How will this help you step up in your career?
Improving our profit margin is always necessary if we want to survive. By really digging down deep with my menu items and ingredients, I feel better equipped to make price and menu changes to keep us ahead of the game. Managing staff is always a challenge, but we were provided with new resources to manage staff that I will utilize as well. What advice do you have for others in the hospitality industry who are looking for ways to grow their career? I would say, find a mentor in the business who you respect and can learn from. Reach out to several resources for continued education/information to help you. Get certified in the areas you are needing help in. Take this course before you open your restaurant. What was your favorite part of the HTIM business management course? I valued instructor Matthew Anderson's story telling. He showed his vulnerabilities back when he was younger. He made mistakes and learned from his mistakes. His style of teaching, presenting the course content and engaging with the students was great. He kept it interesting and shared many valuable resources that we can tap into in the future if needed. How long have you been working in the industry? I worked for about five years as a server and bartender many decades ago. After college I had various careers outside of hospitality but have always loved to eat, cook and serve joy to people through food. Can you share more background on your current role? I took over a city owned sports facility that mostly catered to soccer teams for training and games. My two youngest kids played soccer and I owned the soccer club. We needed more space and Hope Soccer Complex was closing because it was falling apart. I started managing Hope Sports Complex in 2013. I've traveled thousands of miles for soccer games and knew that I wanted to put in a restaurant for families to eat together after training, at half times, and during tournaments. This is a common sight in European cities with the vast number of soccer fields there. I opened up Cleats in 2016 as a seasonal restaurant and it's been a blast serving sports teams, spectators and the public. We survived through Covid and now, try to beat our sales each year. Many of my servers return for several years before they finish college and that makes me feel like we've created an environment that's fun, fair and a great place to make money. What was your first job in hospitality? How did you get into this industry? My first job was as a server at Bill Knapp's in Ann Arbor back in the early 80s. My sister worked there and was making good money. We had to pay for college ourselves and it helped me pay for U of M. I loved it! Interesting and fun fact: I have two Irish Wolfhounds named Smith and Wesson. I love Mexican food and I recently bought property in Mexico and travel there several times a year. I take cooking lessons from some of the fancier places we can find so I can keep learning. Comments are closed.
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