While considering names for the company he was establishing, Maverick Hotels and Restaurants CEO Bob Habeeb said “bells went off” when a friend who names companies for a living suggested “Maverick.” “That really was the best possible name for the company because we really are a different kind of management company; we’re free thinkers who work together to solve problems.”
Habeeb shared with LODGING how he first became “addicted to” hospitality and why he has remained so during a career spanning more than 40 years. That passion led him to found his own company and run it with like-minded team members using forward-looking approaches to hotel development and management and innovative food & beverage programs.
Habeeb, whose first foray into the hospitality industry was working at a bar with entertainment during college, describes hospitality almost as a calling. “For me it became a vocation, where I became ‘at one’ with the industry. I just became addicted. Really, as I see it, if you don’t get hooked in like I did, you were never really in hospitality in the first place.”
Yet, at one point, Habeeb did get out—very briefly. After moving up the ranks from restaurant manager to area manager to corporate director training for a large family restaurant chain, he got into the hotel side “accidentally” when asked to step into the breech left by the abrupt departure of an operations manager in the small hotel where he was managing the restaurant. What he thought was a breaking point came while working as regional director of operations for a hotel company. “I told my boss the job was draining me, and I wanted to try something different,” he relates. Lucky for him, this “wise boss” kept him on the hook. “He said he wasn’t going to rush to replace me during the slow season, when others could take on some of my territory. After about two months, I was happy to go back to my old job. I had forgotten how much I like the industry.”
From there, he continued his climb. He leveraged his varied background, which included the club business, family restaurants, and fine dining as well as hotels, to take a position at a multinational company to manage their portfolio of hotels, restaurants, leisure businesses, and eclectic restaurants that included Hard Rock Café at the time.
Business and Family Mentors
His final move before founding Maverick entailed a relocation to Chicago in 1997 for First Hospitality Group, where he rose to become president and CEO and remained until he founded Maverick in 2018.
Habeeb says it was First Hospitality Group Founder and Chairman Stephen Schwartz who was his most influential professional mentor. “He taught me the whole hotel development game; he was a genius at it, and I learned a lot from him.” But it was his father, a commissioned General Motors car salesman, “who never left Scranton” and never burdened his family with what was almost surely the volatility of his income, that instilled in him the values and view of life that have underpinned his style of managing and living. “He was a great dad and community member in our little town, where everyone knew each other. He modeled integrity and hard work,” Habeeb relates. “He had that common-man touch, something I consider my own stock-in-trade in that I can identify with team members at all levels as well as our guests, but I can also hold my own in the boardroom and other high-profile environments.”
Keeping Up With the Times
Although Habeeb didn’t mention a single challenge that marked his career, he did speak of daily challenges that are “business as usual” for longtime hoteliers who, like him, are “higher up on the food chain.” “My biggest challenge is keeping up in an industry that, between technology and the changes in the workforce, has become increasingly a young person’s game. This is an easy industry to time yourself out in. It’s important not to become close minded,” he maintains.
One way to keep an open mind and “the perspective of a futurist,” he mentions, is to listen to the current music, including rap, which “has taught me things about the human experience I might have closed my mind to.”
A Free-Spirited Culture
Even before starting his own company, Habeeb understood the importance of creating a culture that makes employees feel valued. Under his leadership at First Hospitality Group, the company was included several times on Forbes’ Best Employers.
He describes his own company as “the most entrepreneurial and free-thinking organization that I know of” and one that is based on collaboration. “Our corporate organization is very flat. We’re all just teammates who work on our hotels together, without a lot of meetings or managing up. It’s really all about us tackling our problems as a community.”
He says the name Maverick perfectly describes his approach to managing his company. “Some people need to be in a rich environment where they have a lot of rules, instructions, and guidance, while others do best while freewheeling it as mavericks. They want to win, but they want to do it in an environment where they can be their best selves, where they can work hard and be recognized for their efforts.”
That said, Habeeb recognizes the need “to have a balance of the free thinkers and people in more rule-driven areas.” However, he adds, “Even the people that join us in those roles, like accounting and legal and loss prevention, have to embrace a little bit of that free spirit as well.”
This spirit, he says, has engendered loyalty, which is reflected in retention numbers—especially among the senior group at Maverick. That team includes “one person that moved to three different companies with me” and a COO he’s worked with for 23 years.
“There’s a bond there that’s not easily broken, and that’s been a big plus for our retention. If you’re in our company and subscribe to our way of doing business, you’re not likely to be in a hurry to go anywhere else.”
Learning Through Teaching: Joining Hospitality School Staff Proves an Enriching Experience
Maverick Hotels and Restaurants CEO Bob Habeeb, who first stumbled into the hotel side of hospitality in response to a sudden need, stumbled into teaching some two decades ago in nearly the exact same way: He was asked to fill in for a departing member of the adjunct faculty of Chicago’s Roosevelt University. And, just like with hospitality, he was immediately hooked.
Habeeb continues to teach at a graduate level in the Manfred Steinfeld School of Hospitality Management, and, like many who teach, he says he benefits at least as much as his students do, adding that interacting with those learning the business has cleared out some of the cobwebs that had formed over the years. “When you do something for a long time, you think you know it, but when you get the directions to teach it, you realize there are all these steps that you’re skipping. Teaching forced me to go back and read the directions again, and then share it with others,” Habeeb explains. “That, combined with feedback from the students, meant that by the end of the semester, I was learning as much as they did.”
Great business and a fine man. I’ve had many students work for him, all good.