Kathy Hollinger is headed from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington to Greater Washington Partnership.
You’ve overseen the Restaurant Association through the most difficult time that the industry has seen in modern history, which is the pandemic. How would you describe the state of the dining scene right now? I think restaurants continue to struggle with inflation, labor shortages in terms of who stayed in the industry, who left the industry, who left the region completely. There was a lot of rethinking of what you wanted to do with your life, whether you were in this industry or not.
I would say that the biggest challenge was really being able to synthesize communication around what this industry can and cannot do on a daily basis. There was a complete re-shift as an organization that we had to make in terms of how we were creating community with our members, knowing that it wasn’t getting together somewhere to be able to brief people. We had to become more of a rapid response organization, every single day.
We grew so much every year to make sure that we were really a relevant representation of what is out in the community. I was very intentional about making sure people were at the table, not getting so caught up in membership as it’s defined, and making sure that there were opportunities for voices to be heard. We were always at the table with big issues that were happening, whether in DC, Maryland, or Virginia.