Dennis W. Quaintance
CEO, CDO (Chief Design Officer) & CSO (Chief Storytelling Officer)
Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants & Hotels
324 W. Wendover Ave. Suite 320, Greensboro, NC 27408
t: 336-370-0966 | e: [email protected]
Hospitality Career
- In 1973, he began his hospitality career at age 15 as a housekeeper’s assistant at a hotel in Missoula, Montana. He worked his way up to assistant general manager while in high school.
- For four years after high school, he worked in leadership at several hotels around the Northwest, Arizona and Florida.
- In 1978, he moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, to help a friend open a restaurant, Franklin’s Off Friendly.
- Dennis teamed up with Mike Weaver to form Quaintance-Weaver in 1988 and opened Lucky 32 restaurant in Greensboro in 1989.
- Lucky 32 was named for Dennis’ father’s racecar (‘46 Mercury with a flathead V8).
- Today, the Quaintance-Weaver family of businesses includes a second Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen in Cary. The four-diamond, 130-room O.Henry Hotel and the adjacent Green Valley Grill opened in Greensboro in 1998. The four-diamond 147-room Proximity Hotel and neighboring Print Works Bistro opened in 2007 and are the first hotel and restaurant to gain Platinum certification with the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
- Since ~2014 QW also has the QW Craft Guild; a group of 10 to 16 full-time and adjunct artists and craftspeople that make and restore items and spaces for the QW businesses.
- In 2016, Dennis facilitated the transfer of ownership of the QW operating businesses to a trust that provides retirement benefits for QW staff members. QW is now 100% employee-owned.
Affiliations and Awards
- Guilford College Honorary Doctorate and Commencement Speaker, 2018
- Brotherhood/Sisterhood Citation Award recipient in 2011 from the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) of the Piedmont Triad
- Center for Creative Leadership, Executive in Residence, 2006/07
- Commencement Speaker, Greensboro Day School, 2009
- Johnnetta B. Cole Global Institute for Diversity and Inclusion, Executive Committee 06–Present
- Triad Stage Executive Board, Past Board Member and current Advisory Board Member
- Recipient of Junior Achievement of the Triad “Spirit of Entrepreneurship” Award 2006
- Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, Past Board and Executive Committee Member
- Recipient of Junior Achievement of the Triad “Spirit of Entrepreneurship” Award 2006
- Mebane Foundation, Board Member 2015- Present
- Guilford Green Foundation, Distinguished Service Award (Along with wife Nancy and children, Kathleen and New Dennis)
- Salvation Army (Greensboro) 2017 Advocates of Compassion and Service (Along with Nancy)
- Restaurateur of the Year 2004 by the NC Restaurant Association (Along with Nancy)
- Young President’s Organization, co-leader with Nancy of the Southern U.S. Conference in Chicago in 2006
- Chaine des Rotisseurs, Past Member
Family
- Married Nancy King in 1983. Nancy is VP of QW and focuses on hotel marketing and operations plus she is a member of the culinary team. She was an executive with two different hotel companies prior to joining QW. She started her career at age 15 with Disney and graduated with honors from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
- Children: Kathleen Troy and Dennis Carlisle born in 1998
- Kathleen
- Graduate: Weaver Academy – Greensboro, NC
- Graduate: Sarah Lawrence College – Bronxville, New York
- BA Art, History, Humanities
- Ertegun Scholar – University of Oxford – Oxford, UK
- MST degree in Women’s Studies – St. Peter’s College – University of Oxford – Oxford, UK
- “New” Dennis
- Graduate: STEM Early College at NC A&T State University
- Graduate: Reed College – Portland, Oregon
- BS Physics, Humanities
- Process Development Engineer – Qorvo – Dallas, Texas
- Kathleen
Early Years
- Born in Spirit Lake, Iowa – The youngest of five children
- By age 7 moved to Currant Creek, Nevada where his father was foreman of a 4 section ranch and ran an irrigation drill rig business and his mother ran a 6 room motel with a small restaurant. The family moved to the west to be near his grandparents that had homesteaded there.
- In Nevada, Dennis attended a one-room school that didn’t have electricity or running water. (That might have helped him understand the value of energy and water at an early age.)
- Dennis’s spirit of entrepreneurship started at age eight when he sold rocks and artifacts he found in the desert at a stand along a desolate stretch of a Nevada highway.
- He likes to say: “It was 112 miles from the middle of nowhere.”
- His family then moved to the Bitterroot Valley in Western Montana when his father got into the business of legally transporting wild horses and converting them into rodeo stock.
- Retired from his rodeo career at age 11 after one try after getting bucked a saddle bronc but winning the goat milking contest.
- Age 13 to 15 worked with an excavator putting in sewer lines and digging graves.
- In 1973, he began his hospitality career at age 15 as a housekeeper’s assistant at a hotel in Missoula, Montana.
- Graduated Hellgate High School in Missoula, Montana in 1975.
- With his father, restored a 1947 Stinson airplane, a ‘64 Jaguar XKE & a ‘65 Triumph TR4A.