Where is the greenbrier
How Has Covid Changed the Greenbrier?
[Music]
thank you for joining
the american culinary federation today
as we take you inside america's kitchens
today we are at the legendary greenbrier
resort in west virginia and we'll be
speaking to
chef brian skelding i'm jackie
pressinger director of strategic
partnerships
and looking forward to having you join
us today
chef skeleton can you tell us a little
bit about yourself and how you found
yourself at this
amazing resort here in west virginia
sure um so i started back here in 2002
i came here based on a chef that did the
apprenticeship program here his name was
tom wall
um he graduated in uh 1989
and i met him when i was living in
honolulu hawaii
and he sent me to go work with chef
panke he was in columbus ohio
jeff hanke was the executive chef here
as well uh back in the
early to mid 80s and i you know when i
came here
i really came here just for one year to
be honest and i wanted to work in the
tavern room that was like the
creme de la creme you know the fine
dining and the dover soul table side and
all that stuff
but i really fell in love with the
community here and the culture in the
kitchens
um i've used this story before as i'm
from midwest wisconsin and
i remember walking down white sulphur
springs one day because i lived right
downtown
and a gentleman stopped by and he said
hello to me because i was like i don't
know you
i was like we don't do that in in
wisconsin so right away that
friendliness
that atmosphere really just kind of
permeates with the type of people that
we all
work with day in and day out so for me
that was that was really kind of
eye-opening
and working here has just been a
pleasure ever since but for me the
most precious thing is the people i work
with every day for sure
chef over the past seven years you've
made a lot of great changes to the
dining operations
and i'd love to hear about all of the uh
outlets that you oversee here at the
green room
well so we have 14 kitchens and we have
uh eight full-time restaurants
um on top of those restaurants we also
have a very large banquet
operation which does uh right around 13
million of our 40 million
uh in food and beverage revenue and of
course we have in-room dining you know
24 hours a day operation
as well as we have different lounges and
bars and of course halfway houses
all around the golf courses so all in
all there's uh
20 food beverage operations on property
amazing and so what is the size of your
staff to run all this food and beverage
so believe it or not actually takes
really right at 200 culinarians
to run without overtime uh most of us
chefs know that that's really not a
reachable goal
but you gotta have those goals that
aren't reachable um hopefully
you know get as close as you can to
excellence um and that that'd be with no
overtime so
like last year i ran right at about 167
was the most that i had at any given
time
plus managers so that 200 also equates
into the managers because there's a
shepherd cuisine for
essentially every kitchen as well how
has business been since reopened
business has been phenomenal actually so
we were planning on opening right around
memorial weekend we started planning a
couple weeks out getting ready for that
and you know you hope opening up on such
a normally busy holiday
that things would go really well well
they went splendidly well
and you know we really reached to the
maximum of what we could do we were over
a thousand guests
um we had most operations open as it
relates to restaurants
we were still underneath the mandate
where we couldn't have the casino or the
pool open
so that restricted us a little bit but
then that uh eased up on june 6th
and from then i mean we've been pushing
you know 90
occupancy we're looking at almost 80
occupancy for the whole month of july
and we also in a director's meeting
today our director of room said normally
she has 300
voicemails on average through the week
and she's at 2 000 right now
on average week to week which is people
wanting to book here so
it's a good problem to have super super
excited to be here we have a different
stress than we had six weeks ago for
sure
well for sure and i'm glad to hear those
numbers i know it's going to give a lot
of hope to the chefs who are tuning in
um that business will be coming back and
come back strong
as it relates to group business what did
you do and how did you communicate
with your guests so group business um
kerry baldwin and myself kerry's
director of
event services as well as some of the
sales team you know we started thinking
about what are the guests going to be
looking for how can we deliver
the experience that they're looking for
as related to groups um so we started to
put a small banker bankrupt together
that consisted of some options and green
bar
options because that's one thing we want
to do as reopening is we wanted to still
deliver the green bar experience
otherwise we don't want to reopen i mean
