Piada Spotlight | Kristen Lenz

Meet Kristen Lenz

A die-hard Bengals fan, passionate about food, and an eager learner – Piada Stetson’s Partner Kristen is a great leader and coach!

Kristen has worked with Piada for more than 4 years and has since become a New Restaurant Opening Captain. In 2022, Kristen opened our Stetson location, just off the campus of the University of Cincinnati, and has been serving lots of medical professionals and college students since.

Leading new restaurant openings and working as NRO Captain, Kristen really enjoys learning new tips and tricks and sharing them with her team. She says “After a long week of training, I love coming back to my team and sharing what I learned. I take it as an opportunity to be better.”

Kristen has always had a passion for food. Her first job scooping ice cream, and she went on to pursue Culinary School at the Art Institute of Cincinnati. While studying baking and pastries, she found she thoroughly enjoyed the business management side of culinary. Fun Fact: Kristen’s favorite dessert is crème brûlée– yum!

Kristen worked at another fast-casual restaurant but had heard great things about Piada and their team and decided to apply. When asked about Piada’s culture, Kristen says “I feel empowered and appreciated here and I haven’t felt that anywhere else. I feel very valued.” As a training restaurant, Kristen says that there are high expectations for her store. This drives her and her team to slow down to understand the ‘why’ behind what they’re doing and do things the right way.

A piece of coaching advice from Kristen is to “Always have a ‘yes, chef’ mentality. We all have room for growth and opportunity. Try to learn from your mistakes and do better next time without getting defensive. Be adaptable.”

Kristen has proven herself to be a natural leader and says “I take a lot of pride in delivering a great experience and setting high standards. I want to make people proud.” Through her experience opening new restaurants and running her own store, she has learned a lot about different teaching styles. She says “I’m learning how to adapt my leadership style [by being] tougher on those who need it, and softer on others.”

Outside of Piada, Kristen has two cats—Pumpkin Spice and Butter Pecan, is a proud auntie of 3, and is very close with her family. She says, “My family are the most important people in the world,” and they were quite excited for her to move back to the Cincinnati area, after working at another Piada in Dayton, OH.

In the fall months, you can find Kristen cheering on her Cincinnati Bengals, especially Joe Burrow and Trey Hendrickson. Piada recently did an event with the Bengals and Kristen got to meet some of her favorites and said “It was really cool.” She also loves watching SVU (shoutout Olivia Benson) and listening to Morgan Wallen and Benson Boone.

Kristen’s go-to Piada order is a Diavolo Pasta with Hot Fried Chicken adding pickled onions and creamy parmesan on top. If you’re looking to spice up your next order, Kristen’s pick is sure to do that! Check out a video of how Kristen makes Piada her way here.