Hospitality Recruiting Strategy That Actually Retains Great People
A winning hospitality recruiting strategy is the difference between a restaurant group that scales with culture intact and one that constantly bleeds talent. Michael Bates, Talent Acquisition Manager at the Mina Group, has helped build a team of frontline hospitality professionals across 35 high-end restaurants — and he’s doing it almost entirely without AI, automated screening, or cookie-cutter hiring processes.
In this episode of GoHire Talks, Jonathan Duarte sits down with Michael to unpack how the Mina Group approaches recruiting, retention, onboarding, and career development in one of the most challenging sectors in the industry.
Key Topics Covered in This Episode
- Why Mina Group reviews every resume by hand — and why it works
- How they start recruiting 12–14 months before a restaurant opens
- The M University digital learning platform and Mina Exchange recipe system
- How career pathing calls with Chef Michael Mina drive long-term retention
- Why employee-first market research is central to their hospitality recruiting strategy
- The role of internal promotion in building culture at scale
- How brand-first interviewing replaces the standard job-pitch approach
- Why Chef Mina’s hands-on involvement is a genuine recruiting advantage
The Mina Group: Scaling Fine Dining Without Cutting Corners
The Mina Group operates 35 restaurants across the United States, with two international locations in Dubai and Riyadh, and a presence on the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. They’re on pace to open four to seven restaurants per year for the next four to five years — a pace that would stress the hiring infrastructure of most companies in the industry.
Michael describes the approach simply: “We are a high-end restaurant group. We currently have 35 active restaurants across the United States.”
What makes their scale possible is a talent infrastructure built around relationships, not automation.
Human-First Recruiting: No AI Screening, Every Resume Reviewed
In a world increasingly reliant on AI pre-screening, the Mina Group takes a different path. Michael’s team of three recruiters personally reviews every applicant — line by line — before anyone is invited to an interview.
“We don’t use AI, we don’t have a system that prescreens your resume before it comes to our desk. We review every applicant in person on paper and make decisions from there.”
Qualified candidates are invited to a video interview via their ATS system, Team Taylor. But even that conversation isn’t about the job description — it’s about culture fit, personal goals, and what Mina Group can offer the candidate as a person.
This human-first approach is foundational to their hands-on recruiting process and sets the tone for everything that follows.
Hospitality Recruiting Strategy Starts 12–14 Months Before Opening Day
One of the most distinctive elements of Mina Group’s hospitality recruiting strategy is the timeline. When a new location is identified, recruiting begins a full 12 to 14 months before the doors open.
The team conducts deep market research — competitors, pay rates, top-reviewed restaurants, commute logistics, transit availability, and the realities of local geography. They famously map the actual commute time (not Google Maps’ optimistic estimate) to understand what they’re asking of potential employees.
“Naples to Bonita Springs in reality in traffic is two and a half hours. So those are all things we look at from just a real life. What is your real life day gonna be like?”
This employee-first lens shapes how they structure compensation, benefits, and scheduling long before the first hire is made.
Onboarding That Goes Beyond Day One
The Mina Group’s restaurant onboarding program is a multi-layered system designed to develop every employee — from hourly staff to executive chefs.
- M University — a digital learning system where all SOPs live, accessible on mobile and desktop, with tutorial videos from corporate chefs on everything from slicing Wagyu to front-of-house guest experience
- Mina Exchange — a recipe platform housing every dish created by any chef in the Mina Group, including Chef Michael himself, available to all employees
- Four-week hands-on onboarding for leadership roles, delivered by a member of the corporate team who walks through a detailed onboarding agenda in person
“All of our SOPs live in this system. Our corporate chef will do little tutorial videos on how to slice Wagyu. It’s available to you both mobile and on a desktop computer.”
This investment in onboarding doesn’t just prepare employees — it signals from day one that the company is invested in their development.
Career Pathing Is Weekly, Not Annual
Perhaps the most powerful driver of retention at Mina Group is what Michael calls their weekly leadership career pathing calls. Every week, the team goes through every single member of the restaurant’s leadership — from restaurant manager to GM, from sous chef to executive chef — and discusses where they want to go.
“We’ll all go through every single member of our restaurants on the leadership side and talk about, what was the latest conversation you had with them? Where do they want to go? Is their family looking to move in two years?”