otherwise we wait and figure out what
the mandates are going to come to and we
do it from there
but we put together a small banker rep
that we could easily send out to any of
the groups
it had some of the guidelines in there
talked about what our scenario was for
buffets
because we weren't allowed to do
self-service buffets
we decided to try to get everyone to do
more choice menus
uh box lunches box breakfasts
as well as like action stations so we do
some dinner actions
like we have a wedding this weekend that
they originally wanted a buffet so what
we're doing is we're taking
some of those chunks of their buffet
that they were going to do and just
separate them all around the room and
have
you know a chef just doing a little
salad where they're just almost like
topless portions
there's some service that's involved in
that as maybe servers are helping maybe
slice some different meats
or help give some things to the guests
made from the bar um
so it's been a learning curve and it's
very fluid so that banker rep really
helped us out a lot
as well as the sales team and event
service team was here day in and day out
talking to the guests daily
reaching out to him hey here's where
we're at what do you think about this
let's customize that
so that was really you know very
personable experience for for everybody
absolutely seems communication seems
really key yeah absolutely communication
is
as you know you know being in the
culinary industry communication is
always key for sure yeah
chuck can you share any challenges that
you've had to overcome since they're
reopening
so the one challenge that really because
we have been so busy
is we can do 50 occupancy in the
restaurants
but also tables of six that's the
largest that we can do so what we have
to do is really think about
how each of these dining rooms are going
to look like we had to pull some tables
out move some chairs around
we also adjusted our reservation system
to also only allow so many guests at a
certain time
for example our steakhouse has 130 seats
well we know we can't go over 65
seats um so we adjusted open table in
order to
you know so we can manage that and it
can't be overbooked
so that was one of the biggest things
that we've had to dealt with and still
deal with because
not all guests honestly always
understand our situation
and we're just as honest and upfront as
we can and
take when we can you know right and um
do you see a lot of guests who want to
dine traditionally in the dining rooms
or people looking at outdoor dining
options from service options
room service has done very well it's
room service always kind of like a fire
house it's like
it's so quiet all summer in the bell
rings and then this is fast and furious
we did purchase a tent and put it
outside prime 44 patio our steakhouse
that way allowed for another 48 seats
and keep in mind that that tent also
allowed us to
use that as a full occupancy so we could
still then
you know bring in that many more into
the full
reservation system in order to meet
those guidelines um and honestly with
going kind of going from spring to
summer so quickly and being in west
virginia
one day it's cold one day it's raining
the next day it's 90 it seems like
so there's days where it does really
really well and then there's days where
maybe it's a little humid and people
don't want to sit outside and they'd
rather get some air conditioning
right all right well at least there's a
lot of options yeah we like having
options yeah
chef with such a large team how are you
handling social distancing from your
kitchens
so we're fortunate most of our kitchens
are rather sized you see the main
kitchen here
there can be 50 cooks working here at
some point
but what we do is we just gotta you know
manage it
move people around if a culinarian
starts to get a little bit too close
um we have the mask our face max masks
on so that always kind of helps as well
but we really just just got to manage it
daily because human beings we all kind
of have a tendency to
go back towards our normal habits you
know so but it hasn't been too much of a
challenge it really hasn't
so chef um what hurdles have you had to
overcome both with closing down and
reopening as
it pertains to staffing so closing down
was challenging because we do rely
we have a lot of j-1 visas here at the
property both front of the house back of
the house
and with everyone not knowing what's
going to happen especially with
international travel or when are we
going to open back up what's the country
going to do
this kitchen actually looked like a
human resource department for about
three days
as myself and chef jones and diane we
work with all these
with all these students figuring out who
can stay
do they want to stay can they stay based
on the department of state guidelines so
we had
we had about nine of them stay and sign
off that they you know went
meet maybe the 32 hours a week that's
mandate mandated by the department of
