Shawn Walchef.
The Founder
Shawn Walchef is the founder of Cali BBQ Media and the host of Restaurant Influencers, Digital Hospitality, and Rising Tides Live. He started with a barbecue restaurant in Spring Valley, California, and a flip phone tripod.
The unlock was never advertising. It was hospitality, extended to the internet. Answer every question. Show up where your guests are. Be useful before you ask for anything. Cali BBQ Media has published more than 1,500 episodes across the network since 2017, week after week, for nine years.
Restaurant Influencers, published by Entrepreneur and presented with Pepsi and Toast, is where Shawn has interviewed Shaquille O’Neal, Emeril Lagasse, the CEO of Toast, and hundreds of the people shaping food and hospitality. The 2026 NRA Show named him its Top Podcast Influencer: 565 tracked registrations driven, 70% of them first-time attendees.
Today he helps the technology companies, equipment manufacturers, suppliers, and brands that serve restaurants do what he did: stop renting attention and start earning trust, with real customers, on the record.
Hear it from Shawn.
In His Own Words