Samantha Sanchez
Director and Manager of Operations & Director of Marketing, Third Coast Hospitality
Owner, La Luna Restaurant

Director and manager of operations at Third Coast Hospitality, Samantha Sanchez, has worked every restaurant position, including hosting, servering, bartending, managing, and even cooking throughout her career. Following years of experience working with her father, Sanchez was inspired to open her first restaurant on her own in 2019, La Luna (1726 S Racine Ave).From this creative endeavor, Sanchez has quickly grown her food and beverage acumen on which she's built the foundation of Tree House (149 W Kinzie St.).

As the daughter of Chicago restaurateur maven, Sam Sanchez (CEO of Third Coast Hospitality Group), Sanchez owns the chef-driven bar and restaurant in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. The concept is a flourishing, nature-inspired escape that Sanchez designed from a blank canvas during a challenging time in the industry. Sanchez’s design, management, and vision for the space has always centered around fostering connection through a lively nightlife atmosphere. Growing up immersed in her family’s concepts, Sanchez has had a close relationship to the restaurant industry since birth. Sanchez’s background studying art provided a creative outlook to employ while developing unique concepts in the restaurant industry.

In developing Tree House, Sanchez has taken a detail-oriented approach to ensure staff and customers can feel the love, hard work, and time that went into the project. From picking out plates and glassware, to designing the interior, and crafting the service experience, Sanchez has woven her vision throughout each square foot of the space. Through her management style, Sanchez has built a culture that balances strict expectations with an openness to educate and provide tools for learning.

From her time in the industry, Sanchez has learned to embrace the ups and downs that the day-to-day brings, to balance perseverance and patience, and to cherish the amazing people she has met along the way like a family of her own. In her role at Tree House, Sanchez hopes to mirror both the family-oriented feel and constant stream of creativity that she built La Luna from. Samantha is in the process of opening a second location for La Luna located in Logan Square opening Summer of 2024. Above all else, as the concept evolves, Sanchez plans to inspire and motivate fellow Latina women to reach their goals, and to stand as a leader they can look up to within an otherwise highly male-dominated sphere.