Wine & BeverageService
Andrea Borgen
Director of Community Engagement | Independent Restaurant Coalition
Experience
2024 - Present
Director of Community Engagement
Independent Restaurant Coalition
2021 - 2024
Consultant
One Fair Wage
Education
Advice from Andrea Borgen
Quotes about career path, skills, and teamwork from an industry leader.
Some days, the sheer breadth of your day-to-day operations can be daunting.
Every day, we start from scratch. And in that chaos, it's easy to feel as though you're just treading water, instead of making real strides. I've always loved to-do lists, some I look at on a daily basis, some I use to set monthly, quarterly, yearly goals - and refer back to in order to ensure we're staying on task, making progress, and pushing the restaurant to constantly outdo itself.
"Don't let school get in the way of your education" - some of the biggest lessons I've learned in this industry have been through experiences, traveling the world solo, forming unlikely friendships, taking jobs that didn't feel like the right fit.
Getting out of my comfort zone has consistently provided me with the best life lessons, and helped me propel my career forward.
Management can often feel like an exercise in human psychology.
You have to analyze each individual's personality; what makes them tick, and tailor your management style to motivate each employee to operate at their full potential. It is one of the most frustrating, exhausting, and rewarding processes ever.
People often ask how I'm able to retain my front-of-house staff under the gratuity free model, and it boils down to hiring the right people.
I will always hire the employee who is warm, passionate, eager to learn, and a touch idealistic. Everything else is trainable.
As a business owner, I often spend a lot of time strategizing how to best spend my dollars.
A lot of competing parties vie for your attention (some louder than others), but I've always found the biggest return on my investment is from my staff. If you invest in your team, the people who will support, excite and challenge you, and don't forget to make them a priority every day, I found there is no better, more effective and tangible way to see just how far that dollar can go.
Roles in Wine & Beverage
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