Annamarie Chestnut opened her first restaurant, Annamarie’s, at just 19 years old. Thirty-three years later, she operates two locations and is preparing to expand the original. Her business is family-run and self-made, built around the community it continues to serve. Over the years, she began teaching her employees things she once thought people naturally understood: how to read a table, recognize a guest who has been waiting, and make someone feel valued rather than simply served.
That experience revealed a gap the industry has been slow to address. According to the National Restaurant Association, the industry is expected to add more than 100,000 jobs in 2026, bringing total employment to 15.8 million. Many of these new workers are entering the field for the first time. As a result, the assumption that hospitality comes naturally is becoming increasingly difficult to rely on.
Service and hospitality are two different things, yet they are often treated as interchangeable. Service focuses on execution, including menus, timing, procedures, and standards. Hospitality, on the other hand, requires awareness, judgment, and human connection. It means understanding a table’s needs and adjusting accordingly. It means recognizing what a guest might need before they have to ask. QSR Magazine explains the distinction clearly: service is functional, while hospitality is emotional. Service leads to satisfaction, but hospitality is what builds loyalty.
Chestnut describes the formula simply: “Service, attitude, relationship: you need all three,” she says. A server who delivers every dish on time but never makes eye contact has fulfilled one responsibility while overlooking the others. Meanwhile, a server who chats with guests about their dog while their food sits waiting has mistaken friendliness for hospitality. Both are making an effort, but neither is necessarily creating the kind of experience that brings customers back.
The difference has real commercial consequences, and recent data reinforces what Chestnut has witnessed throughout her career. Intouch Insight found that guest satisfaction dropped from 98.9% to 31.2% when service changed from friendly to unfriendly, even when the operational elements remained the same. Nearly 22% of guests left without receiving a simple thank you. As Chestnut puts it, “Force-feeding someone at a high speed is certainly not hospitality. That is transactional.”
The results at Chestnut’s own restaurants reflect a similar pattern. By her estimate, approximately 70% of her customers are repeat visitors. That level of loyalty cannot be explained by location or menu alone. Chestnut believes it also comes from how customers feel when they walk through the door. She acknowledges that she cannot take all the credit, but she has noticed that when she is present in the restaurant, the day generally runs more smoothly.
Her approach to hospitality began at home. Her parents held traditional values and taught her that anyone choosing to spend their hard-earned money at a business deserved the best possible experience. For the first 20 years of her career, she cooked in an open kitchen, giving her the opportunity to hear conversations, observe what was happening around her, and speak with customers even when she was not directly serving them. Being so close to the guests helped her understand hospitality in practical terms. It also explains why her business remains closely connected to the community that has supported it.
The pandemic brought significant changes to the workforce she was hiring. Many restaurant employees left the industry, while those entering the field were often younger and had less exposure to the traditions of hosting and gathering through which hospitality had traditionally been learned. At first, Chestnut questioned whether the issue came down to her own management. She read books about becoming a better leader and introduced new systems. Those efforts improved operations, but they did not fully address the underlying challenge.
Today, her approach to teaching hospitality is straightforward but intentional. “Attitude is way more important than experience or personality,” she says. She sends training videos every day and conducts meetings with employees before service. Some workers embrace the expectations, while others leave within the first hour and a half. Those who stay often become the employees customers recognize and request by name. Chestnut remains humble about her approach, saying, “I don’t claim to be an expert in anything. A little common sense and some pride in your work can take you a long way.”
The takeaway is not that younger employees are less capable. Rather, hospitality, much like service itself, is a skill that can be learned, developed, and strengthened through practice. Restaurants can train employees in hospitality with the same care and consistency they apply to menus, timing, and operational standards. When hospitality is treated as a quality someone either possesses or lacks, the results are left to chance. When it becomes a deliberate part of training, restaurant operators have a greater ability to shape the guest experience. If hospitality is what truly encourages customers to return, why should any restaurant leave it untaught?
