InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco Announces Ric Lee as Chef Concierge

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco announced Ric Lee has been appointed the hotel’s new Chef Concierge.

Lee brings 50 years of experience in the hospitality industry to his new role. Lee has been a member of Les Clefs d’Or since 1983. He has served three terms as the President of the Northern California Concierge Association, was host of the California Concierge Association Symposium in 2016 and won the Where Magazine Silver Plume Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

At the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Lee builds guest relationships through swift, professional, and highly personal service. He organizes and shares expert local knowledge of events, places of interests, and restaurants. He resolves guest issues, using their feedback to improve guest satisfaction, and leads the way as a brand ambassador to promote the hotel’s other businesses.

In 1969, Lee began his career in hospitality as an elevator operator at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. Over the next 17 years, he rose through the front of the house in different capacities, learning service and management techniques and computer operations, eventually becoming Chef Concierge there.

Before coming to the InterContinental Mark Hopkins, Lee headed up concierge programs at several other prestigious hotels in San Francisco, including the Fairmont Hotel & Tower, the Renaissance Stanford Court Hotel, and the Scarlet Huntington Hotel, among other appointments. In the Palm Springs region, he was part of the team that launched the Grand Champions Resort, the first luxury resort property in the area, and he also created concierge service at the Palm Valley Country Club, and opened as the Chef Concierge at The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage. Lastly, he implemented concierge services for the real estate world for Lion & Foster International in Corte Madera, California.

He was most recently Chef Concierge at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, where he supervised and trained a department of six people. He was a liaison between management and hotel staff for the day-to-day operations, scheduled and prepared payroll and guest reports, and performed and satisfied guest requests and needs. During his tenure there he consistently attained higher Guest Satisfaction Survey scores than the goals that the staff had set.

Lee was educated at San Francisco State University where he majored in Broadcast Communications.