We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keith Burkard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Keith thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been good friends and collaborators with Chef Todd English for several years now. In 2021, we decided to found The English Hospitality Group together, bringing together Todd’s culinary expertise with my business-oriented vision to life. We have quickly become a leading operator, owner and developer of restaurants, hotels, and nightlife venues all around the world. We are reimagining the traditional hospitality model to create unmatched guest experiences that feature impeccable service, extraordinary cuisine and unique, elevated atmospheres encompassing art thematics and outside the box ideas.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

EHG, The English Hospitality Group is a leading global operator, owner and developer of restaurants, hotels, and nightlife venues led by the powerhouse duo of renowned celebrity chef, Todd English, and myself. The EHG portfolio currently includes 21 properties worldwide including outposts in the United States, the Bahamas, United Arab Emirates and the Philippines, with robust expansion plans in the works.

As a serial entrepreneur and visionary, I have streamlined EHG both structurally and financially. I’ve spearheaded restaurant design and development, am rapidly expanding the group’s global portfolio to include hospitality and nightlife destinations, and lead capital and product development for multiple strategic partnerships. Prior to co-founding EHG, I worked at Park Avenue Finance, where I was responsible for over $1.6 billion of capital transaction pipeline execution involving international structuring and top-tier bank financing, while simultaneously driving the financial product innovations that cemented Park Avenue Finance as a leader in strategic solutions domestically and internationally.

I am also the founder and President of LastLeaf, a cannabis-infused gourmet food line that is partnering with the most influential and awarded chefs in the world to reimagine the cannabis edibles market. I hold a BA in Political Science & Economics from the University of Miami, in tandem with a Blockchain Degree from Oxford University Saïd Business School, and actively serve on several Advisory Boards to innovative technology start-ups.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Both Todd and I have strong reputations in our respective fields: food and business. By joining forces, we were able to expand and build our brand out quickly while always ensuring projects have the “English Effect.” The “English Effect” ensures properly-run F&B that leads to compounding asset value increases over time. Every time we start a new project, we always ask ourselves, how can we make it different from everything else in the market? Our ambition is to create properties that give our guests the feeling of absolute luxury while still being welcoming, and authentically integrated into the culture of each city that we’re located in. Our company is built on four pillars: Food, Community, Art, and Employee Development. The hallmarks of an EHG experience that every project will reflect and that every guest will experience are style, sense of place and longevity.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to carve out my own destiny in the world of business. As my business and financial career excelled, I applied my methodical and logistical mindset to support and transform the cannabis industry, which was hungry for disruption. Keeping tunnel vision, I shifted my focus to solving the industry issue of how to create consistent chains of production for cannabis edibles from state-to-state. This led me to create LastLeaf, a collection of cannabis-infused culinary products that approach edibles differently: savory flavors and micro-dosing. Through LastLeaf, I’m on a mission to manufacture culinary products using premium ingredients to produce top-tier flavor with consistent quality harnessing an amplified edible experience for consumers. We work with top-rated, creative chefs to provide culinary products for the American at-home chef. We believe in the healing powers of food and the cannabis plant, individually and together because in just 8-10 minutes of cooking time, people can elevate mealtime, anytime. We’ve already launched two products including Classic Macaroni & Cheese Pasta Shells & White Cheddar. These products are available in California dispensaries – Culture Cannabis Club, Cookies and Lemonade. Coming soon, we will have Classic Olive Oil, Pasta Sauce, BBQ Sauce and Chips

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ehgusa.com/ and https://lastleaf.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithjburkard/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-j-burkard-6a0248131

Image Credits
EHG (English Hospitality Group). For the headshot of Chef Todd, photo credit is William Badillo.