Joe Tenczar is the Chief Information Officer for Sonny’s BBQ, one of the largest and most popular barbecue restaurant companies in the country. Tenczar joined Sonny’s BBQ in 2014 with a focus on creating the franchise restaurant technology blueprint of the future. Tenczar has also led the Marketing, Finance, and Purchasing areas for Sonny’s while acting as CIO.
Additionally, Tenczar is a founding partner of Restaurant CIOs, a “CIO-as-a-Service” company where he and his CIO partners collaborate to represent hospitality companies on a fractional basis. He has also recently co-founded Datapaths, a restaurant data sciences company that delivers actionable insights for restaurant companies from the myriad data they already house.
Before Sonny’s BBQ, Tenczar was the global CIO for Hard Rock International, where he led the R&D and rollout of many innovative technologies that still affect Hard Rock guests and staff members.
His specialties include a strategic focus on emerging technology’s place in hospitality while understanding the overall tactical hospitality technology necessities. After beginning his career as a programmer and manager for financial software companies, Tenczar was a senior technology leader for the second largest arm of the Marriott Corporation. He then joined Ripley’s Entertainment as VP of Technology during the construction of their Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, Canada.
Tenczar holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications and Computer Science from the University of Florida and a Masters of Business Administration from the Crummer Business School at Rollins College. He sits on the executive advisory boards for many industry groups and cutting-edge hospitality technology companies.
