Nick Mautone—Dad, Author, Hospitality Guru, Futurist, Cyclist, Wannabee Astronomer

With 40 years of hospitality industry experience, Nick Mautone believes in the power of mentorship, leadership, collaboration, and possibility. Nick is the architect of an inventive process called “Hospitality Sabermetrics” — think Moneyball for Hospitality — and has a sixth sense when it comes to foreseeing trends. He is known for nurturing sustained success, streamlining operations, and aligning core values in every sort of hospitality business, all while inspiring and empowering his teams to excel.

For Nick Mautone, the spark came as a young kid growing up in Mt. Vernon, NY, where he spent weekends making cheese and handmade pasta for his dad’s specialty food business. While he dreamed of becoming a NASA scientist (and still loves looking up at the stars), he worked his way through school in restaurants—bussing tables and backing bars. Eventually, he and his siblings opened an innovative pizzeria, American Pie, on the Upper West Side. Science became a hobby, and restaurants became his life.

Since then, Nick has worked with some of the most iconic and influential restaurants in the world, including Gotham Bar & Grill, The Rainbow Room, and most notably, Gramercy Tavern, where he was managing partner alongside Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio for seven years and helped define and nurture a fledgling idea Danny and the group coined called “Enlightened Hospitality.”

With decades of experience behind him, in 2003, Nick founded his management and consulting business, Mautone Enterprises. The business was born of a desire to share his process, experience, mentorship, and leadership. Whether building a strong foundation for a first-time restaurateur or turning around a big ship on the wrong course, for Nick the process is about grassroots collaboration, helping chefs and owners come together, developing systems for success, and digging deep into the numbers and the P&L to unco

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