Miranda Dietz’s Career Pivot: From Paramedic to Supply Chain Leader at Rise Brands Columbus

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Miranda Dietz, director of procurement at Rise Brands. They are a Columbus, Ohio based company that develops immersive entertainment experiences through its popular venues, including pins mechanical and 16 bit arcade.

Their goal is simple, bring people together through fun, creativity and memorable moments. Miranda’s role involves handling supply chain and vendor relationships that keep amazing customer experiences running smoothly. She comes to this position having worked as a paramedic before transitioning into supply chain leadership at BrewDog USA. Through these positions, she gained extensive experience managing operations and logistics.

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All right, back to our guest today, the procurement director of Rise Brands, Miranda Dietz. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Miranda Dietz (02:06)
Thank you, Anthony. Good to be here. I hope you’re ready. I have big energy all the time. I hope you can handle it.

Anthony Codispoti (02:11)
⁓ boy. ⁓ that sounds like a challenge.

I’m excited now. Okay, so you’re a great example, Miranda, of people are rarely, if ever just one single thing, right? You started out as a paramedic, then later moved into customer service roles before getting into supply chain responsibilities, which is your current passion. Help me connect the dots here.

Miranda Dietz (02:36)
A lot of dots to connect. Yeah, first life spent 10 years as a paramedic firefighter Super passionate about it loved it life happened I had a medical condition that came out of nowhere ⁓ And I had to pivot first I pivoted away from the firehouse and then I had to pivot away ⁓ from the hospital base as a medic as well and so during that time it came on really quickly and it was the first, you know huge adversity spot in life where it was like

What do I do? What am I doing? I was two months ⁓ out from marriage, right? We were getting ready to fly out to Vegas and get married, my husband and I, and I had to find a new job, not only a new job, but a new career. So I popped into corporate world, into customer service, and then it all kind of…

flooded together from there. So I was at Ashland, a chemical producer. ⁓ Supply chain bit me while I was there. I was there for about eight years. ⁓ And then once I knew that I was done in corporate world, kind of putting a lid on my personality a bit, I knew that it would be fun to find like a super authentic brand that I was passionate about. BrewDog popped up.

I took it shortly after they came to the US ⁓ and so had a lot of fun there. Spent almost six years there really building out that supply chain, learning as much as I would have in maybe 15 years in a corporate world because it’s so fast paced, right? ⁓ And then after that, I’ve recently joined RISE. So I’ve been at RISE for a little over a year and a half now. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (04:13)
So are you comfortable saying more about the medical condition that really altered what you were able to do?

Miranda Dietz (04:20)
Sure, you’re just digging right in there to meet my energy, aren’t you? ⁓ Yeah, I was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, which is an autoimmune disease. I was having bouts of ⁓ vertigo that would last anywhere from an hour to a week. It was absolutely debilitating. A high percentage of Meniere’s patients don’t know how and where to start advocating for themselves and chasing treatment. A lot of them claim disability.

⁓ And so for me that was never an option. That’s not ⁓ what I was going to allow to happen. so yeah, I unfortunately I did have to leave my career as a paramedic. It wasn’t safe for me to have vertigo in the middle of a fire. It wasn’t safe for me to have vertigo while I was walking hospital hallways or starting IVs on people, right, or treating traumas. And so that’s why I had to pivot away from that and find a desk job on

you know, for lack of better terms. And so that is why I pivoted over into customer service in the corporate world.

Anthony Codispoti (05:27)
So I’m not very familiar with Meniere’s disease. I’m just doing a search on it here. Is there something that triggers this? Something that causes it? I don’t know.

Miranda Dietz (05:35)
They don’t know. Yeah, they don’t

know. Yeah, I’ve had ⁓ lots of bouts of different things since that have kind of tied back to it, but it’s all a part of ⁓ an autoimmune disease where your body kind of plays tricks on itself. So I’ve had multiple surgeries to fix the symptoms of that, right, and to correct that and kind of put my life back into a very active space, right? So all is well now. Knock on a lot of wood.

Anthony Codispoti (06:06)
Okay, so these surgeries, these procedures have been successful and you no longer have symptoms or they’re just greatly reduced.

Miranda Dietz (06:14)
Greatly reduced. I’m deaf in my left ear. ⁓ That is a symptom of that and some of the surgeries that I had as well. a lot of a lot of adversity in this little body. I always joke that I have an 80 year old body. ⁓ So a lot of little adversity in here, but you know, that’s one of those things and I’m sure we’ll get into it some of the questions, but it’s like my philosophy is I refuse to ever ever ever put myself in victim mentality. I’m always in a grateful space, right? That is

just something that I’ve chosen as my real mind frame ⁓ in my life and that has really gotten me through so much adversity right. It doesn’t ⁓ it doesn’t always take the suck out of the moments I like to say right and so we have to allow ourselves to feel those but I am just so grateful to be here and to be able to always fight through this and find wild success while doing it right and inspire others.

along the way that it takes all of that away, right?

Anthony Codispoti (07:19)
Is that something you think you were born with or was that something that you sort of sought out and acquired that idea of I won’t allow myself to be in a victim mindset?

