The world’s best hoteliers and chefs reached the top by many routes, and their careers share a shape. Most started at the bottom, usually as teenagers, in a job nobody would call a career. Most had been in the trade for three decades by the time I interviewed them. The hoteliers moved countries again and again; the chefs mostly stayed close to home and went deep. Fewer than one in eight names a school. One in four names a mentor. This page sets out the patterns across the seventy nine people in my three books, drawn from the first person profiles they gave me, and ends with a table of all of them.
A note on method. Every fact here comes from the person’s own account in A Wealth of Insight, the two books that preceded The Luxury of Attention, and from the facts printed at the head of each profile. Years in the trade and posts held are as they stood at the time of the interview, and the table says which year that was. Where a profile does not say something, the table leaves it blank; I have not filled gaps from elsewhere.
They started at the bottom, and early
Sixty of the seventy nine say what their first job in the trade was. Read the list and the pattern is hard to miss: dishwasher, pot scrubber, bellboy, steward, waiter, receptionist, apprentice, kitchen hand. Patrizio Cipollini, who went on to run the Four Seasons in Florence, puts it in one line: “My first job was as a dishwasher in Versilia on the Tuscan coast.” Peter Hopgood: “My first job in this industry was as a pot scrubber.” Aaron Kaupp: “My first job in the industry was serving breakfast at the Golden Tulip Hotel, and I knew right then that I wanted this to be my career.” Nicolai Nørregaard was a bellboy at the Hotel d’Angleterre in Copenhagen before he was a chef. Tom Roelens, later a Four Seasons general manager: “I started in the kitchen washing dishes, and then served in a more visible role in restaurants as a Commis de Rang.”
The exceptions prove the point. The handful who began in management, George Cozonis as a trainee at reception, Taljinder Singh as an assistant lobby manager at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, describe those jobs as humbling rather than elevated. Cozonis: “in my first job as a management trainee, I could barely keep up answering telephones at the reception desk.”
Forty of them say how old they were, or what stage of life they were at, when they started. The commonest answers are fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. Guy Savoy: “Since I was 15 years old, I have worked 16-hour days, and that translates to many decades of toil under my belt.” Eric Ripert: “At 15, I was kicked out of school and told that I needed to find a vocation.” Albert Adrià: “When I was 15 years old, I entered elBulli because my brother Ferran was the head chef and he needed cooks.” Alexander van Gastel: “My first job in the hospitality industry was at age sixteen.” Among the hoteliers, the Saturday job and the summer job recur: Philip Barnes spent every boarding school summer in the kitchen of an airline caterer, and van Gastel served “coffee, tea, and eggs in a small hotel with only twelve rooms” every Saturday morning.
The late starters are rarer and worth noting, because they show that the door does not close. Ana Roš: “I started cooking when I was 30 years old and pregnant for the first time.” Emmanuel Stroobant came to the kitchen from criminal law, washing dishes because it was “the only role I could find with no prior work experience.” Mahmoud Skaf studied electrical engineering first. Mariano Silvestri began “as an assistant in the HR department of a ski center in Argentina.”
The trade runs in families more often than in schools
Nineteen of the seventy nine grew up in a family that was already in the trade. Susanne Hatje: “I was born in Hamburg, Germany, to parents who were both hoteliers, so I literally grew up in the industry.” Brian Gullbrants: “I grew up in the back of our family-run restaurant in Chicago, playing in the storeroom with all of the boxes after big deliveries.” Joan Roca was raised in Can Roca, the restaurant bar his parents opened in 1967, and had a chef’s jacket made for him at nine. Pedro Dias’s father joined the luxury hotel industry at eighteen and retired as a general manager. Richard Ekkebus: “I grew up in a restaurateur’s environment as my grandparents had a hotel, café and restaurant.”
