Here's How... To Become A Restaurant Manager

Thursday, October 20, 2011

It's Sunday afternoon over the high-activity Heroes Day Weekend, the Grand Palladium Resort and Spa in Hanover is at full occupancy. Vacationers are bustling about at every turn of the 80-acre property and with appetites to be satiated, they descend in frequent droves to the hotel's restaurants. It's a gargantuan task ensuring guests are not only fed, but given a satisfactory dining experience.

Enter Fitzroy Lyons, Grand Palladium's restaurant manager. It is his remit to ensure diners at the hotel's 10 restaurants, sports bar, and grill leave their tables content after eating their meals.

"I love people," Lyons shares. His perpetual smile and joie de vivre are indicators of the pleasant disposition. "People are the best part of my job, and the most challenging part, because everyone is not the same and you have to treat everyone as an individual," he explained.

Employed as the hotel's maitre 'd for the past 17 months, Lyons said "visibility is so important" and a critical component in delivering good service, especially when the restaurants have virtually full houses (as was the case last weekend). "You have to go around and see everything that is happening and be prepared to extend yourself."

This, for Lyons, meant working 18-hour days for the busy holiday weekend. It also involved mobilising his team to give more of their time, while not sacrificing the attention to quality. "I come in at 6:00 am and I don't leave until 1:00 the next morning and then turn around and do it all again the next morning. This peak period demands that, and you have to be prepared to understand that," the restaurant manager said.

The 40-year-old Lyons has enjoyed a run of more than two decades of service in the hotel industry, beginning in 1991 at Grand Lido Negril. He would go on to work stints in the food and beverage departments at Sandals Negril, Beaches Sandy Bay and Couples Negril. He credits his love affair with food to his mother, Enid, who operated a restaurant where a teenaged Lyons would help out. "I helped to cook, do the dishes, prepare the meals," he told Thursday Food. However, after working in the industry for sometime, the urge to become a qualified professional gnawed at him. So, Lyons headed overseas to The Big Apple. "I trained in New York at the Art Institute of New York City, where I studied culinary arts and hotel management for three years and received an associate degree." While living in the States, he said, "I worked at Dunkin' Donuts making donuts, then I went to Sizzler. I started out as a chef, then was promoted to a kitchen manager, then a head chef, then as restaurant manager where I was responsible for 16 restaurants in the New York and New Jersey Tri-State" (area).

Turning to his current duties as restaurant manager for the sprawling Grand Palladium, he admitted: "This [Heroes weekend] is a very busy one, and typically for holiday periods we get a lot of Jamaicans coming in and we're glad as it helps our house count. We do encourage and really appreciate serving our own people and to have them experience the excellent service, because there is a cliché that Jamaicans don't take care of our own. We want to change that concept."

Given the seeming innate passion for food, we're taken aback when Lyons revealed that his initial dream career was to represent Jamaica as a football player, and he in fact played semi-professionally for a Toronto-based team before an unfortunate knee injury sidelined him back in 1999. "I'm absolutely happy with the path my life took and 100 per cent happy, and I also love passing my knowledge on to my team members," he noted, while also showering heaps of praise on the team he supervises. Asked how he manages to stay on top of his game each day and manage teeming crowds of diners, Lyons graciously replied: "It's really my team. We have good people and good support. It all takes proper planning, of course, and good managerial skills, but it really is my team that makes me look good."

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Here's How... To Become A Restaurant Manager