Growing up with a mother who ran a catering company, and a chef father who owned a 20-room hotel in Norfolk, England, Ben Pundole’s interest in hospitality was piqued as a child. “There was no escape for me,” he says. The future vice president of brand experience for EDITION Hotels’ professional fate was sealed when he became the cellar man at the private Groucho Club in London. Pundole remembers “wheeling in the wine deliveries, changing light bulbs, painting the function rooms, taking the requisitions up to the bars, and counting the chef’s dirty laundry. It was the worst job ever, and I loved it.”
For four years during an especially thrilling period for British music and fashion that revolved around the likes of Stella McCartney, Jude Law, and Noel and Liam Gallagher, Pundole worked his way up to bartender and eventually manager. “It was the people, the time, the place. It was Soho in the ’90s, and I was in the middle of it,” he says. He then left to manage the new members-only Met Bar at the Metropolitan, one of London’s first boutique hotels, looking after guests like Kate Moss, Bono, Madonna, and the Spice Girls.
After meeting nightlife maven Amy Sacco, Pundole moved to New York to serve as GM of her just-opened A-list hangout, Lot 61. It was here that Madonna, whom he had become friendly with at the Met Bar, told him that she was planning to open a nightclub with Ian Schrager and they wanted him to run it. Though he wasn’t eager to return to London, he couldn’t resist the allure of working with Schrager. “Ever since I knew who he was, that’s what I wanted to do,” he recalls. Although the club never came to fruition, it solidified his relationship with Schrager, and he went on to run the bar programs at St Martins Lane and the Sanderson in London, the Hudson in New York, the Clift in San Francisco, and Miami’s Shore Club.
Looking for more autonomy, Pundole broke from Schrager to cofound King & Grove, opening hotels like Ruschmeyer’s in Montauk, New York that quickly became a Hamptons hotspot. But when he realized he wasn’t in the right partnership, he went to Schrager for advice. His mentor’s solution was simple: “Stop what you’re doing and come back and work with EDITION.” Pundole did just that, joining the team in 2012, as well as launching A Hotel Life, a travel website geared toward wanderlust-seeking Millennials.
Now with eight hotels under his belt (“It’s been one hell of a wild ride,” he says), his touch can be found on everything from events and partnerships (like Yoga for Bad People on TVs) to nightlife, F&B, and public relations. “We have managed to establish a sophisticated and elegant brand that cares greatly about service, our guests, and our community.” Perhaps his greatest achievement is his Stay Plastic Free campaign, which is aimed at taking single-use plastics out of EDITION properties. Now in his 40s and a “more aware human,” it’s a project he says he cares deeply about because hotels are huge plastic polluters. Noting that four of his hotels used 1.1 million plastic water bottles, Pundole rallied the team, replacing staff water bottles with drinking fountains in hopes of “influencing and inspiring other hotel companies to do the same.”
From Schrager, who Pundole considers “one of the most intuitive and exciting people you’ll ever meet,” an important lesson he has learned is how to surprise and delight guests with something before they even know they want it. “It’s not 10 steps ahead. [It’s] just one,” he explains. “Something else I’ve learned from Ian is this idea of alchemy. You can’t put your finger on any one thing that makes you feel great.”
It’s all part of the transformative mindset that Pundole says fuels hospitality today. “I want to go and stay somewhere that has a residual effect, where I know I’m building a community of like-minded people and that has a positive impact on myself and the environment.”