Miranda Dietz (07:32)
yeah, I think I acquired it.

a bit along the way, right? ⁓ You know, it started in childhood. I know, like, I didn’t come from a really opportunity-rich place geographically, right? ⁓ And so I always knew it also wasn’t ⁓ a diverse upbringing, right? And so culturally, ⁓ and so I always knew from a young age, I remember from a very young age, like, I always knew I just wanted more. I wanted something different. Like, it’s not right, it’s not real.

it’s just different, right? I wanted something so much more. ⁓ And then once I left for college, I knew that I wanted to continue to chase more, to be completely vulnerable. I’ve always been running so that I didn’t have to go back, honestly. ⁓ I’ve turned that into a superpower. It could be a sickness, honestly. But I don’t want to win. I have to win. I never want to go to that place that’s not opportune.

I always, always, always will chase opportunities for myself and my family.

Anthony Codispoti (08:40)
Help me understand that superpower a bit more. Are you saying that it’s that you just keep going, you just have to drive?

Miranda Dietz (08:47)
Yeah, I mean a lot of it is grit, right? A lot of it is grit. It’s the hustle to keep going. ⁓ It’s that I’m not a victim. I’m grateful. I have that mentality, right? That yes, this may suck right here, right now, but we’re going to identify the problem and find a solution, period, right? We’re not gonna sit here and waste our time ⁓ really being consumed by why us, why now, why this, right? ⁓

the root cause and we’re going to fix it right we’re gonna have a problem we’re gonna move forward with it so I think always moving forward never being stuck in the past becomes a bit of that superpower that like really just fuels my engine constantly

Anthony Codispoti (09:35)
You know, one thing I’m always fascinated by, and I don’t know that there’s a clear answer to it, is trying to understand what allows some people like you, Miranda, to have these hardships in their life, but not allow that to drag them down the drain. And rather, they almost use it like as a fulcrum to lever themselves into a better life position.

Whereas some people, they get stuck in the past. They hold on to that. It becomes a source of bitterness and anger for them. Has this been anything that you ever thought about? And what is it that allows you to go here while other people don’t seem to have that ability?

Miranda Dietz (10:18)
Yeah, Anthony, I think really it goes back to what I was saying before as far as I came from that in my community growing up, even in my family growing up, right?

Maybe they didn’t know there was any different, right? It had been cycles and cycles of like, okay, we are stuck here. This is our life. This is what we’re destined to be or where we’re destined to be. We’ve hit the ceiling, right? There are no opportunities here. ⁓ I refuse to believe that. I think that there is always a way, no matter the struggle that you’re coming from, right? And…

that point, like we’re all struggling in some way, we’ve all struggled in some way, we’re all going through and have gone through hardships in some way. I think we don’t talk about those things enough. I’m probably more vulnerable than most. I’m a very honest Abe. Like you can ask me anything, I’m going to be honest about it, but why? Because I want

other people to know that we’re all bred from the same cloth, right? Like we’re all torn from the same cloth, we all put our pants on the same way, we’re all struggling out here and if we take the time to live in a grateful space and just accept that yes challenges come but it really is a mindset to get through those and not to waste time, right? Then I truly believe like we can change our own destiny ⁓ in that way.

Anthony Codispoti (11:47)
So hearing that story, Miranda, makes it even more surprising that you have steered your mindset in this direction. The fact that you grew up where the mindset was very different. That’s what you were surrounded with. That is what you knew. Was there somebody you met along the way that told you, there’s a different way to think about these things? Or how did you stumble upon it if that’s not what was around you?

Miranda Dietz (12:14)
Yeah, I mean…

to be really vulnerable here, Anthony, I left. I separated from it, right? I knew there had to be, and I can’t even explain it, I just knew, like there’s always been an innate drive in me that I knew that there had to be something else. I knew the world was round and not flat. I wasn’t gonna fall off a cliff if I ran out to try and find something else, right? And so I knew that I had to explore. I was born curious, I was born hungry, right? And that’s the way that

I innately have always always always been, which is very different from what I came from. And so I knew

But like from the rip that in order to find those things, in order to find something new, to be something different, I had to leave. I had to fly the nest. I had to figure it out. And so, you know, I did that for college, came to Columbus, fell in love with it, met an entire melting pot of humans, right? And just loved it and kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And that’s not where adversity stopped, right? There have been a lot

of adversities, there’s still a lot to come I’m sure down the train tracks right, but I think really proofing through a grateful mind frame versus victim mentality through every single one of those things, I am confident that I will make it through.

I think that’s the mind frame you have to get yourself through is you know other challenges are coming, like this isn’t the last, other things are coming. Are we wishing for them? Are we manifesting them? No, of course not, right? But they are coming eventually. But we have to really wrap our mind around and know we can make it through those things.

Anthony Codispoti (14:03)
At a curiosity, how do you think your life is different with no hearing in one ear?

Miranda Dietz (14:12)
Life is so different. I don’t mean to chuckle at that question. I think if I were to spend time thinking about it, I guess, ⁓ I would realize how drastically different it is ⁓ and how… ⁓

much of a burden, quite frankly, it is at times, but that’s another thing where it’s like control the controllables, okay? I cannot control the fact that I can’t hear out of my left ear. I just can’t, right? So instead I am walking in every single room ⁓

subconsciously strategically placing myself where I’m going to be able to hear everybody around the board table without an issue. I want to make sure I’m getting all of that information. So it’s just something that now subconsciously is inside of me where it’s like my body thinks for me. It’s like, hey girl, we have this thing. Make sure you position yourself so that you are ultimately successful and it’s not a thing. Most people that meet me even after a long period of time, they have no idea

Anthony Codispoti (15:18)
Mm-hmm.

