Operations Manager / Front of House Manager
Pros
Fast paced environment which allowed me to be very mobile and multitask constantly. Make friends with regulars, be able to wear a lot of different hats. I would help assist every position in the restaurant for at least one part of each and every day. I would review my previous years sales and labor costs and pinpoint which part of the restaurant struggled in the previous year and where I should focus my efforts.on. Really gained alot of skills on a the spot, and maintained the restaurants daily operations in a fun and modern but effective approach. Had 35 employees who I would delegate daily tasks too and never had anyone push back or disagree with my Managing tactics or philosophies.
Cons
Company taught me alot, and had great GM's and JVPS. However I felt very under prepared in regards to updates on company policy and procedure adjustements. New Menu releases were almost a surprise, teachbacks on how to prepare food were rarely taught to Managers and Assistant Managers. Company understaffed administaration, it was always a constant problem with payroll , direct deposits never processed on time, home office was very rarely available. District managers or Food techs/Service techs were stretched so thin their areas were huge, it was impossible for them to have a personal relationship with all of the stores. It was very frustarating and I felt like they threw you to the fire and just expected you to learn and train yourself on your own, their was never a consistent process of training new managers it changed every 3-6 months. Then they would expect everyone to be on the same page which would be impossible because each store would do things differently. Research and development would release food items that would take forever to prepare and would contain high commodity cost items that would make no sense to buy a case full of produce or liquor for one specific drink or plate. Very poorly researched in regards to the demographic that Outback attracted which was blue collar people., which is perfectly fine. However people wouldn't be interested in buying a 13 dollar drink with cilantro or jalopenos in it. All in all it was a good way to learn how to work fast, and work quickly and make decisions on the drop of a dime because product levels were always an issue and in my personal opinion you should never run out of an item that is listed on a menu or commercial.
