Erin Kiri

Erin did start her career in hospitality. Technically. If you count hand-tossing pizzas at the local Pizza Factory, which she does — and which she maintains taught her more about service than most brand decks ever will.

The rest of her path was less conventional. Over the course of a 24-year career spanning design, art direction, brand strategy, and experience, Erin has worked across boutique design studios, global agencies, healthcare, and some of the world’s most recognizable hospitality and lifestyle brands. That detour is exactly why she sees restaurants a little differently. While the traditional path often teaches operators to perfect what already exists, hers taught her to ask a different set of questions: Why do guests choose one place over another? What makes them come back? And how do you build a brand people want to belong to?

Erin began her career in design and art direction at boutique industrial design and branding studios, developing an understanding of how form, material, identity, and environment shape the way people feel about a brand long before they can articulate why. At Jack Morton Worldwide, she translated that thinking into live brand experiences for major technology, automotive, beauty, and hospitality clients. Later, at McKesson and Havas, she deepened her expertise in brand strategy, consumer research, and behavioral insight, studying the forces that explain why people think what they think, feel what they feel, and ultimately choose what they choose.

Hospitality became a natural landing place: an industry where brand is not simply communicated, but experienced in real time.

Throughout her career, Erin has worked with hospitality brands including MGM, Bellagio, ARIA, Taj Hotels, Four Seasons, Hi Neighbor Hospitality, Burma Food Group, and Ladle & Leaf. Her work spans brand positioning, naming, identity development, experience design, digital strategy, and community-driven programming.

Today at Cultivate, Erin partners with hospitality leaders to build restaurants from the brand outward, treating every decision — from the name and visual identity to the interiors, digital experience, service, and community — as part of one cohesive guest experience. Her belief is simple: when the food, identity, environment, and service all tell the same story, a restaurant becomes more than somewhere people eat. It becomes a habit, a point of connection, and, eventually, a legacy.