Howard Gordon has spent more than five decades helping businesses grow, introducing new ideas to the hospitality industry and mentoring others. His career includes helping The Cheesecake Factory grow from seven restaurants to more than 150 openings, taking its online sales from about $600,000 to more than $6 million and creating a beverage that became the No. 1-selling iced tea in restaurants nationwide.
He also helped bring technology into restaurant operations, including digital recipe systems in English and Spanish. When The Cheesecake Factory began exploring new technology, Gordon and his colleagues shared what they were learning with other restaurant and technology companies.
“The goal really was to strengthen the industry and not just Cheesecake Factory,” Gordon said. That instinct to look beyond a single business has followed Gordon throughout his career. Today, he works with hospitality companies on growth, operations and technology while mentoring students preparing to enter the industry.
Gordon’s connection to hospitality runs through generations of his family. He is a third-generation member of the restaurant business and fifth-generation member of the baking industry. Originally from New York, he attended a two-year college there before following the head of its hotel and restaurant department to UW-Stout Polytechnic with a group of classmates.
At Stout, Gordon completed his bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management. He remembers a close-knit campus and the opportunity to learn about both the hospitality business and the communities it serves.
Stout also gave him opportunities to experiment with ideas that were new at the time. One of his favorite memories is a microwave oven cooking class, which Gordon believes was the first of its kind at Stout. Litton Industries had provided microwaves to the university and Gordon and several other men enrolled in a home economics class to work with the emerging technology.
Decades later, technology would become a recurring part of his career. He credits Stout’s hands-on approach with helping him understand the business beyond the classroom.
“There were a lot of hands-on opportunities at Stout for us to get to understand the business a little bit better,” he said. Just as important, Gordon said, was learning to keep learning. “Each opportunity is different,” he said. “And so you just continue to keep learning as you move along with your career.”
Gordon returned to New York after graduation. His grandfather, a leader in the baking industry who helped create the Cake Bakers and Bread Unions in the U.S. and served as president for about 40 years, helped him land his first job. From there, Gordon built a career that included a position at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where he became the youngest American manager at the hotel.
He later became a regional food and beverage director overseeing 19 Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels before joining a friend’s high-end coffee and tea company. That move led to the creation of Paradise Tropical Tea.
Gordon and his colleagues spent about a year developing the beverage, experimenting with fruit extracts such as papaya and mango and working through formulation, taste and shelf life. At the time, restaurant iced tea was largely limited to traditional and sweet varieties. Paradise Tropical Tea became the No. 1-selling iced tea in restaurants nationwide and eventually expanded into retail.
“There was nobody doing that,” Gordon said. “And so it became very novel.”
In 1996, Gordon joined The Cheesecake Factory, which had seven restaurants at the time. He became the company’s first senior vice president and took on a broad role that included business development, marketing and communications. He worked with restaurant operations and corporate leadership, assisted with new restaurant openings and represented the company in media appearances.
The company was growing quickly, and Gordon saw opportunities to use technology to change how it did business. He helped create the first website and online ordering system, which replaced an earlier process where customers called an 800 number in Florida to place orders. As a result, online sales climbed from roughly $600,000 annually to more than $6 million.
Gordon also pushed technology into restaurant operations. He realized that kitchen display systems could do more than show orders and could help manage the kitchen. Digital recipes gave employees quick access to information and were available in both English and Spanish. The work reflected a larger view of technology that Gordon still carries into his work today: It should solve a problem, make a process more effective or give people a better way to do their jobs.
After leaving The Cheesecake Factory, Gordon founded Gordon Restaurant Group, working with restaurant and hospitality companies on project management, strategic planning, growth, operations, leadership development, marketing and technology. His current work includes restaurant technology through Curate Technologies, where he is a partner. The platform brings together customer engagement, ordering, loyalty programs and marketing. Customers can scan a QR code to access a customized app without downloading one.
For all the changes technology has brought to hospitality, Gordon said the most important part of the business remains the same.
“The focus is taking care of your customer, having them feel at home and getting a great product,” he said.
That focus also shapes how Gordon advises restaurant businesses. He prefers to work alongside teams rather than simply hand them a set of recommendations.
“A lot of times it is about boots on the ground,” he said. “Most things that are concerns for restaurateurs are based in operations. So you have to be there.”
Gordon sees passion for the industry, strong people and effective technology as key ingredients for businesses that want to grow.
He is also putting those lessons to work with students. Gordon serves on the board of advisors for Collins College at Cal Poly Pomona, where he is involved in preparing students for the workforce. He makes himself available to students who want advice about the industry and has returned to Stout twice to speak to classes.
Gordon’s career has taken him from a microwave cooking class in Menomonie to some of the biggest names in hospitality. More than five decades after graduating, he is still exploring what’s new, asking what could work better and sharing what he learns with the people coming next.
