Real Life in a Restaurant Industry

By now, you may have already read my opinions about restaurant management based on different articles. Now, let’s learn from a real professional. I choose to interview my wonderful professor who has worked in the restaurant industry because he enjoys teaching by sharing his real life experience with his students.  He allows me to post this on the blog to share what I learn with my readers.

Delicious Overseas Dishes Made by My Professor

My professor had experienced in working and operating a restaurant, so he knew the restaurant industry well. His first experience was operating and managing a restaurant overseas with his partner. Later, he opened and consulted some concepts with restaurant owners, employees, and others on restaurant issues, problems, and management. When he came to the United States, he worked in institutional and student-organization restaurants during his graduate studies. He also worked for off-premise catering company by making meals for parties, school campus, and medical company.

I ask him several questions about problems that restaurants face, and his answers are interesting. Restaurants face technical problems, such as stoves breaking down or other equipment does not work. It is important to fix this equipment immediately because it helps the business to operate and serve the customers faster. The most common problems that have occurred to him are customers’ complaints or satisfaction issues because customers sometimes complain about the quality of the foods. When they are not satisfied, they may not come back. To solve this problem, we should “listen to the customers and value them” because we want them back.

Since I know that there are internal and external problems in the industry, I am curious about which problems occur often. According to my professor, they both often occur during an operation on different daily basis. External problems can affect the operation because vendors may not have fresh ingredients that the restaurants want. On the other hand, internal problems can be the employees’ issues. My professor believes that internal problems are more important than external because they affect the success of the operation in the restaurants by having employees with passion to make the services successful.

Even though my professor misses working in restaurants, he loves to educate his students by sharing his real life experience. His interesting class has inspired me to pursue a career in the restaurant industry. This is an interesting experience for me to interview my professor because I get to learn from his perspective.