Daniel Patterson Tries to Change the Rules for Building a Restaurant Empire
Skift Take
The last year has offered a lot of teaching moments and introspection for restaurateurs. Umbrellas like Daniel Patterson’s Alta Group are tackling big issues like closing the pay gap and supporting racial and gender equity, one restaurant at a time.
The paradigm shifted considerably this year, with chefs and brands taking a much closer look at how they run both individual, independent units, and entire restaurant groups.
For Daniel Patterson, whose original restaurant Coi has won numerous awards and accolades for more than a decade, is bringing racial and gender equity, leveling out the pay gap, and building community to the forefront of his newly formed Alta Group. Not only are they talking about the issues, but they’ve been implementing systems and strategies to bring new voices and solutions to the table.
“We’re in the very nascent stages,” Patterson said. “What we’re trying to do isn’t revolutionary, but we want to center the humanness of what it means to feed someone, to take care of someone and to connect in the context in this modern business.”
Changing Gears But Staying On Track
Originally, Patterson’s burgeoning group opened a few Alta locations around Northern California, but the chef says he never intended to open a “chain” of restaurants. He was already thinking about how to build a new kind of restaurant group, one with a model that could make a social impact as well as support growing businesses. By 2016, they were working with Restaurants Opportunities Center (ROC
