Be­yond The Plate

The pro­found jour­ney of a forty-eight-year-old restau­rant in­dus­try pro­fes­sional who be­gan his ca­reer at just four­teen years old in his fa­ther’s es­tab­lish­ment. Over three decades, he has de­vel­oped a rich ta­pes­try of ex­pe­ri­ences across var­i­ous cul­tural and culi­nary set­tings, from Ko­rea to Mi­ami, Nashville, and North Car­olina, and set­tled here in St. Louis, Mis­souri. Cur­rently serv­ing as a gen­eral man­ager at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, his story high­lights a deep com­mit­ment to build­ing a solid foun­da­tion within restau­rants, fo­cus­ing on en­hanc­ing hos­pi­tal­ity and dri­ving over­all suc­cess. This nar­ra­tive pro­vides in­sights into the ded­i­ca­tion and re­silience re­quired to thrive in a dy­namic, cus­tomer-cen­tered in­dus­try.

Most mid­dle-aged men are known to be one of the two: busi­ness peo­ple or hands-on pro­fes­sion­als. This spe­cial per­son grate­fully is able and loves his ca­reer of be­ing able to highly speak upon the fact that he has built the es­tab­lish­ment of be­ing a top tier hos­pi­tal­ity pro­fes­sional where he can cross over both pro­fes­sions and sat­isfy any in­di­vid­ual that walks into the restau­rant that he calls his, “sec­ond home”: Ruth’s Chris Steak­house.

As every pro­fes­sional has a story, I would like to in­tro­duce the Gen­eral Man­ager of Ruth’s Chris Steak­house and what his jour­ney has con­sisted of and how it has not only taught him so much about his work field but also what he has learned along each step of the way and how his ex­pe­ri­ence can help Maryville Stu­dents make sure that they are headed in the right di­rec­tion of suc­cess not just for their ma­jor that they are cur­rently in but to help try and guar­an­tee long term suc­cess and most im­por­tantly hap­pi­ness within them­selves and their work­space that they may spend most of their hours at daily ex­actly how John does.

A mes­sage from John per­tain­ing to the strug­gles I was fac­ing 

Do You Have What It Takes

As we are all stu­dents and are spend­ing our Mon­day through Fri­day and even pos­si­bly some week­ends full of class af­ter class and as­sign­ment and as­sign­ment, do­ing our best to learn and in­crease our knowl­edge about sub­jects and top­ics of our in­ter­est to work for a min­i­mum of four years un­til we can walk across the stage shake the pres­i­den­t’s hand and be granted with the diploma that we have all been dy­ing to get re­ceive since we walked into ori­en­ta­tion week dur­ing our first week of se­mes­ter one. As we all have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of courses that we have to com­plete within our years of un­der­grad, there is not a sin­gle course that I have come across with the three col­leges that I have taken classes at that per­tains to what skills you need to be suc­cess­ful in your fu­ture ca­reer. John granted me the words, “Work­ing in the food in­dus­try is far from easy, and you could be work­ing 60-80 hour weeks, and you will have a count­less amount of to-dos that once you com­plete, there will al­ways be an­other stack wait­ing for you and a lot of the time there is more com­pli­cated than suc­cess within this in­dus­try, and you have to be able to keep a pos­i­tive mind­set not just in­ter­nally but ex­ter­nally to your co-work­ers and also to the won­der­ful guests that chose to dine in with us”. John talked to me about work­ing my way to be­com­ing a man­ager. He told me that some peo­ple have what it takes and some peo­ple don’t, and you can usu­ally tell within the first day of work­ing with that per­son; “This ca­reer path is chal­leng­ing and ex­haust­ing, and I al­ways tell kids your age that you are bet­ter to start learn­ing how to work with peo­ple and han­dle hos­pi­tal­ity in your early twen­ties be­cause some peo­ple get to my age and still steer straight to anger dur­ing hand chal­lenges and that is what makes or breaks a per­son in this in­dus­try and even any in­dus­try is will you make or break un­der pres­sure. Hear­ing these words from John, all I could think about was how I would tell any and every sin­gle one of Maryville Stu­dents do this be­cause we do not have a course about this in­for­ma­tion, and of course, our knowl­edge is es­sen­tial for our fu­tures, but what is even more im­por­tant is how we work with peo­ple and how we re­spond to hard­ships daily.

