Hotels Make Inroads Into Boosting Diversity Through Their Restaurants

25.08.2023 - 14:15 / skift.com / Carley Thornell

Ria Montes has to do it the hard way. A chef for more than a decade, Montes said she has seen women make strides in hospitality but it has been a struggle that didn’t need to be.

“I’ve been a professional chef for 10 years and never had a female mentor in the kitchen,” said Montes, the new chef de cuisine at Estuary, the flagship hotel restaurant at The Conrad in Washington, D.C. “That saddens me — having female camaraderie would have been really helpful in my formative years.”

Montes is about to get her wish for the next generation — and continue defying the odds as a minority in leadership — thanks to a new program seeded by alumni of the Cornell University Nolan School of Hotel Administration. The Alliance for Hospitality Equity and Diversity (AHED) launched late last year to attract disadvantaged and underrepresented students to study hospitality and tourism. While the focus is primarily on Black students, the pilot location at Florida International University is the most diverse hospitality school in the country, said FIU school of hospitality dean Michael Cheng. 

“Within the hospitality frontline, there’s no shortage of diversity,” Cheng said “But it’s hard to ascend the ranks. It’s crucial for us to find partners to champion this cause, and get mentors for young African American, Asian, and Hispanic people so students see them become successful and be promotable – all the way up to vice president or CEO roles. We’re very conscious of that because when we have guest speakers, the comments are ‘They’re all white guys.’”

Where has hospitality made significant inroads, asked Cheng, himself a Malaysian immigrant with a culinary background? The hotel kitchen. Across the country, the ranks of leadership are becoming more diverse regarding background and gender. 

Last year, Graduate Hotels announced Michele Evans as executive vice president of hospitality for the whole brand. Fairmont in November appointed Isabel Chung as the executive chef at Fairmont Orchid in Waimea. Travis Watson recently took the reins in the kitchen as executive chef of five-star Hotel Californian. And in Boston, Muslim chef Zaid Khan was promoted from chef de cuisine at OAK Long Bar + Kitchen to executive chef at Fairmont Copley Plaza, overseeing a leadership team that’s primarily Indian and Asian. 

The benefits are win-win for toques, and hotels are increasingly recognizing that a respected anchor restaurant is table stakes when it comes to securing bookings, local foot traffic, and social media wins. Hotels tend to offer better benefits for those in the culinary field versus freestanding independent concepts, the New York Times notes – especially important for female chefs who may want maternity leave. And partnering with an