By Stephen Greenwell
Having grown up around restaurants and working in one owned by her family, Thy Mitchell hadn’t planned on getting involved in that industry when she decided to attend the University of Houston for her consumer science and merchandising degree.
At the time, she was working in higher-end retail stores — Tootsies and Tiffany & Company — and wanted to explore retail management programs. The networking and versatile education that UH provided turned out to be fruitful for her.
“I actually met a recruiter from Target on campus. I wasn’t trying to interview with the company, but we really connected,” she said. “I graduated and joined the management program at Target because it gave me an opportunity to oversee more than 50 employees at a young age in a high revenue environment. I felt like the school just gave me a lot of different opportunities.”
She has continued to use her degree and the skills learned at UH with Traveler’s Collective, the retail and hospitality group she owns with her husband Matthew. This includes Traveler’s Table, a restaurant serving curated global cuisine in an upscale, full-service environment; Traveler’s Cart, a hip, casual concept serving modern, global street food; and Foreign Fare, a travel apparel line for the stylish, modern traveler.
“We like to say we’re upscale, but not uptight,” Mitchell said of the company’s greater aesthetic.
It was Matthew who first broached the idea of opening a restaurant, and given her background in the industry, Mitchell knew she had to be clear about what that really meant. Having worked at The Fish in Houston, and before that in her own family’s restaurant, she understood firsthand the workload and challenges involved. While Thy was initially hesitant, she ultimately came on board, drawn by the opportunity to run businesses that combined their passion for food and travel.
“Customers were probably wondering why this 12-year-old was a food runner,” she said, laughing, referring to her experiences at family restaurants. “Eventually, my mom taught me how to work the cash register, work the front of house and just do all the things. We even had beds in the back. If my mom was working and I was tired, and we couldn’t go home yet, I could take a nap on one of those and I thought it was fun, right? Looking back now, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a little extreme,’ knowing how things operate now.”
...I’m open to taking different routes and trying out what I like and what I don’t like. That mindset helped me get promoted faster, to be more resilient, to learn faster.Thy Mitchell
The inspiration for the restaurants came from a mixture of their professional backgrounds and personal interests. After Target, Mitchell went from operations to human resources, working with Hilton. She met Matthew and they bonded over a love of international travel, which blossomed into a relationship, a marriage and then their business partnership. Their goal was an experience that was subtle and felt organic, as opposed to being like a theme park or having a flashy presentation. They wanted people to explore the world through food and drink with them.
“If we’re both passionate about this, let’s do it together,” she said. “Let’s give it a try, but I’m going to stay in my corporate job for the first few years just to make sure it works, and work at the restaurant as well. And then, eventually, we were steadily busy and we knew this was going to work, and we both went all in.”
The proximity of the University of Houston to her family’s home in Clear Lake was part of the appeal for Mitchell. Her family moved to the Houston metro area after her father accepted an engineering position with NASA. While her coursework provided a solid foundation in logistics, she emphasized that nothing replaces on-the-job experience, and it was through working that she quickly learned the skills that truly shaped her career.
“Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, I’m getting a degree in this, and then this is what I’m going to do right after,’ and life will humble you quickly,” she said. “I was always very open minded of the path. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to get there one day to the level of success that I would like, but I’m open to taking different routes and trying out what I like and what I don’t like.’ That mindset helped me get promoted faster, to be more resilient, to learn faster. You don’t have to know everything. You just have to be a quick learner. You have to just listen to and observe things around you.”
She cited Shirley Ezell and Marcella Norwood, both now with professor emeritus status, as being key in her academic development. Professionally, Robert Blom at Hilton gave her the job opportunity she doesn’t forget.
“He was my mentor and boss for my first true multi-unit position. I went from one hotel to 30 hotels,” she said. “He’s the first person that believed in me, that saw that I could do the job, because it’s really hard to go multi-unit. It’s very risky to give that job to somebody that has not done it before.”
Going forward, Mitchell said it was important for her to stay hungry, figuratively and literally. Her parents always encouraged her to excel in her studies and her work, and it is something that has carried over to this day. She is always trying out new restaurants — enjoying bites at Casa Kenji and Lena’s Asian Kitchen recently — and traveling when as much as she can.
“I try to do two long distance international trips a year,” she said. “If my husband, Matt, and I can’t go together, sometimes I go with a friend or family member, or even solo. I went to Vietnam solo and I met up my family members halfway into the trip. It works for us because we both encourage each other to travel and decompress. It really helps with inspiration in general, when it comes to our restaurants.”