Only nine name a school. Among the hoteliers, Marc C. Brugger went to the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne and Ralph Radtke to Glion; among the chefs, Ryuki Kawasaki trained at Tsuji in Tokyo and Cristina Bowerman at the Cordon Bleu in Austin. Nicholas Yarnell studied at the LSE and, in his words, “started working odd jobs in hotels to make ends meet.” That became a career that ran through Claridge’s. The others either do not mention school or describe it in passing. The place where they say they learned was the first serious kitchen or hotel, under a named person, which is the subject of the next pattern and of Chapter 2 of The Luxury of Attention.
One in four names the person who made them
Twenty one credit a mentor by name, and the names are instructive, because they are not famous ones on the whole. They are the general manager of the first hotel, the chef of the first serious kitchen. Taljinder Singh names Patu Keswani, the resident manager at the Taj Mahal Hotel when he arrived. Krister Svensson names Brian Deeson, the general manager of the Hyatt in Bangkok. Peter Hopgood: “A gentleman named Keith Williams, who built Sea World and Hamilton Island, was my most influential mentor.” Brian Gullbrants names John Toner, then general manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua. Among the chefs the names are the classical lineages: Savoy with the Troisgros brothers, Ripert with Gilbert Le Coze, Enrico Crippa with Gualtiero Marchesi, José Andrés with Ferran Adrià, Ekkebus with Hans Snijders and Robert Kranenborg and then Gagnaire, Passard and Savoy. The Voices collection The mentors and the people they trained follows these lines through the book.
Hoteliers move; chefs stay
This is the sharpest difference between the two crafts. Of the thirty six hoteliers, twenty eight were running a hotel outside the country they were born in when I interviewed them, and thirty three had worked in three or more countries. The median hotelier had worked in five or six. Stephen Ansell, born in London, lists Russia, Austria, Germany, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and the United States. Krister Svensson, born in Stockholm, lists eleven countries. A luxury hotel career is an expatriate career, and the people who rise in it are the ones who said yes to the next country.
Of the forty two chefs who state where they are based, thirty one are based in the country where they were born, and often in the city. The chef’s career is vertical: the same kitchen, or the same city, taken deeper for decades. The chefs travelled to learn, to Paris, to San Sebastián, to the stage in a famous kitchen, and then went home to build.
Thirty years in
The median person had been in the trade for thirty years when I interviewed them, the hoteliers and the chefs alike. The shortest career in the books is thirteen years and the longest fifty seven. Put that beside the ages at which they started and the arithmetic is plain: the people at the top of this industry spent their whole adult lives in it, and most of their teens. Chapter 1 of The Luxury of Attention, The Calling, is about why they stayed, and Chapter 2, The Apprenticeship, about what those first years under someone else’s eye gave them that no program could.
What to take from it
If you are starting, start now and start anywhere. The first job does not matter; the people in these books scrubbed pots and carried bags. Find the person, not the brand: the mentors named here are mostly the managers and chefs of first jobs, which means the first job is worth choosing for who runs the place. If you want to run hotels, expect to move countries, and say yes early. If you want to run a kitchen, expect to go deep in one place after you have travelled to learn. And expect it to take decades, because for every person on this list it did.
The seventy nine people are listed on the Voices index, each with a page that carries their full account in their own words and the facts above as they gave them.
Questions people also ask
How do most luxury hoteliers and chefs start their careers?
At the bottom, and young. Of the 79 people in my books, 60 say what their first job was, and the list is dominated by dishwasher, bellboy, waiter, steward, receptionist and apprentice. The commonest starting ages given are fourteen, fifteen and sixteen.
Do you need to go to hotel school or culinary school to reach the top?
The accounts suggest not. Only nine of the 79 name a school at all. Far more credit a family in the trade (nineteen) or a named mentor in a first serious job (twenty one). The first years under someone good mattered more to them than the classroom.
Do luxury hotel general managers work abroad?
Almost all of them. Of the 36 hoteliers, 28 were running a hotel outside the country of their birth at the time of the interview, and 33 had worked in three or more countries. Chefs, by contrast, mostly build in the country where they were born: 31 of the 42 who state a base.
How long does it take to reach the top of luxury hospitality?
The median person in the books had been in the trade for thirty years when interviewed, hoteliers and chefs alike, with careers ranging from thirteen years to fifty seven. Most had started as teenagers.