We call people who conceptualise and bring great restaurants to life “restaurateurs”, and people who work in hospitality more specifically to lodgings “hoteliers” – though, even these two terms do not quite describe the same responsibilities – but we don’t have a term for people that don’t quite fit either of these identities.
What about the people who dream up and create excellent bars? Or those who manifest beautiful cafes. People who invent venues that create fantastical experiences of hospitality without really considering them a “restaurant”. These creators of truly great hospitality – even if it doesn’t necessarily fit into the restaurant category, deserve a word too.
A title of “restaurateur” feels like a pair of earned stripes. A medal on the chest to say “I put something on the line here and I created”. And rightly so – these are people who took the onus and put something together themselves. They constructed a team, put a vision to life, gambled their paycheque on a hopefully-calculated risk and created something you can experience – from nothing.
In today’s age, where the drinking and dining scene seems to obfuscate with exciting and unpredictable permutations of a hybrid drinking-dining-hospitality breed, the word “Restaurateur” can feel like a bit of a stretch. However, “Hospitalitier”, a word I’d pulled from a trawl through the mid-twenty-tens lexicography, doesn’t carry the weight of the responsibilities that a restaurateur earns when they’re conjuring an entire restaurant from a concrete bareshell frame.
So, here – I present it to you. The Hospitateur. Or, in dictionary fashion:
Hospitateur hos·pi·ta·teur / ˌhɒspɪtəˈtɜː(r) / noun.
A person who opens, owns, or manages a hospitality business, especially one who conceives, designs, and operates venues such as bars, lounges, hotels, or clubs.
Not sure if it’ll take off.