Ac­tions Speak Louder than Words

One day, I was hav­ing a rough day, and I sent John a text say­ing, “Hey John, I will be in at work this evening; of course, I work at five o’­clock, but I may be run­ning about fif­teen min­utes be­hind to be quite hon­est I have a lot go­ing on in my per­sonal life, and it is get­ting the best of me so I will be in tonight, but I just need a lit­tle ex­tra time to re­group my­self so I can bring every­thing I have to be the best worker.” It took me sev­eral min­utes to de­cide if I wanted to send that text be­cause I was be­yond em­bar­rassed. I did not want my boss to think I was blow­ing off work be­cause that was far from the case. I strug­gled then and wanted to be straight up with my boss so he un­der­stood I was not do­ing my best. What John then re­sponded to that text was why I chose to in­ter­view him. John did not say, “Okay. We will see you soon.” or say, “No wor­ries.” He called me within two min­utes of me send­ing that text. I would be far off from telling the truth if I said that when he called me, all I said was, “Yeah, I am just strug­gling with the bal­ance of school and work. It’s just a lot go­ing on right now.” that was far from any­thing in re­sponse to him say­ing, “Hey Tay­lor what’s go­ing on if you feel com­fort­able I am here to lis­ten I want to make sure you have some­one to talk to to get your men­tal state back straight­ened out” as shock­ing as that state­ment was, that right there is what knew I wanted to be ex­actly like John when I grew up. John may be my boss, but he did not have to call or tell me he was here for me. He could have texted me quickly and said, “No wor­ries.” He re­turned to his every­day job du­ties. As John was more than a help­ful hand to me dur­ing that time, I texted him and asked a few days later why he called me be­cause he gen­uinely did not have to do that. He said, “I take my peo­ple’s well-be­ing very se­ri­ously.” It sounds good for any man­ager to say to their em­ploy­ees, but it’s an­other thing when their ac­tions speak louder than their words. Suc­cess and hap­pi­ness are not guar­an­teed by work­ing daily as a man­ager or an em­ployee and just do­ing your bare min­i­mum du­ties. Suc­cess and hap­pi­ness are when you take care of the peo­ple in your work­space and go that ex­tra mile to make sure that your co-work­ers are do­ing okay men­tally be­cause we all have lives out­side of our school and work life, and not only will the ex­tra “hey I’m here for you just to lis­ten” go more than a mile for an­other per­son it will help to grow suc­cess and hap­pi­ness in the work­place as a whole but also highly in­crease the level of trust that you have with your co-work­ers. Ac­tions speak louder than words, and John has taught me that you must take care of your work du­ties, of course, but tak­ing care of your co-work­ers should be on the top of your work du­ties list just like any other task to be suc­cess­ful from the core of the busi­ness to serv­ing hos­pi­tal­ity on the other end.  

A leader to John that he shared with me one day 


As John has been in my life for a very short pe­riod, he has taught me so much about the restau­rant in­dus­try and an end­less amount of ad­vice that I am so grate­ful to have and, most im­por­tantly, he can share won­der­ful words with all Maryville Saints, there is some­thing that John has done for me be­yond shar­ing words of in­spi­ra­tion and be­ing some­one who teaches me more about suc­cess, hap­pi­ness, and self-de­vel­op­ment. It is that he is a leader. John is not just a leader to me; John is a leader to the restau­rant in­dus­try as a whole. He worked in mul­ti­ple states across the coun­try and even stepped out­side of the coun­try to share his lessons, knowl­edge, and crit­i­cism with peo­ple world­wide. As all of us stu­dents con­tinue our jour­ney to find­ing and build­ing our­selves within our ca­reers, I found that hav­ing a leader along the way of your trip is a sta­ple. John al­ways tells me he’s not per­fect, and he is still try­ing to find his way; he shared with me the other day a pro­fes­sional who is a leader with him. An­thony Bour­dain is John’s leader, and John is mine. Al­though John speaks highly of Bour­dain, I can promise that the leader I have been granted to cross paths with holds me ac­count­able and will call me out on my suc­cesses and flaws. I be­lieve that all of us Saints de­serve the abil­ity to find their “John,” aka my leader, dur­ing our tricky twen­ties and self-evolve­ment, mak­ing us lead­ers for the next gen­er­a­tion.