July 20, 2010
Leslie Phillips, Director of Business Development & Client Relations

A really good read each Sunday is The New York Times, Corner Office.  Adam Bryant interviews business leaders from all kinds of industries.  Invariably, there are great takeaways from each one.

Of interest to us, though, is the number of executives that have worked in food service early in their careers.  Maybe that fact has as much to do with sheer statistics than anything else (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.7 million people work in food services and historically this number has been high).  But, it also tells us how much people learn about life and leadership from working in our industry.  Two recent interviews from the Corner Office illustrate this point.   

While in college (at UMass), Niki Leondakis (COO of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants), worked at a campus dining venue called “Hungry U.”  Her grandmother also owned a diner at a truck-stop in western Massachusetts.   About that she said:

I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at that diner. I’d watch how she’d make tough calls. I’d watch how she’d handle difficult situations, and she always handled it. She never shied away from it, but she always did it with grace and poise.

After the Corner Office article, I read about Ms. Leondakis in Restaurant Hospitality, 10 Thoughts from Niki Leondakis.  Number one?  “My first paying job was working the fry station at Hardee’s when I was 15.”

Jen Hsun-Huang, President and CEO of Nvidia (a maker of graphics chips), waited tables at Denny’s in his 20’s.  Of this he says:

You want customers to always be right, but customers can’t always be right. You have to find compromises for circumstances that are happening all the time and you have difficult situations. You have mistakes that you make; you have the mistakes that the kitchen makes. You can’t control the environment most of the time. And so you’re making the best of a state of chaos, which was a wonderful learning experience for me… When the world is just falling apart, I actually think my heart rate goes down. I find that I think best when I’m under adversity. Maybe it’s Denny’s. As a waiter, you’ve got to deal with rush hour. Anyone who’s dealt with rush hour in a restaurant knows what I’m talking about.

Both of these executives have had a lot of experiences in life.  But, in a short interview, each finds it relevant to relate his and her success to working in food service.  Honest work, indeed.
 

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