state
and the rest of them we finished all
their you know we gave all their
certificates of completion
because we don't want anyone to i would
never punish someone for not finishing
because technically they did and they
did a great job for us so
that was difficult and then of course
reopening when you don't have a lot of
your
staff because they went away as well as
honestly
you know with the government and the
extra 600 you get a week
i don't have a ton of full-time resumes
just showing up on my desk
but i have had a good bid i've had i've
spoken to people all the way as far as
hawaii
um as close as west virginia and
virginia so other resorts that aren't
opening
there's culinarians that are calling and
asking about it and um
you know i've i've been fortunate i've
hired 49 culinarians in the last three
weeks
wow so i've been really really lucky
i've been talking a lot of friends and
colleagues and
just trying to find people looking for
work and it's been a great
it's been a great experience because
those that show up are just so eager
because they've been without a paycheck
in some cases almost three months it's
been crazy
well i'm sure a lot of the chefs and
culinary students who are tuning in are
obviously going to give the greenbrier a
good look after this as well so
hopefully we'll sure
find some find something a few more
spots yeah i've got a few more
chef can you let us know a little bit
more about the apprenticeship program
here at the green rider
sure um it's always tough to put into
words um but the couple things i'll tell
you is
you know the history of the food and the
culinary operations here
um means so much to me and we stand on
the shoulders of those before us
and the it was started by herman roosch
back in 1957
and there weren't a lot of culinary
schools around back then and he used
that as a way to
recruit and train local applicants and
still today that's the main purpose of
it is to really help train and build a
backbone
to the culinary team here and not only
does it push the culinarians to learn
but it's a tremendous impact on all of
us as managers to
research things you read cookbooks offer
suggestions to talk about flavors what's
trending right now
so it's a very um evolving
apprenticeship program
um it changes every year changes month
to month even
based on you know again we make it
personable how we talked about like with
group business and communication
so what i've done is in order to try to
paint a better picture
is um i start up an instagram account uh
about
three years ago now um and i post every
now and then just
what does a day in the life look at the
green bar from a culinary side of things
um and then just about two weeks ago i
started a youtube channel called the
green bar kitchen yes
um have one one video on there and we're
gonna do you know maybe one a month or
one every other month
next we're gonna focus on some of the
kitchens but the main thing was
is when we did graduation and uh chef
kevin walker cmc and the chef red tease
from johnson wales we're here
and chef walker said you know what he
said you should really look at doing
like a video of the day in the life of
an apprentice
and he goes everyone's looking at
youtube these days so i emailed him two
weeks ago and said hey won't you check
out greenbark kitchen
on the youtube and he sent me a note
right back he said that's just awesome
so
we're pretty excited our green bar
webpage has uh our open jobs
as well as has an apprenticeship uh page
as well so there's videos in there
there's a little blurb on what the
apprenticeship is
and of course anyone can ever call reach
out to me dm me on instagram it's no
problem
sure um and can you how long is the
apprenticeship program
so at first it sounds like a long time
it's three years but
i can tell you it goes by in the blink
of an eye yeah it really does
it's fast and furious the camaraderie is
unbelievable i think that some of the
favorite things apprentices i hear after
graduating is the friendships that they
make
as well as just the fundamentals that
they learn everything from souffles
how to make an omelette butchery
charcuterie how to run a grill in a
steakhouse
how to make sushi and infusion we cover
the whole gamut i mean we have so many
different styles of food here
um it's so much to learn so much to
learn so chef this all sounds fabulous
for those who might be interested do you
have any full-time positions available
now i do
so what i'm really in the need for right
now are just some good solid line cooks
um i have a couple of things posted on
the website as it relates to a couple
different restaurant locations
but of course it's always i try to find
the right seat on the bus for people so
i was talking to young man the other day
down in georgia and we talked about all
the restaurants and
the maine dining room suited him
perfectly so he's going to come up here
and start working for us in the main
dining room
as well as a couple sous chef positions