Miranda Dietz (15:23)
that I’m deaf in my left ear because I just compensate for it, right? ⁓ And so that’s another thing that like I never will allow myself to be identified in that way, right? Where it’s like, Miranda has a disability, right? Like she’s deaf in her left ear. We have to be cautious of that. and I’m not ashamed of it by any means, but obviously that is like a daily, what could be a struggle. Yeah, I a sticker on my forehead for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (15:27)
Okay.

You don’t put a sticker on your forehead. Yeah.

Miranda Dietz (15:51)
But it’s just something that you deal with, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (15:51)
Yeah,

let’s talk about supply chain. So you mentioned how BrewDog was such a fantastic experience, accelerated learning ⁓ in this space because guys were just moving so fast. For folks who don’t know what is BrewDog and what were you doing?

Miranda Dietz (15:56)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, BrewDog started as a brewery with two dudes and a dog in a garage in Scotland actually. And so they moved over to the US and expanded in 2017. I went there, I’m sorry, 2016. 2017 is when I joined. So they were just shortly over here when I joined.

And BrewDog to date is a global name, right? They’re in nearly every single country they’ve expanded across the world. ⁓ And so I moved there right after they came. I built the supply chain around us ⁓ and survived COVID, right? When we were on lockdown, I remember like having to pivot and run down to the floor and have the production team pivot over to cans instead of cakes.

because everything was shutting down, right? So talk about real adversity in business there too, right? We had to furlough 85 % of our staff during that time because bars were shut down, no one could come into bars, right? Thankfully, quickly it became not just how we’re gonna survive, but how do we survive and bring our people back, right? That was our focus that entire time. And then people were bench buying and they weren’t just bench buying toilet paper,

were

binge buying beer too. People still like to drink right? Lo and behold people still like to drink even in their own homes, thank goodness. And so the grocery chain.

went nuts, right? And so it was, okay, we’re going to pivot to cans, where are going to get those cans? Because now every one of the beverage industry is trying to get cans, right? Things like that. ⁓ There was true, true adversity during my time there. I always say in true startup entrepreneurial businesses like that, you’re learning more in five years than you could maybe 15 or 20 in a traditional world with so much red tape.

Anthony Codispoti (18:16)
So where did you find the cans? Because everybody else was going through this exact same process, right?

Miranda Dietz (18:21)
I can’t tell all my secrets. I can’t tell all my secrets, you know?

No, that’s when I really learned that you had, I think most people learned this hopefully, that you have to diversify your supply chain, right? You always have to have a plan B, C, D, E, F in your back pocket so that you can flex and in a short lead time too, like what happens.

God forbid something like that happens again, right? How would you get through it? So it’s not as easy as going through that and learning and then forgetting about it, right? It was just a blip. was, it came with a ton of supply chain learnings, right? There were, know, port births were backed clear up into the ocean for months, right? I mean, we couldn’t get things from overseas, things like that. You have to diversify your supply chain, period.

right? So that was one of the biggest learnings there.

Anthony Codispoti (19:17)
So you had this great job. were learning a ton for a brand that was just going up and to the right. Obviously, COVID was, whew, I mean, it had that impact on a lot of folks. Why the decision to leave this great place and go to a smaller company and rise brands?

Miranda Dietz (19:34)
Yeah, of course.

⁓ I was six, six, I can’t even say it, succession training like crazy. I had built an amazing team. mean, a brilliant team. was so lucky to have found these humans, for these humans to find us, right? And the team around me, even at the leadership table was incredible, right? ⁓ I really felt the last year there, I really knew a year before I left, honestly, that I was,

getting to the top of my ceiling in the way of kind of what now, right? What does that next chapter look like? I’m always curious, I’m always hungry, right? I had learned a ton and now it was time to really develop the key folks on my team that I had built and let them fly a little. So how did we do that? And there are times in leadership that listen, I’m no savior but the truth is

unless you walk away in a flat org, there are times when there’s not much development or you know.

rise capability for the folks beneath you on your team, right? So that was a piece of it too. But more than anything, I was curious and I was hungry. It had been almost six years and I was ready. I was ready to build another team to do the same thing all over again, but with all of the learnings that I brought with me. So that was really, spent a year, ⁓ transparently, I spent a year interviewing with quite a few teams.

I

knew that it had to be organic fit. I knew that it had to be just a really kick-ass group of humans that was gonna fit really well in this chapter of my life too. And it took me a year, honestly, it took me a year. I saw the posting, I applied for it, and almost immediately things kicked off and it happened pretty quickly at that point with Rise, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (21:37)
What was that year off like for you?

Miranda Dietz (21:41)
I didn’t take a year off, ⁓ just to be clear. It was basically my part-time job finding, you know, discovering, you know. Yeah, still with BrewDog.

Anthony Codispoti (21:48)
so you were still with BrewDog looking for

a year. You didn’t put in your notice until you knew you had the next thing. Okay.

Miranda Dietz (21:54)
No.

No, still

with BrewDog, still completely poured into that business. I’m all in until I’m out kind of gal, always will be, right? But I just knew ⁓ mentally I had accepted and knew like, okay, what is the exit strategy here, right? All in until I’m out, deep succession training, right, of my folks, like deep work into the growth of BrewDog, but what does the future look like?

time job became looking at what are my needs, what are my wants, and what does this next chapter look like.

Anthony Codispoti (22:34)
And so your role now with rise brands is very similar to what you had before with BrewDog.

