Twin Cities-based Jonathan Maze has become a national voice on the restaurant industry from his perch atop one of the country’s leading trade publications and his adept use of social media. If we’ve learned one thing about the restaurant biz from newspaper website clicks, it’s that everyone’s interested in them, because everyone eats, and everyone wants to eat out. The restaurant industry, says Maze, is $1 trillion of economic activity, 12.4 million workers, and now fully half our food industry. And he says social media drives a lot of that spending, referencing the Popeye’s chicken sandwich craze of years back as a bellwether. “The problem with the industry is everyone thinks they can do it, so there’s always someone waiting to take over a restaurant that should probably remain closed,” he says. He says the industry is in a down cycle—the result of inflation-driven price increases, third-party delivery, and basic oversupply. He calls MSP one of the “coolest” restaurant markets in the U.S.—exceptional, though not for chains or new concepts, which emerge in the Sun Belt.