Storytelling builds culture, empathy, and community… so i’ll start with one.
I grew up just outside of Detroit, Michigan. My mother is Italian and my father Begian. When I was born, my family lineage in the United States went back less than 75 years. I identified as a first generation American.
I attended High School, got good grades, played football and lacrosse, worked part time dishwashing at a French bakery and stocked shelves at a beer & wine store. Looking back, I still love the smell of that bakery. I also remember reading the label on every wine bottle and memorizing hundreds of vivid descriptions. I became able to recall labels and reccommend wine, by listening to preferences i was hearing with customers, before I was even old enough to drink!
I first acheived an AS, in Business, before heading off to Michigan State University. I gravitated toward hospitality classes because it was what I knew. Growing up my family owned some small hotels, restaurants, and a bar. My grandfather was a National Sales Director of a liquor & wine company. All the jobs I had ever worked were in the Hospitality industry. Being college age, I lived the restaurant and bar nightlife and enjoyed the time I spent in them. Throughout, I worked a variety of jobs. I valet parked cars and docked boats at a busy nightclub, delivered pizzas, served frozen yogurt, waited tables at a Country Club, worked as a line cook at a trendy restaurant, marketed a Bed and Breakfast, and dabbled in event planning.
Along the way I had fallen into a bartender position, where I was eventually promoted, to Bar Manager. I was working for tips, Friday through Sunday, and got paid a small salary to order and inventory. Working weekends sucked, but I needed a job I could juggle with college, and I was making great money, all together about $1000 in a 3 day week. $52,000 yearly in the mid 90’s!
I learned a lot about negotiating deals, marketing product, and controlling cost. I also learned that the biggest thorn in my side was my copart. The Chef would always use his experience to sell the owners on why the menu should has this theme, why we should use this vendor, why we should run this special. Some of the decisions affected my profitability and more so effected the profitablity of the business. This sparked me to learn the culinary side of the industry so I would not have to jump these hurdles with a chef in the future.
After I obtained my BA, in Food Advertising, I found a culinary school in Philadelphia that would except a lot of my undergraduate credits. They tailored a short 6 month, Culinary and Pastry Arts, AAS degree program for me. Later that year a friend helped me land a job with Aramark. With my degrees, experience, and overall knowledge of the hospitality industry I felt I could really help with image, cutting costs, and increasing profits. I was really naive.
The job I was given, after a 3 month fast track training program, was a Patient Service Manager for a hospital group. I made $40,000 a year, $12,000 less than I had been making bartending part time in college. I walked the floors and spoke to patients about the experience they had with food service. I spent a lot of time with intake studies, surveys, handling complaints, and increasing overall patient satifisfation scores. I learned how to fine tune budgets, by using daily food cost allowances per patient per meal. I was able to cost individual meals by daypart to within 5 to 10 cents. I began to work with the Operations Manager on learning the software he used to inventory, write recipes, plan meals, and plan production. I really enjoyed this segment of healthcare food service. When he took a leave of absence, I stepped in the Operations Manager role. As the nature of the beast is, the following year we lost the management contract and I was off to my next adventure.
I wanted to be closer to family, so I moved back to Detroit to manage a Nightclub. We were doing $50,000 in sales a day. Another $10,000 in cover. It was here, working with a diverse group of employees, that I learned empathy and humility, bonding over late night communal meals as the sun came up and dealing with drunk, and sometimes hostile, patrons. I also learned about some pretty amazing technology. We were pioneers in the automated beverage dispensing and surveilance systems that tied back into the Point of Sale. I learned how to change pricing by daypart, to drive maximize participation at times of day that were low demand. I learned how to book bands and negotiate entertainment contracts. At the same time, the bar I managed in college asked me to partner with them on building their brand.
I came on board as Operating Partner. My typical day started around 7:30am in the Eastern Market section of Detroit. I would source produce and fish for my daily specials. Then it was back to the Restaurant to give my cooks an idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted it plated. During lunch I was the brand ambasabor, running food, seating tables, introducting patrons to each other, and most importantly… building community. After lunch I would visit other Detroit Restauranteurs to network with owners, managers, and staff about collaboration. Then it was back to the Restaurant to schedule, order, research the image of the “heritage” brand I was building, plan menus, program the POS, and book weekend entertainment. I would stay through dinner networking with patrons and building community. We were able to turn a $400,000 purchase into a $1.2 Million sale in few a handful of years.
I moved on to a position as a Regional Manager for a national sports dining concept. This took me from Michigan to Pensylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and finally Florida. I fined tuned by ability to manager P&L’s, set budgets, and work with recruiters and social media managers. I entered at a time that digital menu boards, take-out, digital-wall media displays, dj booths, paging systems, and reservation software were emerging. As time went on their was merger and downsizing.
I was recruited by the largest POS in the world to help build a brand around a new product they were launching. I was to be responsible for the Florida region. We had to strategically place the product into the market without competing, or cannabalizing, existing products. I developed a partnered relationship with a national food service distributor. I setup fully functional test environments in their test kitchens to help as risk Restaurants improve business results. I had access to hundreds of account representatives, and would often, ride around with them on their routes. As part of the negotiation I presented their clients with Restaurant technology consulting. I sold, project managed, implemented, trained, and supported the product. Our company broke $1 B in sales and was purchased.
At this time I took a leap of faith and joined a new Saas, cloud based, POS company as National Sales Director . Here I learned what innovative, modern, technology was. Man, were they on the forefront of Hospitality Tech. I purchased leads and was ultimately responsible for connecting with them. At the time, no one was doing remote demonstrations, negotiation, and closing through an online meetings. I began to understand the real hard math behind conversion. I was selling to clients all over North America and the Caribbean. I was then approached to get into digital signage for regional POS reseller that was entering the market with a new product.
As a Project Manager, I consulted, project managed, designed, and implemented signage in Flordia. I worked with the Sales and Marketing departments to provide insight into competitive analysis playing off my previous experience. I was able to manage POS Implementations across multiple POS platforms and partake in off-hour customer service. One day I got a call asked if I would like to help a company in the Heathcare space.
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Mavrik Concepts 