Restaurant owner discusses three decades in hospitality business

Richard Mott, a Chicago restaurateur, recently spoke about his 30 years in the food business on the podcast "Odd Lots." Mott started his career in the 1980s when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. He ran a small coffee shop in the basement of the business school. Before he finished his studies, he had grown that one shop into four locations across the campus. In the late 1990s, he opened North Pond, a restaurant that focuses on locally sourced food. He has since added another venture, Spark Shared Kitchen. Mott has also been a long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America and has worked in left-wing media alongside his restaurant career.