Manaia Collective

The Manaia Story

We are passionate about the hospitality industry. It’s a beautiful profession that gives us the ability to connect with our community. Yet, hospitality businesses are, by and large, completely broken. As we've witnessed during the pandemic, the lack of sustainability for business owners and poor quality of life for employees threatens to destroy the industry. In fact, a third of hospitality workers won't return to the industry because they want higher pay, better benefits, and a new work environment. Substance abuse rates in the industry are higher than most industries. Building a career in hospitality is more challenging than ever. Yet, we have a chance to change the status quo.

We Believe

Every hospitality worker deserves living wages, healthcare, benefits, work/life balance, opportunities for advancement, a safe and healthy workplace, and an opportunity to have a real career in the hospitality industry that improves the lives of the worker, their families, and the community as a whole. We believe every restaurant worker, regardless of their position or class, should have a voice in the workplace.

We have an opportunity to reimagine the system.

Support Our Vision

Our Model

Manaia Collective is a new hospitality model that focuses on these values:

Quality of Life: We believe that offering a good quality of life is imperative to attract and retain talent. Livable wages, paid time off, sick pay, parental leave, health/vision/dental, transparency and consensus around salaries.

A Path for Growth: In the industry today, the pathway for advancement and ownership are inequitable. We want to change that. All employees have the option to own a piece of the business through a co-op model, with the opportunity to build a career in the industry and meet their financial goals.

Sustainability in All Areas: Sustainability for the business, our employees, the community, and the environment is imperative in this new model.

Healthy Environments: We believe creating a healthy work environment is good for employees, our guests, and the business.

Emphasis on Community: We use our space to support the community that supports us through pay-what-you-can meals and community partnerships.

The Industry Today

Source: rocunited.org

The median wage for a restaurant worker in the U.S. is just $11.65 per hour.

Restaurant workers are more than 2x as likely to be in poverty than the general workforce.

Women comprise a majority of the industry, and more than half of the mothers in the industry are single mothers.

Over 1/5 of restaurant workers are immigrants.

What is a Worker Owned Co-Op?

The Democracy at Work Institute defines a worker cooperative as “a values-driven business that puts worker and community benefit at the core of its purpose. The two central characteristics of worker cooperatives are:

workers own the business and they participate in its financial success on the basis of their labor contribution to the cooperative
workers have representation on and vote for the board of directors, adhering to the principle of one worker, one vote.”

The Manaia Collective co-op model allows the business to thrive through higher productivity, lower turnover, higher employee engagement, efficiency, and institutional knowledge.

Our Initial Concepts

A progressive city diner for everyone.

Located at the corner of 20th & Main in the Crossroads Kansas City, the menu at Small Axe offers a modern, imaginative take on classic diner fare, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The space is bright and buzzy, lively and upbeat, and a great meeting place for our neighbors.

A wine bar with a worldview.

Our second concept is located at 1989 Main St, Kansas City, MO 64108. At Afi, we’re exploring indigenous ingredients and techniques from North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America, and pairing those dishes with sustainable and natural wines. Open fire cooking on our hearth oven is the common ingredient. We approach food with a deep respect, quest for learning, and acknowledging our limitations of knowledge.

Support our Mission

You have the opportunity to invest in our vision. This is an investment in our community and the future of hospitality. Our model, focused on resiliency and change, can make a real impact for employees, the community, and the company's bottom line. We need forward-thinking investors like you to help us change the industry standard.

Invest

Howard Hanna

CHEF
Howard Hanna is an award-winning chef and restaurateur based in Kansas City, Missouri. He is known for establishing relationships with farmers, his commitment to sustainability, and for promoting racial, gender, and income equity in the hospitality industry. Howard put down roots in KC after graduating first in his class from the Culinary Institute of America in New York in 2003, and garnering valuable experience in some of NYC’s great restaurants, including Union Square Cafe. Howard’s eclectic tastes and approachable midwestern style have earned him recognition by the James Beard Award Foundation as a two-time semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest. He opened his first restaurant, The Rieger, in 2010 which became known as one of Kansas City’s landmark restaurants until closing in late 2020 amidst the Covid 19 pandemic. In 2014 Howard followed up on The Rieger’s success by opening Ça Va, a champagne bar and bistro which has garnered national attention. Before closing the Rieger, chef Howard and his team transitioned the restaurant into the Crossroads Community Kitchen working to salvage food that may have gone to waste while feeding food insecure people in Kansas City while most restaurants were shut down or laying people off. During the spring and summer of 2020, the Crossroads Community Kitchen served over 85,000 meals to people in need, an accomplishment that Howard and the Rieger team are immensely proud of.
Chef Hanna was invited by the James Beard Foundation to attend a Chef’s Bootcamp for Policy and Change in 2017. He received international exposure in 2018 by hosting a pop-up at Chambre Noir, a natural wine bar in Paris, participating in the US-Japan Leadership Conference in Kyoto and Tokyo in 2019, and cooking at Tuscany’s Podere Ciona Winery where he composed his menu entirely from the inspiration taken from local ingredients. Howard is actively involved in the fight for workers’ rights and other social justice causes, and was asked to speak at a press conference in the US Capitol alongside Congressional leaders in support of a bill to raise the federal minimum wage, was active in the successful state minimum wage campaign in Missouri, and has also spoken alongside leaders of Stand Up KC at rallies and press conferences. Howard loves to travel and explore other cultures, and most of his extended family lives overseas in Samoa and Aotearoa/New Zealand, but he is always proud to represent Kansas City by showing off the best of what the Midwest has to offer. He is often found cooking outdoors, at farm dinners, charity events, and pig roasts. Howard is the founder of Manaia Hospitality, a new restaurant group that will roll out two concepts in 2022.
Kyle Gardner

OPERATIONS MANAGER
Kyle is most well-known for helming the bar program at Manifesto and the Rieger, that both pleased the local regulars and drew the destination travelers. When the business was forced to close its doors due to Covid-19, Kyle was fundamental in the development of a Community Kitchen that fed the food insecure and fought food waste – serving over 85,000 meals to neighbors in 5 months.
The community kitchen’s egalitarian structure was essential to the success and satisfaction of the crew. As flexibility and adaptability became the most important attributes for navigating a restaurant model during a pandemic, it was obvious to Kyle that this same approach needs to be applied to all future endeavors, a core tenet for him in his role at Manaia.