Miranda Dietz (22:41)
Yeah, very similar, really parallel market, right? Hospitality. ⁓ And so that was a really organic fit that I could bring a lot to. It’s definitely not beer manufacturing. ⁓ But I didn’t really know anything about beer before I was in beer. And then I knew way too much very quickly, right? Kind of the same at Rise. I knew honestly nothing about gaming or pinball machines or things like that before I started. But here we are a year and a half later. I know a decent amount.

right enough to get us all in trouble. And so yeah, that’s been really fun.

Anthony Codispoti (23:18)
So tell us about Rise Brands, the genesis, who’s behind it, what the concepts are.

Miranda Dietz (23:25)
Yeah, of course. so RiceBrands has been around about 13 years now. It started by founder and owner Troy Allen, who is an absolute brilliant visionary that runs at the speed of light. Right. And so ⁓ it is fun. It is gritty. It is scrappy. It is lean. So a lot of commonalities with my previous experience at BrewDog. And that’s why it fits and works. We have three concepts.

⁓ Currently so we have multiple pins locations. That’s probably the most recognizable brand of ours So pins mechanical locations kind of along the East Coast ⁓ Clear as south as Austin, Texas now that we opened last year so really specializing in Duck pin bowling arcade pinball ⁓ Bar space right a place to really bring everybody together and create some really cool kick-ass memories ⁓

and then we have 16-bit, we have a single 16-bit arcade location. The difference there is more nostalgic arcade box games, right? But same type of concept as pens.

And then we have an upscale ⁓ concept called No Soliciting, which is a member only. Soon we’ll have three. We’re currently building one in Westerville that opens in February, which is really fun and exciting for us. ⁓ But that is a whole different vibe than Penn’s Mechanical where you take your kids on Sundays, you know?

Anthony Codispoti (25:01)
And I was going to say, Penn’s Mechanical is a place we’ve taken our kids to on many a Sunday. We’re here in Columbus where the company is headquartered and there’s two different locations that are pretty accessible to us. Actually a third ⁓ we don’t go to as often and our kids love it. And it is something for everyone. Mom gets a cocktail, kids are playing the games that I grew up with. ⁓ There’s the duck bin polling.

Miranda Dietz (25:07)
Yeah.

⁓ yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (25:29)
bowling like you talked about, it’s a lot of fun. the the app, absolutely. It’s very, it’s very heartfelt. And one of the notes that I made here was telling my wife, we need to go back there this weekend, because it’s been a little bit and sometimes when it’s cold outside, we’re recording this in January. Like, you know, you get a little stir crazy, you need things to do. And yeah.

Miranda Dietz (25:32)
Thanks for the plug there, by the way. That was really good. Maybe we’ll hire you on our marketing team.

I love that.

No, I love that. The cool part about

our pins and indie 16-bit locations is you can bring food in too. So you can kind of like get in there, start playing DoorDash food, a couple of our locations, have food trucks on site. We have Mikey’s Late Night ⁓ Slice connected to a couple of our locations too. So it’s kind of like a get in, tuck in, have some fun, stay awhile.

Anthony Codispoti (26:15)
And I’m glad that you mentioned Mikey’s. He’s been another guest on the show, longtime friend here in Columbus. yeah, the spaces that they’ve built out there sort of connected to you guys are beautiful. And I think a nice compliment. So tell us about the membership concept. You said there’s about to be three. So currently there’s two. Where are they?

Miranda Dietz (26:28)
Yeah.

Currently there’s two.

We have a location downtown, not far from our pens downtown. And then the second is in Dublin. It’s right ⁓ adjacent to the Pearl in Bridge Park there.

right in Dublin. And so the third is in Westerville right off Main Street. ⁓ They’re like the perfect kept little secret. That’s not a secret. But yeah, it is high-end bourbon bar. ⁓ The one downtown has a full kitchen as well. So you’re talking like a full-on dining experience, bar experience. They do some events for members, things like that.

Anthony Codispoti (26:47)
Okay.

And so this is the kind of thing where I’m paying a monthly or an annual membership fee and that gets me access to the place, kind of walk me through it.

Miranda Dietz (27:21)
Yep, that’s right. It’s a monthly membership fee. There’s an online schedule portal that then you get access to. So you’re just scheduling yourself in, making your own reservations. Of course, there ⁓ is a specialist as well that can help out with any of those things. A lot of people use it for even corporate lunches downtown. We see that a lot. Corporate lunches, meeting space, right? Something nice to be able to talk away and actually hear each other and have a little bit of private space.

Anthony Codispoti (27:49)
that’s nice. And you know, my mind immediately went to, you know, I talked to a lot of folks in the industry, and things are flat or down, not for everybody, but for a lot of folks, you know, economies hit a number of people hard, people at the higher end, a lot of those folks are doing well. So that suggests to me, clearly, that’s your clientele. And that’s why you’re expanding this concept right now.

Miranda Dietz (28:12)
Yeah, there are multiple reasons, but definitely. mean, think about, ⁓ you could think about the overhead, the amount of owner furnished items that goes into a smaller build out like that, just to simplify it, right? Versus like a pens mechanical that has everything from bowling lanes to a wide variety of top shelf alcohol to on and on and on and on and large square footprints, right? I mean, you’re talking 30,000 square footprint on average, maybe on some

those pens, that’s a lot of space to fill. It’s a lot of staff to have, right? When you have something smaller and more intimate, higher quality, right? The prices are a bit higher for the quality trade-off, right? You’re talking about higher profit there as well, right? So higher profit, proofed out at a third, right? And proof that out.

