Craig Schoettler

Coming Up

Craig Schoettler’s work sits in the overlap between kitchen discipline and beverage program design. At Johnson & Wales University, he studied Culinary Arts and Related Services from 2004 to 2007, then moved into the precision of Alinea Restaurant Llc, where he served as Chef De Partie from 2007–2009 and Chef de Tournant from 2009–2011. That foundation carried into The Aviary, where he served as Executive Chef from 2010–2012, extending the same exacting standards into a broader dining operation. The beverage side of the trade became the next field of focus. Craig Schoettler served as director of beverage at Menin Hospitality from 2012–2013, then as Executive Director of beverage and Corporate Mixologist at MGM Resorts International from 2016–2021. He later served as Vice President of beverage at Tao Group Hospitality from 2021–2023. The through-line is management of guest-facing systems: menu structure, program consistency, and the operational side of what lands in the glass. Today, Craig Schoettler is Executive Director of beverage and Corporate Mixologist at MGM Resorts International (since 2023) and co-founder and secretary of Zo's Bravehearts Foundation (since 2024). The work now reads as coordination and scale, with the same attention to service that shaped the earlier kitchen years.

Where They Are Now

He returned to that MGM title in 2023 after serving there from 2016 to 2021. The move put Craig Schoettler back into a role he had already held across a major hospitality portfolio, and it kept the focus on beverage strategy rather than personal signature. “I wanted to do something to keep busy,” he said.

Signature

Craig's signature dishes include Sidecar. In a career that has moved between kitchen structure and beverage leadership, Sidecar fits the brief: a named classic, direct and recognizable.

In Their Words “At the end of the day, I’m not the person drinking every cocktail at every venue so using myself as the barometer of what we should be serving doesn’t work because that’s not what the clientele is necessarily looking for.”