How Acme Hospitality Created An Award-Winning Collection of Restaurants and Hotels from Scratch

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I always loved the connection that people make around a table, over a shared meal - family, friends, colleagues coming together to talk about whatever is happening in their lives. For me, that's always been one of the richest experiences that I have with my family, with my friends, with other people in my community. So that idea has always been a central driver in who I am as a person.

It had been a long-term dream that I had shared with my two children. I have two daughters, and we fantasized since they were very, very young about this restaurant we were going to open one day. We called it the Spotted Dog, and we would find ideas all over that we wanted to try.

In my imagination, we had this little cafe. It was so fun and had beautiful flowers on the counter and beautiful food, handmade and from the heart. That had been brewing for many, many years.

This neighborhood was really ripe for reinvention. It had roots in commercial fishing and boat repair. Over time, these buildings rooted in the history of what Santa Barbara was all about had been infiltrated with artists and with surfboard shapers and designers and incredible talented people who were doing really innovative things all over the neighborhood. But the neighborhood as a whole had really become derelict.

Brian came to me and said, ‘You understand the people side of this. I understand the real estate side of this. I know this could be an amazing place. Will you come work with me?’ I said, ‘Sure!’

When I actually made the leap, it was frightening with a capital F. I had no experience in the restaurant industry.

The first people it benefited was our team. We needed a guidebook. We needed a plan. We needed to say, "Here's what we're going to do, and here's why it's going to work." Because at the end of the day, we're in the business of running a restaurant. And if you're not in the business of running a restaurant, then you're in the hobby of running a restaurant. There's room for that, but it just financially wasn't a place where I could be.

If I was going to go all in with my heart, soul, time, energy, put my career on the line, and invest a large portion of my personal savings, I needed to be able to run a business. And that's a really important distinction.

Acme Hospitality still has all the passion, and all the love, and all the energy, but we just celebrated our 10th anniversary and we employ 500 people currently in our company. It’s really important to me that we provide a financially stable, great career opportunity for all of the people on our team. And in order to do that, we have to be smart. We have to run a profitable, successful business.

That responsibility to my team is what drives me to work on the business because it's not as much fun, at least not for a marketing gal like me. It's much more fun to be on the creative side and the passion side, but having the discipline to stay working on the business side is critical.

Some of the most important life moments happen in restaurants and hotels. When that much love and energy and passion comes together hundreds of times a night, and our guests are using this place in this center of the neighborhood to celebrate the layers of life that are so critical, that's the richness of life. That's why I'm in the restaurant business. That's why I'm in the hotel business. It's the honor and the privilege of helping to execute an incredible experience so that our guests can share these life moments with one another.

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