With lockdown measures, social distancing requirements, and other restrictions, the hospitality, and gastronomy sectors have been hit hard by the pandemic. How have hotels, restaurants, cafes, and bars navigated the myriad of regulations? How have they adapted to the changing circumstances as the pandemic goes through different phases? How are they positioning themselves for the coming months?
Join the American Council on Germany and 1014 for a discussion with Nadine and Tom Michelberger who run the Hotel Michelberger in Berlin as a continually evolving family business; Rose Previte who owns and manages “Compass Rose” and “Maydan” in Washington D.C.; as well as Charlotta Janssen who opened the restaurant “Chez Oskar” in Brooklyn, New York, in 2000 to showcase her artwork.
Nadine and Tom Michaelberger are the founders of the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin and projects that evolved from it, like Michelberger Music and Michelberger’s Fountain of Youth or Michelberger Booze. Entrepreneurs at heart, with a high sense of self-responsibility to define and find new ways of creating, running, and growing companies, that are diverse in ideas, aware of the social impact, and always financially independent.
Like so many in the D.C. restaurant industry, Rose Previte, owner of Compass Rose and Maydan restaurants on D.C.’s 14th Street corridor, moved to D.C. to study and work in public policy. She found herself behind the bar in what morphed from side gig to a calling: running restaurants that pull from her other passion, travel. Ms. Previte opened Compass Rose, which highlighted a variety of international cuisines and featured its now-famous khachapuri, or Georgian cheese bread, in 2014. She followed that with Maydan, a much more ambitious live-fire restaurant a few blocks up 14th Street, in late 2017. It quickly blew up, becoming a national destination.
Charlotta Janssen was born in Maine to German parents living in America under the Marshall Plan. In 1973, her family moved to Iran, which they fled during the revolution in 1979. Back in Germany, she studied painting at the University of Arts in Berlin from 1986-1989. She dropped out and traveled the world as a street musician and performance artist. In 1991, she picked up her brushes again and started organizing art shows wherever she traveled. She moved to New York in 1995, and opened “Chez Oskar” in Brooklyn in 2000, as a venue to exhibit her art.
