He picked his city center location, the first one he had launched, where his mother once assisted with baking pies!

Back then, the place barely made enough money to keep the lights on. His mother used to stand in that cramped kitchen rolling dough for pies, humming old country songs while he scrubbed dishes or ran orders. That diner was the start of everything. It was the reason he owned dozens of locations now. And it was the one place he refused to let fall apart.

Yet lately, complaints had been stacking up — rude employees, long waits, wrong orders, cold food, the kind of careless behavior that didn’t happen overnight. It crept in slowly, like mold behind a wall. If he wanted to understand how far things had slipped, he couldn’t show up as the boss. He had to show up as the kind of customer they clearly didn’t care about.

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