With any business it is the management and staff that make the wheels turn, and ours is no different. We are very fortunate to have a very low management attrition rate as this is our backbone. This team consists of Mark Brokensha, Cliffy Anderson and Tim Kelly, with Colin Snell as Senior bar manager. Responsibilities are all shared and a great deal of flexibilty and time leeway is obtained from this.
Our kitchen staff have mostly been with us since inception, and this level of stability and experience is invaluable. All dishes are conceptualised and implemented by the management, (who are qualified in this regard) and then faithfully reproduced by our cooks. We have a kitchen co-ordinator, (aboyeur) whose job it is to collect incoming orders, relay the information to the kitchen departments responsible and then, when the food has been prepared, finalize garnish and presentation and send the food out to the diners. Some of our kitchen staff have 25 years experience in restaurants.
Our waitresses and barmen are sourced locally and are comprised of University students, other post-grad studiers and full time professional waitrons. We tend to use young ladies in the restaurant area and gentlemen in the bar area although we have had waiters in the past. We spend some time with direct experience training as well as reference to a comprehensive training manual written by us and purpose-designed for our application. Waitrons are incentivised by a percentage of turnover that increases with experience, confidence and ability. Some of our long-suffering ladies have more than six years experience with us – almost unprecedented in this type of business, and an indicator of the pleasant environment we try and provide for all! We occasionally use very experienced staff members as backup managers and hostesses when special circumstances require it.