i also have a couple bakers
position open as well as a pastry chef
so they're all on the website anyone can
check them out
but yeah absolutely chef mentoring seems
like it's
such an important part of the greenbrier
culinary team's success
who have been your mentors so some of my
earliest culinary mentors were actually
tom wong who i mentioned a little
earlier ago because i did meet him in
hawaii
and he was really kind of the first
first gentleman outside of wisconsin
first chef if you would
um they've told me about the green bar
i've never heard of it and
i've been here three times so i'm on my
third tour it's my longest tour
i'm going on 11 years on my third tour
but each time that i
looked at coming back here i've always
made a call to him and
and to see what he thought and every
time he's like
you're an idiot if you don't go there
you know he's like you know the answer
to that
um so he's been one of my biggest
mentors and then of course being here as
long as i have
you have your chef rich rosendale and
your chef peter timmons um so i learned
so much from those gentlemen
um so those are some of my more my my
latest mentors if you would and then uh
the other one that comes to mind is chef
lawrence mcfadden also a cmc out of
cleveland right now so he really helped
me kind of reinvigorate the
apprenticeship program we went to a more
tasted
scenario as opposed to everything was
cold food and
mystery baskets at the time and now
everything is tasted every peptane fruit
every canopy
every terrine is tasted now so he really
helped me he was a judge three years in
a row and each year we kind of gradually
tried a couple things and worked on what
his graduation look like what do the
meetings look like
so those those are the gentlemen that
come to mind first and foremost
so chef what advice would you have for
those who are coming into the industry
the young chefs the culinary students
um love to hear for me it's get in the
field
get in the kitchen it doesn't matter
what kind of kitchen it is if there
isn't something that
is around you that is maybe you know
fine dining you've got to understand how
kitchen works and we call kitchen common
sense
get uncomfortable find people that are
passionate about cooking
find teams that are passionate about
working together
and there's times where you're not going
to enjoy it i'll be honest but those are
the times where you learn things that
maybe you don't want to do or a
management style that you don't want to
emulate
but that's just part of the growing
process because you learn so much from
mistakes
or so much from things that maybe are
outside your comfort zone whether good
or bad
and it just shapes you who you are today
so that's one thing i always talk to as
i'm recruiting to young culinarians is
it's the first thing i look at a resume
if someone is going to culinary school
i look in and see not only what the
reference is but also is have you been
working
or are you you know just sitting in your
dorm room and you know just going to
class
and i'm going to say that's because of
experience i originally went to school
for accounting
and my first summer after graduating
high school
i think maybe the first day or the first
week i knew i wasn't going to be an
accountant
i just knew and i went back to the
kitchens where i
ultimately started and one day i said
you know i'm gonna go to culinary school
and i worked full time doing it because
i went to culinary school and
there's just some things in life that
you just know instantly that that was
the right call
and for me that's what it was so ann uh
if you could let us
know a little bit more about your role
here at the greenbrier and how you found
yourself working at the
amazing resort i'm ann sims i'm the
person logistics controller of the
greenbrier
and i began my career here 32 years ago
in the food store room
as a purchasing clerk doing her
disorders for food entry
evolved over the years through retail
control point of sale retail
now i'm back into food i manage the
food store room and the wine store room
and provide
as much support as i possibly can to the
food operation
wow in a resort this size i have to
imagine that's a huge huge job
it is but it's not what i do alone i
have a team of 10 and we
actively do everything we can to support
the kitchens we procure the food and do
the receiving and
fill the orders for all of the kitchens
on property it is quite a task we're
open
seven days a week 365 because people
always eat and we want to make sure they
have the best experience possible
i work a lot with the mapping of the
general ledger and things to accounting
as well from our purchasing system
so i support chef jones and chef
skelding
as much as i can with reporting food
cost controls
and those type of things and recently
we've been taking on more with the
beverage control aspect
and i've heard there's a greenbrier
covid task force can you tell us a
little bit about that
