StM News

Bobby Quintal ’06

14-Year Club member
Brother of Becky Quintal ’03
Cornell University, School of Hotel Administration
Co-Founder of Porch Swing Hospitality 
VP Sandstone Developments

Talk about your time at StM (14-Year Club):

I was just overall really happy to be at school! I always liked going to school, for a number of reasons. It very much felt like home. I always felt comfortable and able to be myself here.

What has it been like for you as a parent, watching your children experience some of the same traditions you enjoyed here?

It’s really special for me to see teachers who are still here from when I was a student. It makes me feel good about having my children at StM because I know what those teachers and coaches bring to the experience. It’s just fun to run into them on campus! When my son was in the Cottage 3s, it was really surreal because he was in the same classrooms that were the Pre-K classrooms when I first started. It’s been fun to once again experience the traditions that have been in place for so long, and also see how StM has evolved immensely. 

How did your StM education help prepare you for the path you took after high school?

From very early on, St. Martin’s gives its students a balance of freedom and accountability. We were treated almost as peers by the teachers and coaches, who taught us to think outside the box, ask challenging questions, and challenge the status quo in a way that led to a larger learning experience. I feel that, especially when you get into college and start to focus on your career path, you need to have that type of working relationship with your professors, and I was able to gain that confidence from my time at St. Martin’s. As students, we were able to have an open dialogue with the faculty, and that was critically important to my success in college.

I chose Cornell because I really wanted to go into the Hotel School, which attracted me because making other people happy had always made me happy. Being in service to others and developing service leadership skills is what I gravitated towards in high school. I really enjoyed being involved in Student Council and other campus activities because, in my mind, I was doing my part to help St. Martin’s be the best that it could be. 

Helping others gave me perpetual fulfillment, so that’s what really led me down my career path. On the flip side, the classes that I excelled at in school, like Geometry and Physics, gave me those technical skills that I use day-to-day in my career. Being able to walk into a space and calculate the square footage fairly quickly is important, but I think even more important were those “softer skills” that I developed at St. Martin’s. I credit my ability to communicate and write clearly  to my English classes. My papers may have gotten torn up with corrections in high school, but that helped me learn how to handle feedback. I learned how to have a tough conversation with my teachers, in a respectful and professional manner, and ultimately those corrections helped me become a stronger writer and communicator. 

Why did you choose StM for your kids?

To me, what separates St. Martin’s from other schools is the sense of values that the school instills as an overarching theme across the learning experience. The mission of St. Martin’s and what it strives to bring to the table outside of the classroom, that was critical to my decision for where I would send my children. I want my kids to have the best opportunity to become the type of individual they want to become, and I know StM emphasizes a strong sense of character, integrity, and values from a very young age. 

I feel that a lot of what makes our school unique is how we embrace teaching religion and the values that come from that. Our students go to school with kids from a variety of faith backgrounds, and StM takes those values that spread across all beliefs and ties those into the curriculum. St. Martin’s provides the foundation that I think is critical to developing children and students into people of strong character. 

Talk about what you're doing now with your two businesses, Porch Swing Hospitality and Sandstone Development. 

At Cornell, I majored in Hotel Administration, with a concentration on food and beverage. After college, I joined the Union Square Hospitality Group in New York, where I was a project manager, which basically meant that wherever there was a need, I went. I found myself managing concessions for the NY Mets. I was 22 working at a baseball stadium…it was a dream job! I also got to oversee the construction at a new restaurant and that led me to gravitate towards the development side of things. I eventually wound up overseeing all business development for the entire company and was working on new projects across the country. 

When I moved back to New Orleans, I started Porch Swing Hospitality with my business partner, who is still based in the Northeast. We are a consultancy that supports businesses in the hospitality realm that are on the cusp of growth who need professional guidance to achieve that growth. Through this work, I also  got connected with a local hotel operating and development company, Sandstone Hospitality. 

What’s so interesting about working in this realm in New Orleans is that hospitality projects, like a new hotel, for example, have so much more of an impact on the community than they do elsewhere.  We make sure that everything that’s good for one of our properties, is ultimately good for the neighborhood nearby. The work we did with the renovation of The Columns Hotel really opened my eyes to that, and we truly considered the needs of the locals when opening Fives in the French Quarter. 

Obviously, tourism is so important to this city, but if you build something for the community, the tourists will come. It’s the locals who need to embrace a project for it to work. We believe that if we focus on being a good neighbor for our community, and respect the needs and opinions of our staff, business will come! We always ask ourselves how we can build something additive to the neighborhood and the community. We want to give our buildings a sense of place. This month, we opened Hotel Henrietta, which is a 40-room hotel on St. Charles Avenue. The chance to build a building from the ground up on St. Charles Avenue was incredibly powerful for me, as someone who grew up here. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity! 

What advice would you share with young alumni looking to go into the hospitality industry?

It’s crazy to think about how well positioned students are today. Knowing how prepared I felt when I graduated from St. Martin’s nearly 20 years ago, and just seeing what the curriculum is like today, I feel students now are just miles ahead in terms of their knowledge and skill sets. Seeing how the curriculum has evolved and become more intense starting at such a young age was just another reason my family was so excited to come back to St.Martin’s for our own kids.

For someone looking to get into this industry, it’s so critical to have an understanding of the day to day, “boots on the ground” aspect of the operation. Having experience in food service, bartending, and greeting people, it just gives a greater empathy and understanding for those people who live and work in the spaces I build. I highly encourage those who are just starting out to get some form of basic operations experience to gain a better understanding of how to speak to people, manage people, have tough conversations, and deal with problems. Hospitality is the best way to get that experience, under pressure. It gives you so much opportunity to think on your feet, to think critically. Those skills, regardless of the industry you go into, are extremely valuable.