Anthony Codispoti (29:06)
So in your role in supply chain from a procurement standpoint, what’s the most challenging part about bringing those creative visions of rise brands to life?

Miranda Dietz (29:18)
yeah the cost honestly, it’s the cost and I think every business would say this excuse me whether it is

whether it is hospitality or not, right? All of us feel it in our own homes, right? The cost of eggs today versus the cost of eggs yesterday. Inflation, labor, all of the things, it’s the cost. How do I personally control the cost at Rise, especially while we’re building, but while we’re sustaining to current locations, right? Like, how do I control those costs and still drive for the creative quality that we want? Because the thing at Rise that is different than

anywhere I’ve been before is it is.

You know, quality is everything. It is everything from big concept things to every tiny little detail, right? If you walk in a no soliciting bathroom, you have printed ⁓ napkins to wipe your hands on, right? It is every tiny little detail because it all takes part in those core memories that we’re trying to get you to build. And so it’s how do I control those costs ⁓ while driving that quality experience in this quality item. So yeah.

I’ve put some aces up my sleeves over the years on how to do that.

Anthony Codispoti (30:37)
So as I think about the Pins experience for me, it’s very nostalgic, right? There’s a lot of games there that I played growing up. ⁓ Frogger, ⁓ Centipede, Donkey Kong, and it’s fun to watch my kids now learn those rules and play them too. Is it hard for you to find those games or do people still manufacture them to look and behave like the old ones?

Miranda Dietz (31:03)
Yeah, this is the sexy part of the business for sure. ⁓ Games, like I said, I had no idea when I first started. I went out to our distribution and our gaming center to kind of take a tour and I walked in and I said…

Holy crap, like this is really cool, because it is just games as far as the eye can see, right? It is really, really cool. But the magic behind that is we have a team of unicorns, honestly, a team of unicorns that really live, eat.

breathe this lifestyle. They’ve been in it for decades. They know who to buy from, where to buy from, when to buy, right? Arcade boxes as you see them like the old school Pac-Man, the centipede, right? Those things, you know all the ones you’re listing, those aren’t built anymore, right? And so

Anthony Codispoti (31:57)
Okay.

Miranda Dietz (31:59)
those are true nostalgia and the fact that you there is just no store that you can go to and so we’re going to garages with some guy from eBay, you know. So there are stories with every single one of those games that you’re touching inside of a pens or a 16-bit which makes it like really super super special and super magical.

Anthony Codispoti (32:23)
So I haven’t been to a 16-bit yet. Kind of explain to me what’s the different customer experience like between the two.

Miranda Dietz (32:30)
Yeah, so same customer experience, more based on the nostalgic arcade. So they don’t have pinball, they don’t have duck pin bowling. We have one standalone 16-bit and indie. We still do that concept within pins. ⁓

a lot of our pens locations are kind of combo locations where it’s pens and 16-bit. If you, for example, if you walk into the Dublin, Ohio pens, that’s a combo model. So if you’ve ever been in there, you can visualize it in your head when you first walk in the bridge street side.

that ⁓ is kind of the 16-bit model. It’s all the old arcade boxes, right? All those things you’re walking through. And then you turn the corner of that massive backside and it becomes Pinball Alley and your bowling lanes and those different things. That’s what really separates that off. But still, same concept.

Anthony Codispoti (33:21)
Yeah.

So going forward is the plan more pins and more of the membership, the no soliciting model. So not doing sort of a standalone 16 bit.

Miranda Dietz (33:34)
Yes. Yes.

Yes, as of now, yes. Yep, yeah we’ve built three PENZ locations just in 2025, Anthony. So we expanded

kind of at a massive rate, right, with the Lean team that we have and for all of our locations, a bit more magic behind the scenes to let you know numbers for all of our locations currently. Our home office and distribution center combined, we’re talking about roughly 50 people.

So talk about fast pace, scrappy, lean, right butts in the right seats, right humans. I mean, we have an incredible team that’s making it happen behind the scenes.

Anthony Codispoti (34:23)
Yeah, and the the design of these places is really cool. If people are listening and they’re not familiar with it, I’ll invite you to go check them out at rise brands.com. You can see you know all the different brands, but they’ve got you know, interior and exterior shots of the pins locations and they’re just they’re really cool. They’re just really modern and well done. ⁓ And it’s so interesting to hear this is what I had sort of assumed, but I wasn’t sure that the games are all truly vintage. They don’t make these anymore. So you’ve got to find them.

maybe refurbish them in some cases, but do you think at some point that will ever limit your ability to growth being grow because you can’t find these things? Or is that not

Miranda Dietz (35:03)
Now you’re triggering

all the risk trauma here. Yeah, I mean, yes and no, right? It’s like any other… ⁓

sexy collection, right? That’s really what it is, right? Is a collection. We own all of our pinball. We own all of our arcade. So it is also an amazing asset if you think about it that way, right? All of our arcade is free play. So that’s all on free play. So that’s why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that’s free play. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (35:32)
I’m so glad you mentioned that. We didn’t call that out. Say it again for people who missed

it.

Miranda Dietz (35:37)
Yeah exactly and so if you walk in and hit our arcades like you can button smash all day on those things. My eight-year-old loves it right because I don’t have to feed it money. I love it too right. I let them go nuts on Pac-Man. ⁓ So yeah that part is free.

Anthony Codispoti (35:51)
It’s free people. It’s free. It doesn’t take quarters.

Sorry, go ahead.

