Kraig Kalashian is the owner of KKAD, Pocono Modern, and Westmore Hotels and  Restaurants, which includes Pren Kitchen. After spending years playing in a band, Kraig realized he has a passion for solving problems and he discovered the best way to do that is through architecture, food and music. He’s here to give a unique perspective on hospitality through a different lens. Listen to this week’s episode as he shares #hospitality insights with Dan Ryan today!

Takeaways: 

• Architecture isn’t about how to make money, but rather how to solve problems. It’s all about finding ways to fit everything you can imagine into a given space. 
• Hospitality is a feeling you get when you are taken care of. It’s knowing that somebody is devoting 100% of their time and attention to you and making sure all your needs are met. 
• Today, travel and dining out are not the luxuries they were once considered to be, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to do it well.
• Kaizen is the Japanese word for making small, incremental improvements over a period of time. 
• Acknowledging that a mistake has been made is something that is very important when it comes to life and business.
• It’s important to listen to the staff and hear what their opinions are. They might have a great idea on where to better locate certain things to make their life easier (ie, making sure each floor has a linen closet).
• The Einstein approach is working on ideas for a long period of time, but sometimes the answer to each one arrives at the same time, making it seem like it was all done at once.
• Everybody gets the same 168 hours during the week. After sleeping and working, we are left with 50 hours of freetime. How you carve out that freetime is up to you, but you can use it to master your craft. 
• The backbone of hospitality is inclusivity. People from all walks of life are part of hospitality so finding ways to include them and making them feel wanted is the essence of the industry. 

Quote of the Show:

3:37 “Hospitality is a feeling, it's the feeling like somebody is taking care of you. It's the feeling like somebody sees who you are and what you need and, and gives you that. For me, the best way that I could define it is just this feeling I used to get from going to my grandmother's house when I was a kid. 

So if you asked what's hospitality, I would say it's, it's the way my grandmother treated me. Like when I was a kid, like when I would go to my grandmother's house, like she would just basically give me a hundred percent of her time and attention while I was there. She would always have things that were special for me.

It was really like this feeling of being treated in the best way, like you would imagine royalty gets treated and somebody stopping, whatever they're doing to just make you feel at home or accommodated or, you know, just pay attention to what you need. And so I think that for me, the idea of hospitality is just thinking about other people and how to, and how to make them feel seen and how to make them feel taken care of.”

Links: 

• Kraig’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/kraig-kalashian-ra-ncarb-leed-ap-916b388
• Company website: poconomodern.com 
• Personal website: kalashian.com 

Shout Outs: 

5:56 Dominique Ansel, creator of the Cronut

10:25 Independent Lodging Congress event in Brooklyn 

10:29 David Rockwell

12:46 Danny Meyer

20:20 W Hotels

22:03 Blackberry Farm

24:46 John George

25:54 Hygge, Scandinavian Design 

36:13 Libby Patrick

40:26 Amman

40:27 Four Season

40:29 Mandarin Oriential 

49:13 Joe Rogan

49:14 Marc Maron

50:47 Game of Thrones

51:20 Target 

51:26 Starbucks

58:54 DoubleTree Hilton

Ways to Tune In: 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386
• Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/BDd0WGhX8xY