These conversations feed directly into promotion planning. If someone wants to relocate to Charlotte in two years, and Mina Group is opening there, Michael already knows that 24 months out. That’s hospitality career pathing done right.
Chef Michael Mina himself participates in four to five of these meetings per week — a level of executive involvement that is virtually unheard of at this scale.
Promoting From Within: The Long-Term Play for Restaurant Employee Retention
Internal promotion isn’t just a perk at Mina Group — it’s a deliberate strategy for restaurant employee retention. When a new project is in development, Michael’s team briefs internal restaurant leaders one to three months before it goes public.
“I’ll talk about a new project with my internal team at all of our restaurants a month, two months, three months before that project even gets released publicly and let them know, here’s the market.”
By the time a role is posted externally, there’s already a pipeline of internal candidates who have been developed, tracked, and prepared for the opportunity. As Michael puts it: “That’s one thing in TA that I think people miss — it’s always about finding the next best person. It’s like we have 35 of the greatest people in the industry. I just need to plug and play and move them around.”
Brand-First Interviewing: Selling Culture, Not Just a Job
Michael’s interview philosophy flips the standard dynamic. Rather than running candidates through a gauntlet of behavioral questions, his team focuses on understanding who the candidate is as a person — and then demonstrating what Mina Group can do for them.
“I want to know you. I want to know where your passion lies. I want to know what you’re looking to accomplish in your life with, for your family. And I want to see if we can be a match for that.”
This brand-first approach also extends to how they present the company’s unique benefits: Chef Mina’s name on your resume, hands-on training from a world-class culinary team, union membership in certain markets, and the kind of creative freedom that’s rare in fine dining.
🙌 About The Guest
Michael Bates is the Talent Acquisition Manager at MINA Group — the San Francisco-based restaurant empire founded by James Beard Award-winning Chef Michael Mina — where he leads all recruitment efforts and college/university relations across a portfolio of more than 30 upscale dining concepts in the US and Dubai, including Bourbon Steak, Orla, and Aqua Bistecca. He brings nearly two decades of leadership experience across the restaurant, hospitality, and resort sectors, having held senior roles at Walt Disney Swan & Dolphin Resort, MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts, and holds a degree in Sports/Event/Entertainment Management from Johnson & Wales University.
The GoHire Talks Interview Transcript with Michael Bates
[00:00:00] Jonathan Duarte: Okay, everyone, we’ve got a great guest today. Michael Bates works with Mina, a high-end distributed restaurant with, what, 35 restaurants?
[00:00:13] Michael Bates: 35 currently, yes, sir.
[00:00:15] Jonathan Duarte: 35 restaurants around the United States. And my question, the reason why I wanted to bring on Michael, is to understand how do you keep such high level individuals, they’re all frontline, everyone in a restaurant is how do you keep ’em on and how do you keep that standard and scale like you’re doing? And so Michael, why don’t you give me a little background about yourself, how you got into recruiting and, what you’re up to these days and how this seems to be working.
[00:00:45] Michael Bates: Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate you inviting me on the program this morning. So first of all, my name is Michael Bates Talent Acquisition Manager with the Mina Group. I’ve been with Chef Michael Mina now for just under five years. It’ll be five years next month. And we’re an exciting group.
[00:00:58] Michael Bates: We are a high end, as Jonathan mentioned, restaurant group. We currently have 35 active restaurants across the United States. We have two international locations. We’re in Dubai and also Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We do have some specialty licensing projects. We’re on the second and third ship of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.
[00:01:15] Michael Bates: Really exciting times for our group. We are continuing to expand as well. We are on pace to open between four to seven restaurants a year for the next four to five years. Continuing to expand both domestically and internationally. So really exciting times with our group.
[00:01:31] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, and I think what’s interesting is, scaling. You always hear restaurants, they have a high propensity to fail. And it’s for so many other reasons, but also operations and keeping the brand true over time is incredibly hard. So how do you guys manage that from a recruiting aspect too?
[00:01:53] Michael Bates: So from a recruiting aspect, we market ourselves as a restaurant management company. So we do have a handful of owned operations, but our most recent openings in the last couple years have been restaurant management agreements where we’ll go to Ritz Carlton, we’ll go to Four Seasons, we’ll go to Marriott and we’ll pitch our brand as our company will manage the restaurant.
