About Us

As the founder and principal of the bar and beverage consultancy Noetica Group, Mike brings experience in the restaurant and bar industry that spans 20-plus years. In addition to being a nationally recognized bar educator, trainer, and operator, Mike spent the last 5 years as the National Director of Bars for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants. In that role, he opened dozens of bars and restaurants, developed concepts and beverage programs, evolved immersive activations for meetings and events, and created educational programs to mentor and coach hundreds of bartenders across the country. Under Mike’s direction, Kimpton’s beverage program was named “2017 On-Premise Player of the Year” by MarketWatch.

Prior to his national role, Mike helped launch Kimpton’s Sable Kitchen & Bar in Chicago in 2010, which soon became a local favorite and lauded nationwide by industry critics and peers. Under Mike’s bar leadership, Sable was named one the “Best Bars in America” by Food & Wine, one of the “Best Hotel Bars in the US” by USA Today, one of the “Top 55 Whiskey Bars in the US” by Bourbon Review. 

His innovative cocktails have also been featured in People magazine, Whiskey Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler and Redbook magazine, and Mike was also named Nightclub & Bar’s “Bartender of the Month.” Mike grew up outside Philadelphia in Pottstown and moved to Chicago in 2001 to attend The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. While working at the postmodern restaurant Moto as a line cook and then sous chef, he began self-educating himself on the world of spirits at The Violet Hour. He was eventually hired on and mentored behind the bar to meld the culinary with the cocktail.

Rich in meaning and broad in context, noetics is a branch of metaphysics concerned with the study of mind as well as intellect; separately, the science of noetics covers the field of thinking and knowing, thought and knowledge. With these references to the human capacity to think and know, we have coined the name Noetica Group. Within the universe of food and drink, we are storytellers, artists and scientists. We’re in the business of creating remarkable experiences — what we feel and what we taste stimulates us to recall memories and spark conversations. We savor both immediate sensory satisfaction and the connections that occur.

Combining left brain and right brain, creativity and pragmatism, invention  and experience, Noetica Group celebrates how marrying mind and spirit yields our most exciting, unexpected human moments.