Wheelhouse Consulting
Our Wheelhouse
With over 25 years of combined experience in entrepreneurship and food & beverage, Wheelhouse Consulting helps businesses operate smarter and grow stronger. Regardless of industry, we partner with leaders to drive clarity, execution, and lasting success.
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About Us
Nathan Rees
Nathan brings more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and executive leadership experience to Wheelhouse Consulting. As a founder and operator of businesses across beverage, hospitality, distribution, and technology, he understands what it takes to build a company, lead a team, solve problems, and create sustainable growth.
His experience spans business strategy, operations, P&L leadership, brand positioning, commercial partnerships, customer experience, and organizational development. He has built and operated a regional consumer brand, managed complex facilities and live events, led growing teams, and developed nationwide distribution relationships.
Nathan works best where vision meets execution. He helps leaders identify what is holding their business back, clarify where they want to go, and build practical plans for getting there. His advice is grounded not only in strategy, but in the firsthand realities of owning, operating, and growing a business.
Approachable, creative, and quick with a laugh, Nathan believes good business is ultimately about people. Outside of work, he enjoys baseball, Pilsner, Pinot Noir, traveling, cooking, playing guitar, singing, and coaching Little League.
One day, his bestselling book will be titled “What NOT to Do in Business.”
Mel Patton
Mel brings more than a decade of accounting, financial operations, and hospitality experience to Wheelhouse Consulting. Her expertise includes bookkeeping, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, financial reporting, software implementation, and process improvement.
She has a particular talent for bringing order to complicated operations. Mel helps business owners understand their numbers, strengthen their financial systems, eliminate inefficiencies, and create reliable processes that support better decisions. Her experience in the restaurant industry also gives her a firsthand understanding of fast-moving environments where margins are tight, timing matters, consistency is critical, and execution directly impacts the customer experience.
Accurate and meticulous without losing sight of the bigger picture, Mel approaches each engagement as a trusted partner. She does more than keep the books in order—she helps leaders connect sound financial management with operational efficiency, greater clarity, and sustainable growth.
Mel is known for her tenacity, reliability, practical judgment, and sense of humor. Outside of work, she enjoys food, music, nature, yoga, exploring the culinary world, discovering new things, and finding plenty of reasons to laugh along the way.
Her future memoir will undoubtedly be titled, “Add a Little Sauce and Laugh It Off.”