yes the resort wanted to be our owner
wanted to be proactive
in ensuring the health and safety of our
team members and of course all of our
guests that
choose to come here so a copin a task
force was established it includes our
vice president of operations
vice president of human resources our
director of security
our compliance and safety officer and
as well as our purchasing manager and
myself and we
are just following daily the fluid
situation that is happening with the
coveted guidelines
the governor of west virginia has rolled
out a statewide
guidelines for us to follow week by week
we've experienced a few challenges there
because of some of the nature of our
resort of having combined
i would call hybrid departments like our
outdoor pool
where we have a food outlet and a
recreation mingled together
and those came out on different
guidelines so what we're doing we are
actually reviewing
uh the guidelines daily with the uh and
comparing of course
the guidelines from the state are
written in relation with the cdc
guidelines so
we are also making ourselves available
to every team member here we have had we
are addressing guest concerns
um employee team member concerns on a
daily basis
we are making sure that we are in um
adherence to all of the guidelines
we're doing the 50 occupancy in each
outlet we
are clearly doing walk-throughs of every
single aspect of the resort before it
reopens to our guests
currently we are reopened in the
majority of those
we have of course puts guidelines in
place the casino
for instance maybe every other slot
machine is available
limited tables uh seating similar to
what we're doing in the restaurants as
well
removing bar stools limiting the number
of seats we remove tables we remove
chairs
we have provided ppe to our employees
with we're doing the distancing making
sure that if anyone is in close
proximity all
employees are screened upon entry of the
resort we are taking temperature checks
and ask the screening questions
to follow the guidelines we are also
providing mass
gloves all the ppe that we feel is
necessary to comply as well as maintain
again the safety of our guests
we want them to have a great experience
for here we don't want to feel like a
sterile
unwelcoming environment but we want to
make sure we're doing everything we can
to protect everyone
and we're currently meeting again like i
said we have standing meetings three
days
a week we are also meeting daily if
needed and
it's been a very good response from both
the guests and the team members
and again we're addressing concerns as
they come up i feel like we've
we've covered all the bases but again
the situation is so fluid it's changing
from day to day
so we are again reviewing them daily and
making adjustments on the fly as
necessary
right and i mean i noticed it even
before getting onto hotel property
um there was temperature checks for
everyone coming through the game
absolutely um as we were coming up
the uh those who were greeting us had
masks there was
signage everywhere there's uh hand
sanitizer um as soon as you're coming
into the resort and in the public spaces
absolutely you can see it from the
moment you show up good i'm glad to hear
that it means it's working
so in preparation for the opening uh do
i'll create protocols checklists for
food and beverage
actually um as chef was working on
staffing to bring back
to work we also started in food store
and working on protocols and how we were
going to get
procure product and get it delivered um
there's been a real challenge with
the markets trying to get product in
where we normally could place an order
about three o'clock
and have it at seven a.m the next
morning we're having to think ahead
and figure out how we're gonna do that
but we did do checklist we actually
with the coven task force help
established a delivery
process the people in the food store
that do the
unload of the trucks now wear double
gloves they wear masks at all times they
of course do the screening as they come
to work each day with the
coveted questions stringing questions
and mask wearing
we also began having the drivers with
each company
stay in their truck they come on
property they unload they give us the
invoices
and everything to check in the product
and then we have them remain in their
trucks
they are also screened either by their
we have statements they are screened by
their
companies before they ride the truck or
they are screened by our security guards
as well as they come onto the property
so we've changed our whole vendor list
as far as how they get on property they
have to have an appointment
there are no drop-in vendors now for
sampling or anything like that
everything has to go through a po
process it has to come through our
guards for a check-in and screening just
like any other employee
but we do have them stay in their trucks
now we unload everything and only bring
them back into property
if there's a problem with the order and
