If different from Full Name provided

We will contact them before finalists are announced.

For the person behind the room. This award goes to a restaurant owner or operating company that other operators point to as the standard — a healthy business, a team that stays, and a presence in the community and the industry that extends well past their own four walls. We look at operational excellence, how they treat their people, and what they have done to promote and protect foodservice in Minnesota.

Eligibility: Hospitality Minnesota member in good standing.

For the one who makes the shift work. Servers, line cooks, dishwashers, hosts, bartenders, managers — anyone whose professionalism and care set the tone for everyone around them. You do not need a title to win this award, and some of the best nominations we receive are for people who have never been publicly thanked for anything.

Eligibility: Employed at a Hospitality Minnesota member restaurant for at least one year. Nominate more than one person if you have more than one.

For the cook, whose kitchen reflects both skill and leadership. This award looks at what comes out of the pass — menu development, consistency, food quality, creativity — and at what happens behind it: who they have trained, who they have kept, and what they have contributed to how Minnesota eats.

Eligibility: Employed at a Hospitality Minnesota member establishment.

Catering is its own discipline — one shot, no second seating, and a client who has been picturing this day for a year. This award recognizes a catering professional or company that delivers it, whether that is a banquet department turning a ballroom between a morning meeting and a wedding, a restaurant running private dining alongside a full house, a resort putting on a reception at the water's edge, or an off-premise operator executing in a room they do not control, on a timeline they did not set. We consider menu creativity, client service, and the operational discipline that makes a four-hundred-person dinner look effortless.

Eligibility: Hospitality Minnesota member in good standing. On-premise and off-premise catering are equally eligible — hotel and resort banquet departments, restaurant private dining, and standalone catering companies.

For the person carrying the whole property. This award recognizes a hotel owner, general manager, or management company executive whose peers regard them as a leader — in how the property performs, how the team is treated, and how they show up for lodging in their community and at the Capitol.

Eligibility: Hospitality Minnesota member in good standing. General managers, management company executives, and property owners are all eligible.

For the hotel employee guests remember and coworkers rely on. Housekeeping, front desk, maintenance, banquets, sales, night audit — every department is eligible, and the quiet departments are often where the strongest nominations come from. Twenty years of doing it right without being asked is exactly what this award is for.

Eligibility: Employed at a Hospitality Minnesota member hotel for at least one year. Multiple nominations welcome

For the owner or operating company anchoring their corner of the state. A short season, weather that does not negotiate, and a workforce that has to be rebuilt every spring — this award recognizes the operators who do it well year after year, and who carry their community along with them.

Eligibility: Hospitality Minnesota member in good standing. General managers, management company executives, and property owners are all eligible.

For the person who makes a family's week at the lake the thing they talk about all winter. Front desk, housekeeping, grounds, marina, kitchen, activities — anyone on the property is eligible. Seasonal staff count, and so do the people who have come back every summer for fifteen years.

Eligibility: Employed at a Hospitality Minnesota member resort or campground for at least one year. Multiple nominations welcome.

For the allied partner, whose service to this industry goes past the invoice. The distributor who found product during a shortage. The vendor who answered on a Sunday. The partner who invests in Minnesota hospitality's advocacy, education, and workforce because they believe in it, not because it was in the contract.

Eligibility: Any Hospitality Minnesota member business may nominate a supplier. We would especially like to see this category filled this year.

David Burley was an innovator. As co-founder of Blue Plate Restaurants he built concepts and practices that had not existed before — and then he handed them to anyone who asked. He never held an idea back to keep an edge. He believed, plainly and without qualification, that every operator in Minnesota deserved to succeed, and he spent his career proving it: opening his books and his kitchens to competitors, mentoring owners who would go on to open across the street, and advocating at the Minnesota and U.S. Capitols for the whole industry rather than his own piece of it. He never sought the spotlight for any of it.

This award goes to a hospitality leader who works the way David worked — building something new, then bringing everybody along with them. Someone whose best ideas ended up in other people's businesses, and who counted that as the point.

Eligibility: Open nomination. Individuals or operating companies.

This is not a good-year award. It is a career. The Hall of Fame recognizes individuals whose contributions shaped Minnesota's restaurant, lodging, or resort and campground industries over decades — the ones whose names come up when an operator tells you who taught them, who built something that outlasted them, who set the standard the rest of us measure against. Legends, in the judgment of their peers.

Eligibility: Twenty or more years in the business. Nominee or their business must be a Hospitality Minnesota member in good standing.

150–300 words. Be specific. What did they actually do, and when?

100–250 words. Give us numbers wherever you have them — revenue, retention, occupancy, covers, guest scores, turnover, review ratings. A number the committee can point to is worth a paragraph of praise

100–200 words. Name someone whose career is different because of this person. Mentorship is what separates the top of every category from the middle.

100–250 words. This is the part we read from the stage. Make it the real one.

Optional. Community involvement, industry service, board work, ProStart or workforce support, advocacy, volunteering.

Optional.

Walk us through their career — where they started, what they built, where they are now.

Roughly 300 words. Dates and places help.

What in this industry exists today because of them?

What did they build, change, or try that nobody else was doing?

How have they helped those in the industry outside their own business?

What has this supplier done for your business that went beyond the contract?

How do they support the broader Minnesota hospitality industry?

Not required to nominate — registration opens soon.