Ben Mouton

Executive Summary

Restaurant operations leader with 35 years in the industry — apprentice to owner — who built, scaled, and sold a full-service restaurant group across 14 years of complete P&L ownership. Carries the ownership-grade accountability most regional leaders never face: full responsibility for the P&L, not a slice of it.

Deep command of food and labor cost control, multi-unit operations, vendor negotiation, talent development, and TABC and health compliance — backed by a 25-year systems-and-technology edge spanning restaurant POS implementation to operations software. Seeking to bring that operating discipline to a multi-unit Director of Operations role with a growing food group.

Professional Experience

2012 – 2026Leander & Cedar Park, TX · Full-service Tex-Cajun group · sold 2026

Owner & Operator / Executive Chef

Mouton's Bistro (ALSTIG, Inc.)

Built the group from the ground up — acquired Moody's Breakfast House and converted it into Mouton's Leander (2012), then opened a second full-service unit in Cedar Park; each generating $1.3M–$1.6M in annual net sales.
Owned full P&L across both units; drove $1.6M at the Cedar Park flagship (2025) while holding prime cost to 62% — under the 65% full-service benchmark — through 33% food and 29% labor discipline across rising-cost cycles.
Recruited, trained, and retained a team of up to 55 across both locations; authored written kitchen and service SOPs that lowered turnover and held guest experience consistent unit-to-unit.
Made a disciplined, data-driven call to consolidate two units to the stronger Cedar Park location in 2024 — reading unit economics, executing a clean closure while protecting brand and core staff — then led a successful sale in 2026.
Maintained a clean health-code and TABC record over 14 years; engineered seasonal, margin-aware menus and authored a 350-page cookbook documenting the group's recipes and standards.

2026 – PresentAustin Metro · Restaurant-operations technology

Founder

ALSTIG, Inc. — Restaurant Operations Technology

Repositioned the holding company to build restaurant-operations software — scheduling, inventory, and cost-control tools drawn directly from 14 years of frontline P&L ownership.
Now seeking to return to full-time multi-unit operations leadership, bringing a builder's view of the systems that run a restaurant.

2008 – 2011Austin, TX · High-volume bar & restaurant

General Manager

Sherlock's Baker Street Pub

Managed daily bar and restaurant operations — staff scheduling, inventory control, and service standards through busy evening service.
Supervised evening operations, resolved guest and staff issues, and handled nightly financial reconciliation and deposits.

2005 – 2008Austin, TX

Enterprise Product Specialist

Apple Inc.

Delivered enterprise and Tier 2 technical support and consultations, training business clients and internal teams to integrate hardware, software, and networks into their operations — part of a 25-year technology foundation.

2002 – 2005Austin, TX

General Manager, Multi-Location Operations

Draker Enterprises

Directed operations across multiple restaurant locations — staffing, inventory, and menu pricing — owning cost analysis to optimize margins at each unit.
Standardized systems across sites, administering POS, networks, and Exchange Server and training teams to use technology for faster, more consistent service.

2001 – 2002Austin, TX · Restaurant POS integrator

POS Systems Technician

CRS Texas

Earned hardware and software certifications installing and configuring Digital Dining POS, networks, and back-office systems for Austin-area restaurants, and trained operators to run them — the technical foundation behind ALSTIG's later software.

The Operator's Edge

An operations leader who also builds the systems.

The tech thread runs the length of the career — from installing Digital Dining POS as a technician, to enterprise support at Apple, to building ALSTIG's restaurant-operations software today. Scheduling, inventory, and cost-control tools designed from the floor up, by someone who has actually owned the P&L they're meant to protect.

It means margin problems get read like an operator, not a spreadsheet — and technology gets deployed to make service faster and more consistent, never for its own sake.

Toast & Digital Dining POS Inventory & cost-control software Labor & scheduling (Sling) Restaurant-ops software development Networks & Exchange Server

Earlier Hospitality Leadership

General Manager — Austin Java Co.

Austin, TX · 2000–2001

General Manager — Earl Campbell's

Austin, TX · 1999–2000

Bar Manager — South Shore Yacht Club

New Orleans, LA · 1998–1999

Progressive operations and beverage leadership across full-service restaurants and bars — P&L, staffing, inventory, and beverage-program development.

Technical & Systems Skills

Restaurant Technology POS systems (Toast, Digital Dining), inventory & cost-control software, labor & scheduling platforms (Sling); restaurant-operations software development (ALSTIG).

AI & Software Development Seven production apps built solo on one repeatable architecture — mobile clients, a secured backend, and frontier AI models (Claude and GPT, chosen per task) returning clean, schema-validated data. Six read real-world inputs — invoices, recipe cards, menus — into structured data via AI vision and OCR; shared data contracts let the apps exchange information.

IT & Infrastructure Network configuration & security, hardware/software troubleshooting, Microsoft Exchange Server.

Education & Training

Delgado Culinary Institute — Culinary Arts · New Orleans, LA (1997–1998)

Southwest Texas State University — Coursework toward a BFA in Acting · San Marcos, TX (1993–1997)

Chef's Apprentice — Katy Station · San Marcos, TX (1994–1996)