Founder of IAM Hospitality

From Northern Mexico to the global table.

Beto Martinez builds restaurants with soul, teams with culture, and experiences that carry the craft, fire, and warmth of Mexican hospitality into the world.

Cuerno New York brought the ritual of Northern Mexican carne asada to Rockefeller Center. The philosophy behind it is simple: hospitality should make people feel seen, welcomed, and eager to return.

Cuerno New York Hospitality philosophy

80+restaurant openings across two decades

17+restaurants currently in operation

NYCCuerno at Rockefeller Center

To carry Mexico into the world is not to decorate a room. It is to raise a standard for how culture, fire, service, and pride can gather people around a table.

Mexico as a standard

The story

A real origin. A bigger table.

In 2006, at sixteen, Beto opened his first taco stand in Torreon. Two decades later, that same instinct lives inside the Taco Taquero at Cuerno New York: a dish that turns memory, product, and service into a tableside ritual.

By 2026, Cuerno has carried that northern Mexican language into Rockefeller Center, with a New York restaurant rooted in fire-driven cuisine, family recipes, and warm Mexican hospitality. Around it is a larger IAM ecosystem: 80+ openings, 17+ active restaurants, 1,500-2,000 collaborators, and a portfolio that includes Cuerno, Animal, Mochomos, Clavadito, Mika, Reforma, and new concepts in motion.

What he is building

Restaurants with soul. Teams with culture. Experiences with identity.

At the center of Beto’s work is a belief: a restaurant should not only serve a good dish. It should carry a story, make people feel seen, and stand for something beyond the reservation.

Product

Fire, salt, tortilla, meat, seafood, technique, origin, and the details that make a dish feel specific.

Team

People aligned around a shared standard, where ordinary talent can become extraordinary through culture.

Hospitality

The human feeling of being hosted, remembered, welcomed, and invited back.

IAM Hospitality

A hospitality group built around identity, not repetition.

IAM is the home of restaurant brands and hospitality ventures shaped by product, narrative, operations, and human service. Each concept is different. The thread is culture.

Fire / Steakhouse

Cuerno

A Mexican steakhouse rooted in Northern carne asada, direct fire, prime product, and warm service.

Energy / Social Dining

Animal

An expressive meeting point for food, music, drinks, and Mexican reinvention.

Scale / Sonora

Mochomos

A Sonoran steakhouse story expanded through partnership, consistency, and operational discipline.

Seafood / Freshness

Clavadito

A coastal expression built around seafood, freshness, casual precision, and the pleasure of gathering.

Contemporary / Hospitality

Mika

A contemporary restaurant concept shaped by atmosphere, detail, product, and a polished guest experience.

Hospitality philosophy

Technology can help. It cannot replace the human feeling of being hosted.

Beto’s restaurants are not designed around cold efficiency. He believes hospitality still lives in the human details: the welcome, the timing, the story, the team, the table, and the memory someone carries the next day.

“Opening the doors is not the finish line. That is when the real work begins.”

Operations

“The goal is not to impress once. The goal is to make people come back.”

Consistency

“When a team really works as a team, ordinary people become extraordinary.”

Culture

“Mexico deserves to be experienced at its best.”

Representation

The North of Mexico is not a theme. It is a way of gathering around fire.

On product, memory, and place

Journal

Notes from the table, the kitchen, the city, and the build.

Coming soon: opening diaries, menu tastings, conversations on hospitality, stories from the team, and reflections on what it means to carry Mexican culture into global rooms.

Press & collaborations

As seen through the work

Let the projects, the press, and the people tell the story.

The most powerful proof of the vision is not a claim. It is what guests, critics, collaborators, and team members experience inside the restaurants.

The New York Times Eater NY Forbes Resy Time Out Financial Times The Infatuation