Miranda Dietz (35:56)
Yeah,

yeah and then the pinball, the difference there, pinball is still manufactured right? Pinball is a hot chase. There are hot titles, it is very competitive out there. ⁓ There are, we actually have a gal on our gaming team who’s the gaming supervisor. She is a pinball champion, she goes to all

kinds of competitions and championships. So we have these really cool unicorn folks on our team that really make that magic happen so that the guests can experience that too. It all bleeds through, right? But that’s where it starts.

Anthony Codispoti (36:32)
that’s fun. And so what’s the future look like? What are the growth plans that you can tell us about that we haven’t already touched on?

Miranda Dietz (36:40)
Yeah, Troy is a brilliant visionary. I’ve mentioned that before, right? We’re all lucky to work with his visions and through his visions for sure. And so there’s always the thought of, we create a new concept in the future? Right? That’s always an option. But for now, what we’re focusing on in 2026 is really taking this chapter to slow down, to speed up, right? You run so fast for so long.

We just built three pins back to back to back to back.

It’s a lot on the team, right? And now it’s time to really slow down and understand foot traffic, increasing that, making sure the guest experiences are just top notch at all of the existing locations and really just greasing the wheels, fine tuning things so that when we launch into 2027, we are just ready and raring to go right in all spaces. And we’ve done a lot of building the car while driving the car.

like to call it through these last…

Three new builds because it was an iterative process of a lot of us were new to rise Whilst we were building those and planning those right so for us ⁓ New folks it was really our first chance to build a pens and we hadn’t done it before so you know it was a lot of the Documentation it was a lot of finding efficiencies in the process It was a lot of finding new preferred vendors better preferred vendors. We hadn’t built in two years

prior to opening last year’s first location. And so it was a long pause of how do we do this better, right? But while we’re doing it, so it was a really tough chase and proud of the team around me and with me, like really knocked it out of the park. It was absolutely amazing what these people did. 2026 is really learning from that. It is really slowing down to speed up. It’s fine tuning so that we can come out of the gate even bigger,

even stronger in 2027.

Anthony Codispoti (38:50)
So specifically on the supply chain side of things, Miranda, what are some projects that you’ve got on tap for 2026? What are some of those dials that you want to turn new projects, new technologies?

Miranda Dietz (39:02)
Yeah, for sure. I’m always and forever interested in balancing AI in our business to pick up efficiencies, right? That’s huge. You hear a lot of people say that, especially in supply chain now. But it’s really, it’s the basics. It’s the simple stuff, right? Like a contract depository that automatically goes in and flags unwanted terms, right? Things like that. Something that alerts you to, this contract renewal is coming up, Miranda. Take a look at this, right?

the manual off of that and then looking at ⁓ AI functions for source to pay, procure to pay, and really leaning that down so that we can pick up speed in those things instead of manualizing that and being careful on

vetted systems, right, that don’t hallucinate like a chat GPT would that really is learning off of your business and your fences, right, so that it’s an educated system over time so that you’re not getting a lot of hallucinations in there too and you can rely on it.

Anthony Codispoti (40:10)
So I want to dig in a little bit deeper if that’s all right with you. You mentioned the contracts and I want to ask some questions about that, but I didn’t understand the second part of what you were saying. Source to pay, can you walk me through?

Miranda Dietz (40:20)
Sure, sure, just the procurement life cycle in whole, right? Everything from sourcing and vetting vendors, clear through to then procuring it, right? POs, all of the little steps in between, clear to the pay spot, right? Clear to invoicing into your AP side. So really anything we can do to pick up efficiencies on that entire life cycle to make it more efficient. So.

each person in between touching that isn’t spending so much time on those things, right? That is a true time suck in every business, not just ours, right? But especially in the lean businesses, right? I wear a lot of hats. Everybody around me at Rise wears a lot of hats. So anywhere we can identify where we’ve got a time suck, we should be working to like fill those gaps and pick up efficiency so we can speed up those life cycles.

Anthony Codispoti (41:15)
And the work that you’re doing around all of this, is this like homegrown tools or are there third party programs that you’re putting in place?

Miranda Dietz (41:23)
Yeah, there’s some homegrown things in the interim, right, that I’ve pulled a couple aces out of the sleeves on, right, but long term it’s vetting really in Q2, Q3. What I’m, what my work is being put into is vetting those systems that we could bring on and understanding what fits us the best as we launch into 2027. So it’s really a lot of research right now too.

Anthony Codispoti (41:50)
And the contract work that you’re talking about sounds really interesting. If I understood what you were saying, you know, one element of it is, hey, we got a new vendor contract coming in, drop it into this tool. And it is sort of, you know, pre ⁓ prompted to look for terms that are not favorable to you. So obviously, you’re going to have somebody’s eyeballs review the whole thing anyways, but this is helping to flag and bring those things to your attention.

And then it’s also going back through existing contracts and it’s looking for renewal dates so that you guys are ready for that. Am I understanding this?

Miranda Dietz (42:30)
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. There are a lot of programs out there, cloud based and otherwise, right, that have these capabilities currently, right? So it’s what fits our business the most. It’s always a balance between, ⁓ you know, we’re not the largest, but we’re not the smallest. So what fits us right now? What’s the ROI for that, right? How do we hold on in the interim? This chapter for us, it rises all about mature the existing and sustain growth in the future, right?

do we mature the existing, why we’re supporting all of the current footprint and really make it sustainable for the future so that we can stamp these things out in the future. That’s really what all of my work is is going into now, right? Vetting the right vendors, onboarding them, really templating out terms and conditions, right? On different things, what is that language?

and then bringing on an AI system that we can pop those things into so that it knows our generic kind of fencing and it can do that work for us. So it’s not just my set of eyes, right? Looking through every contract, redlining every single contract, going back and forth.

