As Josh Rossmeisl plots out the future of Your 3rd Spot, his innovative Atlanta social dining experience launched in 2022, the company’s founder and chief vision officer has a prized keepsake in his work bag to remind him of where he’s been—the first check he received from Boston Chicken as a teenage dishwasher 30 years ago.

“For me, it’s about remembering where you came from and how I felt as that kid starting out in this business. Now as a leader in this company, I have a responsibility to serve the people I work with. Creating an environment of trust is essential. Our industry is hospitality—it’s literally about taking care of human beings. For me, that begins with taking care of the human beings taking care of our guests.”

Rossmeisl’s “people-first” priorities may be the reason Your 3rd Spot is now being recognized as an innovator in experiential dining, blown up on TikTok. (thanks to a flurry of guest-generated viral videos), attracted over 300,000 guests in its first year and currently enjoys a 4.5-star employee rating on Glass Door.

As a fiercely independent teenager growing up in Boston, Rossmeisl quickly ascended through the ranks at Boston Chicken, a brand that would become Boston Market and grow to 900 locations across the country. He trained as a carver, learned to be a cashier and by age 17, had been promoted to a senior manager with the company.

Consequently, when hiring new staff for Your 3rd Spot, Rossmeisl is less focused on what an applicant’s resume tells him and more focused on what a prospective team member’s drive, goals and personality do. “Mentorship is what motivates me most at this stage of my career,” Rossmeisl says. “It’s about noticing the abilities of the people quietly working in the corner, the ones showing up every day and doing good work and not necessarily the loudest voices in the room.”

As a boss, Rossmeisl is equally prone to quote Dr. Suess as business guru Zig Ziglar. Family meals are prepared and served nightly for staff before opening, and certain nights at the venue are set aside exclusively for Your 3rd Spot team members.

In a post-pandemic reality where hundreds of thousands of workers have fled the hospitality industry, most of the staff at Rossmeisl’s parent company AMP Up1 Hospitality have been a part of his team for over a decade, and 85% of the company’s current leadership started in hourly positions. AMP Up1 co-founder Doug Warner was first hired by Rossmeisl at King’s Dining & Entertainment as a bartender in Boston in 2006. Chris Barrows, the company’s current chief people officer started out 16 years ago working for Rossmeisl as a host at King’s.

“You can’t microwave leadership,” Rossmeisl explains. “You have to be bad at something to get good at it. I don’t know how I got to where I am given all of the crappy things I did as a young leader. I’m here and have grown in this work because the people around me afforded me empathy and grace to learn from my mistakes. It’s now my turn to do the same for others as they grow in this business.”

Rossmeisl credits his parents, both longtime educators who as foster parents took in over 100 children over the years, with helping to instill the values he now brings into his business life. “My parents really showed me the importance of taking care of others,” he says. “I learned work ethic and analytical drive from my father and my mom taught me the value of empathy and having compassion toward others.”

Prioritizing the staff and guest experience has helped Your 3rd Spot to evolve into one of the buzziest and most innovative social dining experiences in Atlanta. In 2023, Atlanta Magazine named the 26,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor adult playground “Best Date Night,” “Best Special Occasion Restaurant” and “Best New Ice Breaker” in its annual Best of Atlanta issue. Meanwhile, some guests are driving six hours each way to enjoy a date night at Your 3rd Spot and then creating TikTok videos chronicling their experience. Executive chef Stuart Rogers’ upscale curated crowd-pleasing menu of sharable small plates has earned him the Georgia Grown Executive Chef Award from the Georgia Restaurant Association.

After 15 years of helping to innovate “eatertainment” experiential dining at King’s, Rossmeisl had time to self-reflect when the hospitality industry catered in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. Out on a 10-mile walk with Warner, the pair came up with the idea that became Your 3rd Spot, an entertainment and dining concept that prioritizes the guest experience and human connection. “Stepping away from our jobs was the craziest and scariest thing we’ve ever done,” reflects Rossmeisl. “If the pandemic hadn’t happened, people would have successfully talked us out of this. We had crippling anxiety, but it was the collective knowledge we gained and the tremendous team we built that kept us confident in moving forward with this.”

Successfully selling an experiential dining concept celebrating recreation (with home and work occupying the first two spots of our lives) in the middle of an isolating pandemic wasn’t always easy. “We had a lot of doors slammed in our faces,” Rossmeisl remembers. “We were told, ‘You’re crazy! Why are you doing this?’ But we knew human connection is essential to society. We knew people would gather again. It’s critical to our lives. We crave connection, and that’s what we focused on. Your 3rd Spot is a place to gather with your family, your co-workers and your friends to celebrate milestones, bachelorette parties and birthdays together.”

To further demonstrate his belief in the concept, Rossmeisl sold his house, car and furniture in Boston, liquidated his 401K and moved within walking distance of Your 3rd Spot’s lush, green park-accented front door in West Midtown Atlanta.

And while Your 3rd Spot offers a bowling alley, Skee-Ball and an entire zip code of video games, it’s the old-school games from childhood guests most love. “We have a million dollars of video game technology, and people line up to play the $49 life-sized Jenga from Target,” says Rossmeisl. “People just prefer connecting through analog tactile experiences.”

And if the line for the two sets of basketball hoops seems long at Your 3rd Spot, that’s completely intentional. “Hoops is by far our most popular game,” says Rossmeisl. “But if there’s a line at hoops, you’re going to turn around and play something you’ve never played before. When you do something for the first time, you create a memory. That’s what we want to offer guests at Your 3rd Spot.”

After learning lessons from their Atlanta incubator, Rossmeisl and his team are excited to expand their concept. “Our growth plan has always been to not replicate until we are fully ready, and we are ready. We’ve invested in the culture, built a bench, invested in a training program, all the things most companies don’t think about until the wheels start coming off. We treated this first location as our prototype, and our growth is happening exactly the way we want it to. We spent a long time building this concept, and we’re ready to expand when we find the perfect spot. Ultimately, our success will be measured by our guests having a great experience, telling their friends and wanting to come back.”

Josh Rossmeisl is AMP Up1 Hospitality’s founder and chief vision officer. Your 3rd Spot, an inclusive vibe-forward social dining experience featuring over 80 games and upscale small plates is located at 400 Chattahoochee Row in Atlanta. Your 3rd Spot is open seven days a week. Check your3rdspot.com for hours.