[00:02:25] Michael Bates: From a recruiting standpoint though, our team is we have currently three recruiters on our side. And what we do is we take a very hands-on approach. We don’t use AI, we don’t have a system that prescreens your resume before it comes to our desk. We review every applicant in person on paper and make decisions from there.
[00:02:43] Michael Bates: When you apply to a role with Mina Group, your resume will come to either my desk or my three coworkers desks, and we’ll review that resume in person line by line. If you meet the standards for the role, what we’ll do is we’ll invite you to a video interview very similar to what Jonathan and I are doing here.
[00:03:03] Michael Bates: We use a system called Team Taylor. That’s our ATS system. And we’ll do a Team Taylor interview on video and discuss very basic information about the role and really dive into the culture of our company and what we will bring to you as an individual joining our group rather than trying to sell you a job.
[00:03:22] Michael Bates: A couple big things that we offer is we have two incredible programs that we offer to our employees. One’s called Mina Exchange, which houses every recipe that any chef in Mina Group, including Chef Michael himself has created. Another amazing program that we have is called M University, and M University is our digital learning system, where as a line level employee all the way up to executive chef or general manager, all of our SOPs live in this system.
[00:04:18] Michael Bates: Those are two incredible things that we offer to employees. Another thing that we do is we have an extensive onboarding program that’s hands-on. So we’ll bring in a member of our corporate team and for a leadership role, we’ll be with you for four weeks going through line by line of a very detailed onboarding agenda.
[00:04:38] Michael Bates: We are a family owned company. We’re not public. And we treat our employees that way. Chef Mina is extremely involved. He’s not a name on a menu cover. He’s in the daily operations. I have four to five meetings with Chef Mina a week myself.
[00:04:52] Michael Bates: Discussing different things, those meetings include leadership career pathing for individuals. We’re actually go through every individual in a restaurant and talk about where they want to be. Do I have a host who wants to be a captain? Do I have a server who wants to be a restaurant manager? And how do I get them there?
[00:05:18] Jonathan Duarte: So how did you, and I’m sure a lot of this has come in the last five years while you guys have been building this too. But you had to have had your fingers in a lot of this stuff before. How did that come about? What was your background to pull that together?
[00:06:00] Michael Bates: Sure. I’m an alumni of Johnson Wales University. I went to the Providence Campus. I graduated with a degree in Sports Event and Entertainment Management back in 2007. I got my start right out of college at Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin as a restaurant manager. Flash forward. I moved out to Vegas in 2013. I worked with MGM Resorts International at the Mandalay Bay Campus as Food and Beverage Division Training Manager.
[00:06:48] Michael Bates: And then from there I was able to get the role of food and beverage director of administration and that really focused on hiring and overseeing some onboarding processes. And mainly focused on the MGM Resorts International Internship Program called the Manager Assistance Program. I actually met Chef Mina there. Chef Mina has a restaurant called Strip Steak at Mandalay Bay, and that’s where I first got my introduction to Chef Mina.
[00:07:25] Michael Bates: Then COVID happened. The world went crazy. I had stayed in communication with a couple people who had transitioned to working with Chef Mina and was able to jump on board. We’ve been opening restaurants, four to five restaurants a year. We’ve already opened one this year. We have four more on the calendar for this year.
[00:07:54] Michael Bates: We start our recruiting process 12 to 14 months in advance. When we find out we’re looking at a project in Charlotte, North Carolina, our recruiting team will go in and we’ll do market research. We’ll look at comp set, we’ll look at who’s our competitors in the market. Dive into trying to find everything from pay rates to the top 10 restaurants on Yelp.
[00:08:31] Michael Bates: And then the biggest thing is with those video interviews that we do, even the folks who don’t join — the insight that we gain from having those conversations in person, one of the questions I always ask is, how do you handle staffing issues in your market? The information I learned from general managers and executive chefs who are in that market, just based on that question alone, guides us.
[00:09:12] Michael Bates: Our plan is to bring on our Executive Chef and our GM six months prior to opening, not only for training purposes and to be able to get them immersed into the brand, but also when we get closer to opening, we’ll bring them back to their market to be involved hands-on in hourly staffing hiring events, career fairs, college visits. And have them part of that process where they’re building their own team.
[00:09:42] Michael Bates: Where I think a lot of folks are being handed a team and saying, here’s your people, make magic happen. Whereas we want that to happen organically. We want the GM to know the host, to know the hostess and feel comfortable with them before the doors even open.