then we sign the papers
and again we provide them with mask and
hand sanitizer if they do need to come
in
to witness anything so that's been a big
challenge for us
um a little on the back of the house
side but it definitely is vital because
we want to make sure
that the cartons and everything are
coming in the guys are wearing double
gloves
um they're not handling any cardboard
boxes or any containers that are coming
in without gloves they're using hand
sanitizer hand washing
we're trying to make sure we're
following again all the code guidelines
and even stepping up a step further by
limiting the number of people that can
just come into the resort they still
have to be screened and have a purpose
for being here sure that certainly seems
above and beyond where it's great for
safety and chef how about for the
kitchens in the dining rooms
so we we started putting a list together
based on the mandates
as well as just kind of reminding
everyone about some of the normal
you know things that we deal with every
day in the kitchen obviously we've been
you know we deal with perishable goods
we deal with germs we do have bacterias
we deal with temperatures
danger zones all that stuff so for us it
wasn't too much of a stretch some of the
biggest things that were maybe a change
was
definitely keeping an eye on hand
washing scrubbing down stations before
you get on the stations
again normal stuff but just really
managing it
and doing it more frequently especially
the hand washing
and then i would say probably social
distancing
make sure everyone's wearing their masks
you know as we wear these masks they
have a tendency to wear out
whether it be how hot it is or because
you got to taste your food you got to
keep moving these masks around
for culinary that was probably the
biggest stretch as it relates to the
front of the house
team members you know we started
laminating most of the venues so those
need to be wiped down
sanitized uh sanitizing stations on all
of the uh side stands so that anytime a
guest gets up
or a table needs to be flipped it's not
just cleared it's sanitized you know
arms of the chairs backs of the chairs
salt and pepper shakers
so that you know the dining rooms look
very empty all rolled silverware
um essentially there's nothing on the
table except for the linen
once you sit down that way we can
sanitize everything in the back and then
bring every piece of equipment or food
item that you need
as uh as your dinner progresses sure um
and and as a chef too i know that
sanitation is sort of inherent
in all that we do um so it seems like
you're doing things that are
upgrading in this essentially yeah a few
extra hand sanitizer stations here and
there
um then we also put checklist there's
daily checklists that each of the
kitchens have to do
just as a way to get into a new normal
or new habits
that we're really just again it's a
human element and i'm just as guilty of
straying away from maybe an old habit or
a new habit just as anyone else's so
those checklists i've always been a
checklist guy and having those
checklists
really just kind of helps you all right
i gotta double check this this and this
today or i saw a problem area with that
i need to go talk to someone so so those
checklists have been very very crucial
for us
chip jones could you please let us know
a little bit about your role here at the
greenbrier and
how you ended up here in beautiful west
virginia absolutely jackie so
i actually uh graduated
from the university of maryland with a
dream degree in criminal justice
uh while i was at school uh
for whatever reason i didn't like eating
in the dining halls so
i started cooking in my dorm room and by
the time i graduated i figured out i
didn't want to do anything with criminal
justice
so i went back to school to get a degree
in culinary arts
i went to school in baltimore when i was
in school
i met a uh certified master pastry chef
his name was
jan vanduala who was friends with
the uh at the time executive chef of the
hotel peter timmons
so he said hey i know this place in west
virginia it's a huge place they have
restaurants they have banquets
uh you should go down there you know
peter's a great guy you'll learn a lot
from them so
uh i've never been to west virginia
before and i just so i
came down and visited i talked to my one
of my predecessors chef mangle
was the one who hires me he's actually
still here uh
and based upon that one visitor said
okay
i'm gonna pack up and move to west
virginia and i did
and that was in 2005. so
i worked here from 2005 to 2008
um and then while working here i met
michael baltaggio
he ran the old tavern restaurant for one
year and then hemispheres for a year so
i got to work with him up there
and then we i moved to los angeles and
worked
with michael in opening uh jose andres
restaurant
the bazaar i worked at a couple other
places and then finally we
made my way back here in 2011 so
uh and then i assumed my current role in
2016.
