Shortly after graduating from Architecture School, Gordon landed a job in-house with an expanding restaurant company in Toronto. It was here that he met his future business partner and collaborator, Ron Wong. Over the course of three years, this young creative duo learned the art, science and economics of successful restaurant design from the inside out. This experience at Pete & Marty’s proved formative and eventually laid the foundation for their international award-winning design and branding studio, mackaywong. The firm is celebrating its 30 th Anniversary in 2024! With more than 500 restaurant concepts of all shapes and sizes to their credit, the firm now creates signature destination resorts, hotels, casinos, and entertainment projects for the world’s leading hospitality and entertainment brands. Despite the large scale and complexity of their current projects, Gordon remains passionate about the value of well- designed and thoughtfully positioned food and beverage concepts. He believes that in a world seemingly determined to keep us staring at digital screens, restaurants are critical for fostering healthy communities, because these spaces are by nature, designed to meaningfully reconnect us in ways that matter.