Founding CHART
Learning. Sharing. Growing. Caring. A legacy from the past that lays the foundation of CHART’s future.
1970 – The Founding of CHART
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 more than 50 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 then the Educational Director of the National Restaurant Association. At the time of the National Restaurant Show in 1970, Chet's 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, committed to the creation of a formal organization. Their next step was to hold an organizational meeting, CHART’s first “conference,” in Chicago in February 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:
- National Restaurant Association, Chet Hall, Education Director (pictured above)
- Howard Johnson’s, Walt Hiller, Southeast Personnel Director and Training Manager
- Holiday Inn, Tom Johnson, Director of Resident Training
- Dobb’s Houses, John McClendon, Training Manager
- Hilton International, Henri Blanc, Director of Training
- Sky Chef’s, Phil Gibson, Director of Management Training
- Marriott, Marty Harder, Training Manager
2000 – What’s with the Swooshes?
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
As we celebrated our 45th year and 90th Hospitality Training Conference, CHART smoothed and modernized our logo.
Today, with more than 650 members from more than 350 multi-unit restaurant and hotel companies, CHART represents a workforce of almost five 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.