Anthony Codispoti (43:44)
And I’m going to ask a question here, Miranda, that I don’t know if this sort of falls under your purview. So if it doesn’t, we could skip over it. But I’m curious how you guys think about expansion. And I get that right now you just went through rapid expansion. You’re sort of pausing and taking a breath. There are some people that approach expansion as let’s go to a nearby big city where we might already have some name recognition. Right. So like a good example is

Here we are in Columbus. So you’ve done some of the suburbs. You now you’re in Cleveland. Now you’re in Cincinnati. So there’s people who have heard the brand. They’re aware of it. But, you know, then I see place like Nashville much further out of the way. I see a really cool town like, you know, Austin also further out of the way where you guys don’t have that established name recognition. How important is that to you as you guys think about those new locations?

Miranda Dietz (44:41)
Yeah for sure. I won’t go too deep because we have a whole development team ⁓ that could speak to it so much better than me, right? Troy himself could speak to it so much better than myself but truly it’s a combo.

right? It’s a combo. There’s a spoken hub model like you’re talking about like in Columbus, right? Where you start with that core one in the middle of Columbus and then you spoke it out, right? And proof that out. ⁓ You know, there are exercises that we’ve done with other current locations that we have to say, hey, if we put it in the neighborhood down the street,

what does this marketing research look like, right? And so we’ve exercised those. And then there are very hot markets like Austin, where you do your market research, right? And you try and get on the front side of things coming, right? And it’s just a balance. It really is timing. It’s all about timing.

It’s all about case by case kind of what’s working. But it’s definitely our model is definitely a combo of those.

Anthony Codispoti (45:48)
You know, and you talked about in, you know, still a somewhat smaller company, you guys end up wearing a lot of hats. And supply chain all by itself is a giant bucket, a giant hat on its own, if you will. Are there other hats outside of the supply chain ring that you are wearing, at least occasionally?

Miranda Dietz (46:10)
Yeah, the beauty of supply chain is you’re involved in everything, honestly. Like you’re a bit of the nucleus, that’s how I always think about it and there’s a blessing and a curse with that, right? If I break something, it breaks for everyone, no pressure. But when I win, everyone gains efficiencies, everybody wins, right? And so yes, I would say there are so many hats that I wear because of the natural, just the innate

Anthony Codispoti (46:24)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Miranda Dietz (46:40)
nature of what supply chain is where you’re working hand-in-hand with every single department truly on a daily basis.

Anthony Codispoti (46:49)
Tell us something surprising that you’ve come to understand about broader human psychology from your.

Miranda Dietz (46:57)
Hmm, I would say just in general, a lot of people have a fear of failure. I think a lot of people are driven in this social media heavy world, really where it is a filtered world on what they’re seeing, right? A lot of people really fear failure.

Miserably right like fear failure to the point where they’re not even willing to get Uncomfortable and try to push out right of the box. They are really so Fearful of failing and and what is that driven from? I mean bad bosses in the past ⁓ Bad childhood in the past right like it’s all driven by experience But what drives that so heavily now? I truly think that we live in this world that is just

flooded by comparison and everyone is comparing themselves to the person in the filter next to them and it is like an epidemic. You see people just so afraid to fail.

Anthony Codispoti (48:08)
So you think it’s worse now with social media than perhaps it had been even before. I think at a certain level, for most people, that is baked in, just this fear of failure. And it kind of shows up even in my kids who are relatively young. And ⁓ so I think to some degree, it’s a core part of just how human beings are wired.

But I think maybe what you’re saying, Miranda, is it’s made exponentially worse by social media and everybody’s sharing, you know, the picture of the nice car, the, you know, sexy vacation in the background. And, you know, everybody else who is sitting at home in their long john saying, well, why don’t I have.

Miranda Dietz (48:50)
Yeah, well, and it’s twofold, right? It’s not only fear of failure, but then it’s victim mentality coupled with that, which make for like a really hard wall to blast through mentally, I think, for people. And truly in my type of business, true entrepreneurial, original startup, right, type of super fast-paced business, I think I see it exponentially so because we are so fast-paced.

you know we’re moving at light speed, people are so afraid to fail and to break everything when in reality, you know, if you fail and own it, right, if you’re not in victim mentality, right, it’s the Oz principle, if you’re not in victim mentality, you’re keeping yourself above the line, you’re like I messed up.

you know everyone around us at least at Rise were just like okay what are we doing about it, how do we move forward, it was a learning lesson. And so I think that’s where people get caught is they’re so afraid to fail that they get in this victim mentality and they’re pointing outwards trying to get the blame on someone right so that they’re not the ones that fail that it just kind of becomes this cycle and weighs them down where they’re not progressing.

Anthony Codispoti (50:05)
You know, people who follow the show, Miranda, and I sort of prompted you with this before we went live. My favorite question to ask at this point is about a big serious challenge that you’ve overcome and how you worked through that. We already talked about some pretty big challenges at the top of the interview, but I don’t want to escape this question if you had something else in mind that you wanted to discuss.