so i've been executive sous chef for uh
this will be my fifth season
that's wonderful i'm noticing a pattern
too a lot of a lot of people
are working here and then they get drawn
back they come back i mean it's a great
place to live so
uh especially if you're into outdoors
you like to fish
uh i i would say that probably all of
the shepherd cuisines you know either
fish hunt
uh you know mountain bike or just like
being outdoors so
it's a great place like great place to
be so and what's your favorite part
about working here in the property
my favorite part is the variety
it's you can go you know
from a restaurant to a banquet uh we've
had pga tour events we had
the um the greenbrier classic which was
a military tribute to the greenbrier for
uh 10 years so we had that we've also
had training camps for
nfl teams the texans and the saints held
here so
40 usually on average about 40 weddings
a year so the variety here and that's
kind of
the selling point that i'll talk to when
when hiring
students or cooks is you know you can go
to another place that
maybe just does banquet food
and you'll learn a good bit there but if
you come here you can
work in the banquet kitchen you can work
in a steakhouse you can
go and work in infusions and learn how
to roll sushi or at the forum and
learn how to make pizza pies so so the
variety
is is one of the things that i love
about it and um you know
my kids live here so i get to see them
uh you know they live about a mile down
the road for me so that's the other best
part and they love to come in here
uh my daughter's actually been in about
three times
uh to hang out and cook with me so
that's that's great so
that is awesome i love it you almost
have miso maybe i'm gonna move through
sure we're hiring you can go on our
website it's thegreenbriar.com
under employment all right and look at
the job
keep an eye out um you mentioned young
chefs though so i do want to touch on
that what what is your advice
to those young chefs or those who are
thinking about coming into the industry
and perhaps might want to work here in
the future
the benefit of working here is that you
know a lot of people will say that well
it's
it's not in a big city uh but that to me
that was the benefit
uh there weren't distractions everywhere
you know you you could
you go to work and you go home and and
most of the you know main street shuts
down at nine o'clock and that's fine
um because uh you know like my dad
always told me you know nothing good
ever happens after midnight so there's
there's no reason to stay out that late
um but i would say that's that's the
biggest benefit is
the focus that you can put into uh your
craft and just working
um instead of being distracted by
everything else in getting to know
everyone
uh here at the resort even more i can
see that mentorship is
key so i'm wondering if you might be
able to share with us who
your mentor mentors are so i would say
that my biggest mentor has
been my dad he doesn't have a culinary
bone in his body
uh he could you know he can barely i
have a story about him calling me how to
uh cook ribs and potatoes and i went
through the whole
whole recipe with him for 10 minutes and
then he finally told me that
oh no they're already cooked i just need
to know how to heat him up he didn't
even heat up ribs
but uh all jokes aside um
his work ethic is is next to next to
none i mean i
just growing up seeing him um you know
he doesn't
obviously doesn't work in the culinary
industry but the dedication he put into
his his career working nights and
weekends when he had to
uh you know to support his family uh my
brother my mom
uh just kind of you know that's
inspiring to me
so so my dad well it seems like it
ripped off
thank you i hope so just a little bit
um and um a little bit off topic with
that do you have a favorite
restaurant or food service outfit on
property that or one that's most special
to you
one property uh it would probably be the
main kitchen this is this is the
the line that i learned to cook on you
know where i kind of like grew up
um when i started here in 2005 we only
had four restaurants at the time
um and my i remember my first night here
it was actually like june 16th 2005.
