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How many times have you asked
the person serving you in a restaurant, "What do you do?"
or "Where do you go to school?" Most diners expect that
working in restaurants is a temporary or part-time occupation for
those serving them.
However, for millions of people
nationally - and hundreds in Santa Fe - the food service or hospitality
industry is a real career option. Vivienne Wildes, founder of The
Waiters Association, is striving to give those working in restaurants
the respect, recognition, training and benefits that come along with
other career choices.
Wildes 37 has spent 20 years in the
business of waiting tables both on the front lines and in management.
She came up with the idea for founding The Waiters Association while
getting her master's degree in Restaurant and Hotel Management from
Penn State.
She began the association with
only $1,000 and a simple mission statement: "To upgrade the
status of waiters in America to a career level."
Wildes views the eveolution of
waiting as part of the greater evolution of the restaurant and
hospitality industry.
Last week Wildes came to The
Bishop's Lodge Hotel and Resort to give a seminar entitled "
Building Foodservice Sales." The lecture here was the second
in a six city national series sponsored by MasterCard for its merchants.
Wildes focused on nuturing increased
sales at restaurants. The seminar attracted nearly 40 restaurant workers
and owners from the Southwest resion who were looking to hone the skills
of their trade.
According to Wildes, the American
hospitality industry is "coming into its own" and there is
a great demand for casual friendly dining that is anchored in a secure
feeling for the customer. The trend, as Wildes sees it, has been away
from country club dining to customer-defined services marked in the
late '70's with regional dining and in the '80's with opulence and the
act of "experiencing" dining.
As far as current restaurants go
Wildes says, "The server is a large participant in the game . . .
There has been a turning of tables out of the kitchens into the front
of the house."
Wildes views these seminars as a
step forward in the status for waiters coinciding with the development
of the hopitality industry.
She reinforces this by explaining
that in a business plan for restaurants today you'd see service as part
of the business plan which was not the case five years ago. The result
is taht waiters need to be better trained and more dynamic in today's
market than ever before.
There are more people dining out
now, which brings greater competition to the restaurant business and
more demands for special needs. As a result, waiters are expected to
play many different roles including sales person, actor, psychologist,
caretaker and still keep an upbeat attitude and sense of urgancy toward
serving their customers.
Additionally, there is a higher
level of fundamental knowledge both about the food and beverages that
they are selling and about liability issues of serving alcohol and
food to customers.
Wildes sees the shills of the waiter
as underdeveloped and underrated in today's world. She calls the shills
of the good waiter "right brain" or "soft" skills that
don't fit in with the more industrial structures of business. She feels
that a waiter thrives on using these soft skills to proiritize multiple
tasks, communicate effectively, negotiate clearly and get along with many
different types of people. Her seminars drive at developing these talents
in order to provide better training to those who make a living from their use.
Beyond increasing the profitability of
the waiter of the restaurant, Wildes sees her efforts to make waiters more
respected as a profession as an all around winning proposition for everyone
involved in the industry. As the role of the waiter becomes more important
to all types of restaurants from those with five stars to the local diners,
more attention is being given to the importance of this group and their
contribution to the bottom line.
Wildes stressed that the importance is
not recognized either in respect of food service as a career or in terms of
offering benefits to thses workers.
To help correct that problem, Wildes -
in addition to participating in thses types of seminars - publishes a 12-page
newsletter 10 times per year for the association's members.
The publication includes tips for waiters,
profiles of other professional waiters, discount offers and other information
she feels should be shared with the waiteing community. Her mission is to
reach out and empower the 1.8 million waiters in America not by being a union
organization but by educating and raising the self-respect levels of those
in the profession.
She keeps the dues for membership low
($20 annual and $50 lifetime) so that the maximum number of people will be
able to participate as the word spreads of the group.
The Waiters Association's toll-free number is 1-800-437-7842.
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