The Boutique Search Firm Blog

If you are in any way connected with the larger issues of hospitality and a reader of this blog, you are familiar with the proposed College of Business at Cornell University. Being a long-time graduate of Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, I readily admit my education there made me the successful professional I have been […]

Happy New Year. Here is a classic scenario: after graduating from Cornell, Lausanne or Michigan State, you have enjoyed a steadily rising career with Hilton, Starwood, Marriott, Hyatt, InterContinental or some of the other big guys. Do not feel you have to remain in the corporate world: my recommendation would be in fact just the […]

Danny Meyer has made a resounding announcement that only a restaurateur of his level of credibility could get away with and be taken seriously for: gradually, and starting at the Michelin-starred Modern next month, all restaurants within the Union Square Hospitality Group will shun tipping. SHUN, ELIMINATE, NO MAS. Not hide it, not disguise it, […]

Dear Candidates: It may not have occurred to you that now that my hair has gone gray, I may have become a source of good advice. I’m no E.F. Hutton, yet, but when I speak, people (should) listen. Frequently, jobs are poison, some of them lethal. I am more likely to be aware of the […]

The leitmotiv of the twenty first (and before it, the twentieth) century is that a top-notch college education has become totally unaffordable except for the top 1% of our (let’s call a spade a spade) plutocracy. What happened to the notion of effort? To that of working and saving toward a college education? To that […]

Three times in the past two months, I received calls from hotel executives relating the most most damning experience: in one case, a position of General Manager for a major luxury hotel was very “sloppily” extended to two different candidates. Due to an embarrassing misunderstanding and communications breakdown between the property and the corporate office, […]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but talking about breaking the glass ceiling, year after year after year without ever doing anything about it is getting old. It is as empty as talking about California running out of water and doing nothing about it, when our entire coast abuts the Pacific Ocean. […]

The folks behind Katsuya, the successful group of Japanese restaurants developed by Sam Nazarian’s SBE group, do a great job at training their staff. A repeat guest at their restaurants is more than likely guaranteed good, informed service. Personally, I have always wondered how the servers get the orders right most of the time in […]

Nepotism is favoritism granted to relatives. The term originated with the assignment of nephews to cardinal positions by Catholic popes and bishops. Nepotism is found in the fields of politics, entertainment, business and religion. In my book, it is cronyism with a big N. Take it from the headhunter: Nepotism is POISON. Worse yet, nepotism […]

“Drinking rum and Coca Cola, Workin’ for the Yankee dollar.” The good folks of the Mafia have fond memories of Havana when it was Las-Vegas-by-the-Sea: the showgirls, the fancy hotels, the nightclubs, the restaurants, pristine beaches and the illegal pleasures that come with it. The Batista régime did its utmost to encourage vice and the […]