[00:11:14] Michael Bates: We come at our market research with the employee in mind. For instance, we just opened a restaurant — Acqua Bistecca in Bonita Springs, Florida. So how do I get the person in the middle who’s not in the resorts, in the big cities, and how do I draw people from those big cities to come to Bonita Springs? We look at everything from where are people living? Where’s my dishwasher gonna live? How far away is my dishwasher? And then how does my dishwasher get from A to B? And then home at 3:00 AM when I do a private event. Is there Uber? Is there buses? Are there trains?
[00:12:08] Michael Bates: We look at that from just a real life — what is your real life day gonna be like? And what do I need to do, whether it be pay rate, whether it be family meal — what benefit do I provide you for making that sacrifice to come work for me?
[00:15:30] Michael Bates: Our general managers and our executive chefs are peers. They don’t report to one another. We have a director of culinary and a director of operations who the executive chef and the GM report to, and all of them are on numerous weekly meetings.
[00:16:01] Michael Bates: We celebrate our regulars, we celebrate our VIPs. Our note taking system for our hosts is probably one of the best in the industry. We have multiple levels of VIP status. We’ll get down to the minutiae — he wants a Grey Goose martini with blue cheese olives, and I can have that on your table before you sit down just to start your night off the right way.
[00:17:19] Jonathan Duarte: So here’s the question — what would you say your retention rate is compared to the rest of restaurants?
[00:17:40] Michael Bates: I would say our retention is pretty good. Obviously there are challenges. With our management agreements at Marriott properties, for instance, employees get all the Marriott benefits — room rates, extended PTO, laundry service. Some of our restaurants, hourly employees are part of unions in certain markets, like Bourbon Steak San Francisco.
[00:18:41] Michael Bates: One big thing that we really pitch to our leaders is the fact that Chef Mina is so involved in our daily operation. He will be in an operation six days a week. There are a number of times where I’ll be at openings and one of us will have to go in the kitchen and remind Chef that he has to come out and shake hands and kiss babies. He’d much rather be in the back on the grill with the guys and gals, whipping up the great food that he does.
[00:19:34] Michael Bates: We also promote very much from within. When we’re launching a new project, I’ll talk about it with my internal team at all of our restaurants a month, two months, three months before that project even gets released publicly. We do a weekly leadership career pathing call. We’ll all go through every single member of our restaurants on the leadership side and talk about, what was the latest conversation you had with them? Where do they want to go? Is their family looking to move in two years? What market are they going to? Are we opening in that market?
[00:20:39] Michael Bates: That’s one thing in TA that I think people miss — it’s always about finding the next best person. It’s like we have 35 of the greatest people in the industry. I just need to plug and play and move them around to make things work better, and then train the next generation. It doesn’t stop when you sign your offer letter.
[00:21:16] Michael Bates: I’ll work with you to get you there. And that’s one thing that I think a lot of people hesitate on and go, oh, I just need you to really do the 16 hour days every holiday in the restaurant.
[00:22:22] Michael Bates: The ability to have a conversation like you and I are having is much more fluid. Rather than going, tell me about your last role — you don’t learn anything from that. I want to know you. I want to know where your passion lies. I want to know what you’re looking to accomplish in your life for your family. And I want to see if we can be a match for that.
[00:23:28] Michael Bates: We all want to do a good job. We all have families to support. We all have people that we love and care about. And that starts with Chef Mina. And that’s really how he’s formed this group and been able to attract that talent.
[00:25:10] Michael Bates: We use a video interview. I will say we use Predictive Index as just a benchmark. It’s not pass fail, it doesn’t boot anybody out. It’s just to see where they land. But we’ve tried, we’ve dabbled with AI, but I bring it back to that human connection.
[00:26:05] Michael Bates: You can visit our career page at www.theminagroup.com/careers. You can also see all of our restaurants, all of our markets that are listed on there.
[00:26:32] Jonathan Duarte: We’ll put all that stuff in the notes and the career site too, because just amazing stuff. And yeah, just thanks. Thanks again. It’s great to hear about how leaders are doing this stuff and decentralized recruiting — doing it well, you just don’t get to hear about companies who have done it that way.
[00:27:17] Michael Bates: Absolutely. Let me know. Be more than happy to host you. Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate it.
Connect with Michael Bates on LinkedIn: Michael Bates
20 April, 2026
