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Founding CHART

Learning. Sharing. Growing. Caring. A legacy from the past that lays the foundation of CHART’s future.

1970 – The Founding of CHART

Original CHART Logo

The Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (CHART) was founded to help hospitality trainers do their jobs better – to develop people and improve the performance of their organizations. This mission has withstood the test of time. For 45 years, CHART members have gathered twice annually at thought-leading conferences, and connect even more frequently at regional meetings, industry events, and online forums – learning the latest in training and development, sharing best practices, growing to significantly improve their organization’s performance, and caring to help others develop personally and professionally.

Like many professional associations, CHART was founded by a group of peers who were passionate about their profession. In this case, the year was 1970 and this forward-thinking group already understood the connection between great people practices and organizational achievement. More importantly, they understood the critical training and human resources role in this equation. The founders held common beliefs that continuing learning, sharing information, developing personally, and building lasting relationships were vital if one wished to achieve a high standard of professionalism and contribute to their hospitality company's growth and profitability.

Our founding father, Chester G. Hall, Jr., was the Educational Director of the National Restaurant Association at the time. His action plan was to contact several well-established restaurant and hotel organizations and ask their “personnel executives” to attend an exploratory meeting with the purpose of discussing opportunities to improve the state of training in the industry. The initial group, including Bob MacKinnon, Corporate Personnel Director at Howard Johnson’s, agreed the next step would be to hold an organizational meeting, CHART’s first “conference,” at the NRA Show in May of 1971. There were about 10 members in attendance.

At Conference #2 in Montreal, Canada, Chet Hall was elected the first CHART president, a name for the organization was selected, and bylaws were created. CHART was off and running! National brands and training professionals represented at this conference were:

2000 – What’s with the Swooshes?

Middle Logo

Sixty conferences and hundreds of members later, in conjunction with CHART’s 30th anniversary, a new brandmark was developed to make a bolder visual statement about what is special and lasting about CHART. The identifiable swooshes communicate positive, upward motion, improvement, and performance. The blue colors in the olympic-style rings are strong, but warm, and signify the belonging and amazing connections among CHART members.

2015 – Goodbye Times New Roman

New CHART Logo

As we celebrated our 45th year and 90th Hospitality Training Conference, CHART smoothed and modernized our logo.

Today, with more than 450 members from more than 300 multi-unit restaurant and hotel companies, CHART represents a workforce of almost three million. CHART includes all facets of hospitality training, learning and performance professionals; from entry level to senior executive. CHART’s mission is to develop hospitality training professionals to advance industry training practices and improve operational results by providing access to education, tools and resources.