uh i went to my pre-shift meeting you
know i was super nervous
and uh we sit down and the chef the
cuisine at the time said uh
that we're gonna do 660 people in this
and i said that's in the hotel right not
so um 660 people
in the main dining room was my first
service uh and i think i probably
i started on pantry stations so i made
300
caesar salads and probably another 200
iceberg salads and
scooped about 400 scoops of ice cream so
um i would say
working you know having memories like
that and working on this line was
probably
uh it's probably my favorite restaurant
that's excellent and i also love for
the chefs we're tuning in too to see
that you started on the pantry station
and you're now all the way up with this
executive chef of the whole resort
yeah i mean yeah and the idea around
that is it's
you have to know every station in the
kitchen you know if
somebody comes in they say well i'm not
gonna work salad station i just
i'm just going to cook beef because
that's the most important
station in the kitchen well it's not
they're all important and
as you grow as a chef as you get
experience and get
promoted you need to know how to run the
pantry station
or dessert station so you can teach
other people how to and so that you can
run a better business so
i'm all about i'm all about learning and
grassroots in the kitchen especially
yeah well absolutely and i think it
shows that there's no shortcuts
to hard work and absolutely not i know
during this pandemic it's it's been a
very challenging time when did the
greenbrier actually close its doors
so the decision to close the hotel was
made on
march 18th so uh that we would close
on the following day at noon and then
that gave
gave us about 24 hours to get most of
the guests out of here uh
obviously you know they needed to make
plans and arrangements to get home
and then we had all of our guests were
out of here on the 20th
wow so uh and then fast forward
two months uh and then we reopened on
uh may the 22nd so we opened that friday
so yeah two months
a little over two months to the day so
oh my gosh well um i know it's with so
much food and beverage that you all do
here at the resort
what did you do with all of the
perishable food when you had to close
down
we kind of put everything in the boxes
that we could
either freeze like our sauces we would
cry back them
a good portion of our proteins obviously
some of our
prepared foods we had to discard you
know due to
laws about donating but uh
the perishable fruits and vegetables
that we had in the storeroom
we went through i forget how many it was
about 16 000 pounds of food
that we were able to distribute to local
uh shelters or uh charities that were
then able to
to give to to people who had lost their
jobs or been laid off
um kind of like a pickup you know they
put it put a bunch of fruit in a bag a
bunch of veggies
uh and then the residents of greenbrier
county were able to come over and get
that and then take it back to their home
so
that's that's wonderful that you were
able to make those arrangements from
that project absolutely
i hate throwing food away so as your
team members started coming back to work
what were some of the biggest changes
that had to be made
so number one i would say would be the
security checks when coming on
properties so
we have tents at our main gate
primarily for guests and then we have uh
a tent at our security gate number two
for which is our employee entrance so
the employees come in
uh it's cordoned off you have to follow
the ropes
uh you get a temperature check and you
get a mask and they ask you a series of
six questions
you know have uh have you been exposed
to anyone that's been uh you know
diagnosed with kovid
have you been out of state and then
based upon those questions the security
team
uh determines whether or not you're able
to come into work
every day every day every every shift
actually
so if if a lot of our front of the house
staff work multiple
shifts during the day so when they leave
property and come back on they have to
go through
cycle through the the process all over
again wow okay well that's great let's
race now
um i just want to say a quick thank you
to jackie persinger
and uh alan sterling for taking the time
out of their
busy schedule and coming up here to
check out the green bar
we really appreciate it we had a great
time great to get the info out there
we're super excited with how busy we are
and sharing that with everyone
if you ever have any questions you know
if you want more information about
what we did with our protocols or how we
communicated to our guests
easy just shoot me a dm on instagram or
send me an email
and also too hope everyone starts
thinking about maybe the summer or the
fall and
you can either come up here or a little
r and r with your family
or perhaps you may know a young
culinarian that's just starting out that
may want to
move away from home and come to a nice
roll area and
hunker down and you know learn some good
fundamental cooking
so again thank you again and appreciate
it thank you acf
have a good one thank you so much for
joining us today as we visited the
greenbrier resort here in west virginia
a lot of great information
for those who are opening post pandemic
and please make sure you put this on the
list of your next travel destinations
there'll be more episodes coming soon
inside america's kitchens with the
american culinary federation
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