Miranda Dietz (50:27)
I am like the queen of adversity probably. I never asked for it. I would never ask for it again. ⁓ But here we are. It makes me exactly who I am. Yeah, adversity really has been my whole life, right? I talked about I didn’t come from an opportunity-rich background, right? ⁓ You know, we talked through like some of my medical things, right? Where I had to pivot my career, ⁓ things like that. You know, there have been

a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of adversity meetings in this little life right but I think as long as we focus on being grateful right and pushing through that and not getting stuck in ⁓ victim mentality right, it’s the grittiness and the scrappiness and the balance of that. I think sometimes we really have to get to a point where we put our

give a crap’s in order where we’re just.

maybe so afraid to fail or so used to running so fast and hard that we’re not taking a time out to like enjoy the good life around us and be really grateful for it right. I think balance is just so so so so so so important and if you’re not filling your bucket, who is? So you have to take a time out for those things and give yourself a bit of grace through those ⁓ adversity moments for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (51:56)
Miranda, are you comfortable saying more about that upbringing that was not opportunity rich, as you’ve called

Miranda Dietz (52:04)
sure to a certain degree. ⁓ Yeah, no yeah I was raised in a small farm town. My dad ⁓ was blue collar and worked his behind off to pay the bills for all of us to have as much as we possibly could right and ⁓

Yeah, I was not taught about money or finances or you know, I had to learn all of those things by myself I had no clue like what investing was or what corporate world was or right? a true career opportunity was I was the first one to get a college degree ⁓ You know those different, you know opportunities that really set you up for more Success there like I didn’t have those I had to

find those for myself, right? I was lucky enough, I think it’s very important to surround yourself by really good humans in life. I think that’s where a lot of your lessons come from, right? You nurture and you receive what you nurture. That’s proved out time and time and time and time again. And so really it was me latching on to what I thought was

like really opportunity rich speaking parents, Like different things like that. I grew a network ⁓ from a young age, continue to do that to this day, but that has helped me immensely throughout my entire personal life and career. It takes a community. You have to have support, right? You have to have thought partners to talk things through, to risk mitigate, right? I think that’s super, super, super important. And so

If you don’t have those opportunities where you come from or the people beside you, you really have to capture those through life and hold on to those and find those other places and fill the gaps.

Anthony Codispoti (54:04)
I like that a lot. Are there resources that were either helpful to you as you were learning and discovering some of these new ideas, like books or podcasts courses that you took, or even things that even today that are good resources for you that our audience might find interesting.

Miranda Dietz (54:23)
Yeah, I would say a few things. ⁓ Patrick Lincione books, Always and Forever, love the advantage, love doing like that work through career and a lot of it bleeds into personal life. The Oz Principle that I mentioned earlier, it’s all about accountability, right? It’s all about like, we cannot allow ourselves to be below the line and point outward and be victims. We have to rise above that affects how I parent, that affects how

lead right, that affects who I am as a human, that affects how I get through adversity and keep pushing forward and am never never ever ever like complacent and anything right, ⁓ that helps that principle really helps drive me further but it’s all about accountability with yourself first.

Anthony Codispoti (55:15)
What’s your favorite thing to do outside of work, Miranda?

Miranda Dietz (55:20)
Ooh, I have an eight-year-old son who is my everything. He’s so much cooler than I could ever dream of being ⁓ and a husband of 20 years as well. And so that is outside of work, right? I turn work off literally ⁓ and we do hockey games, we do adventures, we go to different cities and poke around, we travel. ⁓ We recently have geeked out on sports cards.

He’s a big sports guy. And so that is a bit of the nostalgia from my husband and I’s childhood, right? We’re both sports heads. We love sports cards. So now we do that with our son. So that’s kind of fun. We’ll sit downtown, shout out Midwest cards, downtown Columbus, super cool place. But we’ll have little family dates down there and break some packs open and do some of that little nostalgic looking at cards. So we love things like that. It’s all about

building memories. It’s all about building core memories. Anything and everything I can do ⁓ is focused on building core memories with my family.

Anthony Codispoti (56:26)
which is like a really cool overlap with what Rise Brands is about too, right?

Miranda Dietz (56:31)
Yeah, 1000%. I told you, it had to be organic. It had to be an absolutely phenomenal team. ⁓ And that’s exactly what it is. So you can see it’s like such an amazing fit. I’m a lucky gal.

Anthony Codispoti (56:45)
That’s cool. know, Miranda, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three things. First of all, anybody that wants to get in touch with Miranda, you can reach her at her email address, mirandaatrisebrands.com. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes, mirandaatrisebrands.com. Also, as a reminder, if you want to get more hospitality employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds, that, as paradoxical as it seems,

actually increases your company’s net profits, reach out to us at adbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you’ll take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you’ll hold a special place in my heart forever. Thank you. So last question for you, Miranda, a year from now, you and I reconnect and you’re celebrating something big. Just pump it in the air, kind of a one big specific thing. What’s that thing you hope to be celebrating?

Miranda Dietz (57:40)
Yeah, 2026, it’s not just career, but it’s personal too. It’s all about slowing down to speed it to speed up. Truly. It’s making those core memories. It’s doing more of that. We’re doing a lot of camping this summer. Like I really, when I’m present with my family, I’m 100 % there. And so it’s celebrating that. It’s celebrating that in career. Like what have we implemented at Rise in 2026 that has sped every single life cycle so we can run fast into the future.

and what have I done in my personal life to kind of do the same thing.

Anthony Codispoti (58:15)
Miranda Dietz from Rise Brands. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you.

Miranda Dietz (58:24)
⁓ I loved it. Thanks, Anthony, for having me so much.

Anthony Codispoti (58:28)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.