Playa Bowls, leads rapid market expansion for the brand from franchise recruiting through the development of traditional and non-traditional shops in the U.S. and internationally. With over 30 years of multi unit retail and restaurant experience, Jayson is a results-oriented, innovative and impactful leader experienced in operations, development, marketing and product innovation with both early stage and high-growth companies. Jayson is recognized as a business leader and innovator adept at identifying business opportunities, solving complex problems and leading teams to deliver on growth initiatives. An insightful strategist and analyst, Jayson's ability to leverage analytics and creativity to devise and execute winning strategies has driven value for some of the best-known restaurants, retailers and consumer brands including Starbucks, redbox, Papa Murphy's, Potbelly Sandwich Shop and others.
Jayson has spent the last 8 years working with emerging brands in the restaurant and restaurant-focused tech industries. Prior to that, as a C-Level executive, Jayson led sales and unit growth at Papa Murphy's for 5 years. Prior to Papa Murphy's Jayson held executive leadership roles across marketing, development and strategy for redbox, Potbelly and Starbucks.Jayson started his career following graduate school as a statistician in Psychiatric Epidemiology at Washington University. Jayson is also a professional jazz musician and avid boater. He resides in Portland, OR with his wife, has two adult children and one granddaughter.
Sunday Jan 11
1:00pm - 1:30pm
MicroTouch Stage
Playa Bowls is on the road to 500+ locations by the end of 2026—and as the brand scaled, its legacy tech stack couldn’t keep up: fragmented systems, inconsistent execution, and an inefficient store-opening process. In this session, Playa leaders join Qu and Esper to share how they rebuilt the foundation by modernizing devices and POS, unifying data, and rolling out tools operators actually like using. You’ll get practical lessons on avoiding legacy pitfalls while balancing enterprise control with franchisee empowerment. And yes—there’s one unforgettable KDS story that made paper chits feel instantly outdated.
Bring your earbuds + mobile device to this session! Session audio will be transmitted via a silent conferencing system. Use your own mobile device during the live session to access the audio feed. (Extra earbuds available, while supplies last.)