Doug Warner has built his career at the intersection of hospitality, human behavior, technology, and business strategy. Long before AMP Up1 Hospitality existed, he was already interested in the same question that still drives much of his work today: what makes people want to gather, connect, and come back?

Doug earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Syracuse University and a master’s degree from Boston University, where he also taught Social Psychology. His education gave him a framework for understanding how people think and behave. Hospitality gave him a place to test those ideas in real time, surrounded by guests, teams, noise, pressure, and all the imperfect variables that make restaurants interesting.

In 2006, while in graduate school, Doug took a bartending job at Kings in Boston’s Back Bay. Kings was still a single experiential dining venue. What started behind the bar became a much larger career as Doug moved through beverage leadership, marketing, guest experience, technology, and business innovation. He eventually became Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Innovation as Kings grew from its original Boston location into 11 venues around the country.

That progression shaped the way Doug solves problems. He understands what a decision looks like in a spreadsheet and what it feels like at 9:00 on a Saturday night. He studies the reasons guests choose a place, how teams influence that decision, where technology can remove friction, and how small operating choices can either strengthen or weaken the experience.

When the hospitality industry reset in 2020, Doug and Josh Rossmeisl founded AMP Up1 Hospitality with a group of longtime teammates who wanted to build again. The team spent 973 days developing Your 3rd Spot before opening the Atlanta prototype in 2022. Doug helped shape the concept around the idea of the third place, the space outside home and work where people build relationships and community. That belief became bigger than any individual game, menu item, or piece of technology. The experience had to create reasons for people to be together.

As Chief Solutions Officer, Doug works wherever the business has a problem worth solving. His responsibilities cross marketing, technology, demand generation, membership, analytics, guest behavior, business systems, brand strategy, and experience development. He is often the person connecting information from different parts of the company, finding the opportunity hidden between them, and helping the team turn an idea into something that can actually operate.

Doug’s leadership style is calm, curious, and grounded in data over ego. He believes good organizations create enough trust for people to challenge ideas without making disagreement personal. He also believes talent can come from anywhere in the building. The job of leadership is to recognize it, give people real responsibility, and create enough room for them to show what they can do.

That matters even more as AMP Up1 grows. The Looking Glass is the company’s next brand, while Your 3rd Spot is expanding beyond Atlanta with locations opening throughout the United States. Doug is focused on building systems and demand without losing the reason the company exists in the first place: connect people and build community.

He still approaches the work with the curiosity of a social psychologist and the practicality of someone who spent years behind a bar. Pay attention to people. Ask better questions. Study what they actually do. Keep learning. Change what needs changing. Then build something worth coming back to.

Away from his professional life, Doug is a devoted husband and father, finding joy in family time with his wife Jennifer, daughters Morgan and Zoe, and their dog Bear. A lover of music, Doug is an avid vinyl collector and enjoys expressing his creative side through karaoke, music and barbecue, reflecting his philosophy of living a balanced and fulfilling life.