Nick Steen.The person across the table.

Nick Steen is a career operator with over 20 years in the hospitality industry. He has run multiple restaurants and resorts from every angle, washing dishes, building budgets, owning the properties, leading front-of-house and back-of-house teams alike, and carrying full responsibility for every seat in the building and every line on the P&L. He is an owner-operator who has run every side of the business and knows how each piece connects.

That range is the point. A guest ranch is not a restaurant, a resort is not a hotel, and a bar is not a coffee shop, but the underlying business is the same in every one of them: labor, cost of goods, guest experience, and the daily discipline of running a P&L an owner actually understands. Nick has done that work from the line, from the corner office, and from the ownership side of the table.

Along the way, the James Beard Foundation named him a semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain three separate times, a real signal that the food and the team stood up to national scrutiny. The result he cares about most, though, is the one nobody hands out: a business that pays its people well, treats its guests like family, and outlives its founder.

In 2026 Nick stepped out of daily operations for good. Consulting isn't a side project or a bridge for him, it's the career he has committed to for the rest of his working life. Sunstone exists so that independent owners across all hospitality fields can get senior, operator-level help from someone who has actually stood in their shoes and sat in their chair.