The Prescott Area Hospitality Collective is Solving an Old Problem

With Powers Combined

Richard “Dick” Milon has a wealth of personal experience with an age-old problem: “Good help is hard to find.” A graduate of Saint Paul College’s Culinary Arts Program and the University of Denver’s Hospitality Management Program, his career encompassed upper and senior management positions in the corporate world of service. His experience spans airport operations, hotels, upscale restaurant chains, and contract service providers for college campuses.

For the last 12 years, he’s shared his experience as a volunteer mentor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE). This lasting connection with the restaurant and hospitality industries made him aware that the problem still hasn’t gone away. “After listening to that so many times, all of a sudden it dawned on me: ‘This doesn’t make sense. We’re sitting 90 miles from a Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) program at NAU, and there’s a great culinary program in Sedona, so why not try to connect the dots?’”

In April 2024, he started reaching out to local restaurant and hotel operators. Would an internship program make sense for them? Such was the humble beginning of the Prescott Area Hospitality Collective (PAHC).

The next logical step was connecting with Suzanne Taylor, program director of Career and Alumni Services at NAU’s School of HRM. “What if we created a summer internship program for the NAU kids to come to the Prescott area and work with some of our operators?” Milon asked. Taylor’s response was instant and enthusiastic. Like Milon, her industry experience spans decades. She’s done every aspect of food and beverage service possible (minus cooking on the line) and at one time owned her own residential and commercial cleaning business.

Taylor is also a graduate of the HRM program and has led Career and Alumni Services since 2008. One of her primary goals is to ensure students have industry experience before they graduate. “If they go through all the theory and then they get out there and hate the work, it doesn’t make any sense. I want them to get the experience early on so they can say, ‘No, this isn’t for me. I’m switching my major,’ or ‘Yes, this is exactly what I want to be doing.’”

“The purpose of the internship,” Milon says, “is to help them carve their own road.” Whether at a hotel or a restaurant, the internship provides students with experience in both front- and back-of-the-house operations. He adds, “That’s really the key: to be able to give students a well-rounded experience of what it takes to operate a restaurant or hotel. And then they can take it from there.”

While hypothesizing what the program might look like, Taylor told Milon, “The biggest roadblock is students who would go to Prescott don’t have a place to stay and don’t qualify for a lease.” Sixty percent of HRM students come from Arizona. Relocating for a mere six weeks on a student budget would be nearly impossible. Undeterred, Milon continued connecting with people, including the vice president of Finance and Administrative Services at Yavapai College. An agreement was reached. Dorm rooms on the Prescott campus would be available during summer, for a cost.

Yet another piece of the puzzle involved ensuring business owners had access to a training budget. Initially, the Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG), a leader in local economic and workforce development, was poised to help provide the necessary funding. Now, as a federally and state-funded nonprofit, NACOG’s role in the program is uncertain. “Funding remains the floating piece,” Milon says. “The Collective is constantly applying for various grants to help subsidize the internship program.”

If you’re wondering why paying an intern is any different than paying a new employee, consider this: An employer is responsible for payroll tax and workers’ compensation insurance. The Small Business Administration quotes a rule of thumb that the actual cost of an employee is 1.25 to 1.41 times their wage. If an intern is paid minimum wage for 20 hours/week for six weeks, that’s at least $2,000. At the end of the six weeks, the intern returns to school. While the goal is to create a valuable learning experience for the student and a solid future team member for the business owner, there is no guarantee the student will return after graduating. In other words, it’s a risky investment.

Risk is something entrepreneurs are deeply familiar with, especially those in the hospitality business. On average, restaurants have a profit margin between 3% and 10%. Hotels are higher. If owners are earning three cents on every dollar spent inside their doors, then adding a paid intern to the payroll is not a decision to be made lightly. Short-term costs must be weighed against big-picture gains.

The PAHC is made up of several business owners in the Prescott area, all of whom are accustomed to seeing forests rather than trees. Among them is Brittany Peters, co-owner of Farm Provisions in Prescott. Peters says, “We don’t have a lot of people in the 20–45 age range that are sticking around and starting families or businesses. If we can connect with these younger students, get their foot in the door, and they fall in love with Prescott as we all have, then maybe we’ll start building that foundation.”

Peters understands the implications of her statement. She fondly recalls childhood memories of riding horseback to Dairy Queen in her hometown of Cave Creek. “It hurts the heart a little bit because I’d love to let my daughter experience those kinds of fun things, but I think Prescott still has a lot to offer in regard to feeling little and hometown-ish.”

Beyond considerations of the demographics of vibrant communities, she is excited to see young people who share her passion. “For [Chef and Co-owner] Ryan and I, this was our dream,” Peters says. “It’s rare to find people who are on that side of it. I enjoy being able to connect with people who want to create beautiful dishes and unique cocktails and want to be on the cutting edge of what is coming up in our industry. It’s fun to sit down and get new ideas and collaborate.”

Julia Ammons, co-owner of Essence Kitchen + Bar, was also drawn to participate in the PAHC. Since she and Co-owner/Chef Jason Krupp conceptualized the restaurant, part of their mission has been to nurture the craft of the industry and share it with the community—a mission she recalls joking with Krupp about almost immediately manifesting.

“When we first opened in June of 2020, the staff consisted of one 66-year-old, one 32-year-old, three 19-year-olds, and everyone else was 14, 15, and 16.” Although born and raised in Prescott, Ammons spent 25 years working in Huntington Beach, California, where she says, “There was such a diverse availability of workers and team members that we don’t have here, especially in Chino Valley.”

Like Peters, Ammons welcomes the concomitant growth the internship program hopes to inspire. “Everyone’s moving everywhere. I know people who are moving, and they want to be part of a community, and that’s why they go to smaller towns. They want to support local. They want to support the farmers market.”

Rounding out the collective is the Ponderosa Hotel Group, owner of the Springhill Suites and Residence Inn in Prescott. Alondra Flores, general manager, is equally excited about the prospect of the internship program. She says, “This gives us the opportunity to find someone young that we can mold into what we want the future of our company to be … that will have the same views and values as we do.” For her, those values revolve around family and teamwork. She describes Springhill Suites as “a big family where everybody is equal, everybody is the same. From the owners to the newest hires, we are all here to get through the day together.”

Flores perfectly reflects Prescott’s motto of “Everybody’s Hometown.” She says, “It’s not just, like, ‘Come work for us,’; it’s, like, ‘Come live here.’ Prescott’s amazing. We have great schools and great hiking. If your goal is to find a person, marry them, and have children, this place is perfect. I don’t think young people know that.”

The potential impact of the PAHC is more significant than encouraging a missing generation to call Prescott home. Taylor says, “If we get this off the ground and make it successful, we can use it as a model in other areas like Sedona and the Grand Canyon where it’s so difficult to get people to come and work and stay.”

And so far, it’s off to a good start. In February, the PAHC joined 45 other businesses during the HRM School’s Career Fair. They set up a table along with representatives from major hospitality companies like Marriott and Hyatt, and restaurant groups like Fox and Hillstone. Within a few hours, 10 students had signed up for an interview to be conducted later that day.

There are still pieces of the puzzle to find and dots to connect, but optimism is well warranted. This summer, the PAHC will host two interns: one interested in restaurant management, the other in hospitality management.