The “Five minutes with” series focuses on an SDSU faculty, student or member of the Brookings community. The interviewer spends five minutes speaking with a person to learn their specialty or something they are passionate about.
Q: How did you get started in the restaurant business?
A: My first experience with anything in a kitchen was in a nursing home kitchen. I was 16, that was with my mom and my grandma. After that, I moved out here to go to school and I worked in restaurants to pay for school, and that’s where I got all of my experience from.
Q: Is there any routine to your day?
A: Not really, the only routine I honestly have is every morning when I get to work. I make a list and I circle the things that have to get done that day, after that everything goes out the window. You can’t predict when you’re busy, you can’t predict when someone is going to call in sick or if something happens. Your day is constantly changing and you just have to adjust.
Q: What is your favorite part about your job?
A: You get to do something different everyday, it’s never the same thing. Everyday you’re always meeting new people, doing something different. There’s not much about it that gets repetitive day after day.
Q: If you could give someone advice about this business, what would it be?
A: You have got to love what you do. If you don’t love it, this isn’t it. The other big one is you have to maintain a positive attitude all the time. Restaurants are a negative world — you could have always done something better. No matter how a day went, you could have always done something better.
Q: What is the hardest part about your job?
A: The hardest part is just keeping up with everything for sure. Being a single owner of a small restaurant, you wear so many hats. You’re the guy that has to fix everything, you make all the schedules, you do the payroll, the cooking. You’re wearing 15 to 20 hats to make everything happen. So, I think the hardest part is keeping up on it and having that balance between what you need to get done and what can wait.
