The Secret Hidden in Plain Sight is the Intention You Put Into Your People.
Hospitality consulting from the team behind roomforty. We help hotels, resorts, and restaurants close the gap between what they’ve built and what their guests actually feel.
You put BILLIONS into the property. What’s been put into the welcome?
You Can’t Renovate Your Way To Remarkable.
We recently walking into the bar of a billion-dollar resort and ordered the house bloody Mary. The bartender shrugged: honestly, it’s kind of “meh.
Multi-millions in design. Shrugs at the bar.
When we met with and asked leadership about the mission and values, no one had an answer. That’s the gap — and it’s almost never a money problem. It’s a hospitality problem. Burnout, turnover, flat reviews, soft repeat business, no appeal to the local community, these are symptoms. The cause is a team that hasn’t been given a reason to care.
That’s what we fix.
The Philosophy (The Host MindsetTM)
Hospitality is a posture, not a department.
Most consultants will hand you a service manual. We start somewhere else: with the host mindset, the conviction that every person on your team, from the GM to the dish pit, is hosting. When a team adopts that posture, the bloody Mary gets defended like a reputation. Because it is one.
Service is what you do. Hospitality is why and how you do it. Systems make a property run; The Host Mindset makes it remembered. We bring both.
Steve Fortunato
Steve Fortunato is the founder and CEO of roomforty, who grew a 100-square-foot taco stand into a multi-concept hospitality group and is and is known for redefining leadership through “The Host MindsetTM”, rooted in generosity and service. He is the author of “The Urgent Recovery of Hospitality.”
Alejandro Guzman
Alejandro Guzman is a chef and hospitality leader whose journey from his mother’s restaurant in Los Angeles to Michelin-starred kitchens and acclaimed concepts reflects a deep commitment to craft, community, and elevating the guest experience.
We’ve opened rooms, run brigades, rebuilt cultures, and sat in your chair. We consult the way we host: present, candid, and invested in your outcome.
What Our Engagement Encompasses
Five ways in. One standard throughout.
1. Brand, Mission & Culture
If your team can’t say what you stand for, your guests can’t feel it.
We facilitate the work most properties skip: defining the mission, values, and service philosophy — then wiring them into hiring, training, pre-shift, and daily decisions so they live on the floor, not in a frame in the back office.
2. Guest Experience Audit
See your property the way your guests do — before they review it.
We move through your operation as guests and as operators: arrival, bar, dinner, service recovery, checkout. You get an unvarnished, prioritized report — what’s working, what’s leaking revenue, and the order to fix it in.
3. Food & Beverage Programming
Menus that match the room — and margins that match the menu.
Concept, menu architecture, beverage program, pricing, and the service standards to deliver it consistently. Built for the property you are and the guest you want.
4. Leadership Development
Your culture is whatever your managers do under pressure.
We coach GMs, chefs, and floor leaders to lead like hosts — running pre-shifts that set tone, giving feedback that builds rather than burns, and creating the conditions where good people stay.
5. Pre-Opening & Repositioning
The standards you open with are the ones you’ll live with.
For new builds, rebrands, and properties in transition: concept alignment, hiring and training design, opening playbooks, and steady counsel through the most defining window a property ever has.
We Embed Ourselves Into Each Engagement
1.
Walk the property.
Every engagement starts with us on-site, experiencing what your guests experience. No deck, no diagnosis-by-Zoom.
2.
Name what we find.
A candid, prioritized read — delivered the way we’d want to hear it: direct, specific, and with respect for the people doing the work.
3.
Build it with your team.
We don’t leave a binder and disappear. We work alongside your leaders until the standard holds without us
We Work With People Who Believe the Room Matters.
Boutique hotels and resorts. Independent and group restaurants. Wineries, venues, and private member’s clubs. Ownership groups between leaders, properties between identities, and teams that have the bones but not the pulse. If you’ve invested in the build and the experience isn’t keeping up — that’s our brief.
We Work With People Who Believe the Room Matters.
Boutique hotels and resorts. Independent and group restaurants. Wineries, venues, and private member’s clubs. Ownership groups between leaders, properties between identities, and teams that have the bones but not the pulse. If you’ve invested in the build and the experience isn’t keeping up — that’s our brief.