The BT Dream Team

What a difference a year makes. No matter how much experience you have in this business, when you open a new place, everyone - including you - is "new" and inexperienced, starting basically from scratch. If you are very, very lucky you will build a team from those employees who stick it out with you and make the place really click.

After a year we have a solid sous-chef who is a steady, dependable cook with a professional attitude toward the position, the customers, the staff. Kevin Guertin - who started here in June - has years of experience of his own, and it shows. He is truly a godsend. While we could never have opened this place without our original sous-chef, Holly, it wasn't until she moved on that we realized What We Needed. And that turns out to be a sous-chef like Kevin. In the few months he's been here, he has made Chef Kevin's life 100% less stressful, and that is about the most important job there is!

But it's the dining room staff I really want to talk about. It's Ashley and Joy, pictured above. Both have been on the floor for a little over a year. When they started we were still suffering from service issues - 4, 5 months after opening. We had no "team". People were doing their jobs but they were not working together to do the job. There was back biting and high turnover and not everyone understood what the "regulars" mean to the business. Service was okay, the crew was doing their best, but it just wasn't a cohesive group effort. It probably didn't start heading in that direction until this time last year, soon after Joy and Ashley became our first truly full-time servers.

These two are professional waiters. They don't do anything else - no day job, no waiting for their "real" job to begin, no marking time while studying for the bar exam. These two are what most Dining Room Managers can only dream about around here - servers who work well together and with the rest of the crew, work full-time, and most importantly, enjoy what they do.

Now don't get me wrong. Obviously our entire dining room staff is the Best in Kent County - I know that. And we only need two full-time waiters - there aren't enough shifts for more. We still need the people who only want the two or three shifts a week when it's too busy for just two servers to handle alone. And we all need diversity in staff members - people who do work other jobs, like Ann at the Post Office, or go to school, like Erin in Vet School and Pete at WashColl, or specialize, like Valerie on the bar, or work just the weekend, like Marc. We need them all. But, to have two people who work all five dinner shifts (and Joy works two lunches a week as well, with Nate picking up three others) that brings some consistency to the table. Tuesday through Thursday night, Joy and Ashley work the floor together, with bus help from Ali and Emily (the bus girl who will never get promoted to waiter because she is too good a busser to lose), and Erin on the Bar. Busy or slow, they make it seem easy. They help each other make sure the service at BT is the best around. And come the weekend, when the rest of the DR staff is scheduled, they continue their team effort to provide the guests with what they are looking for in an evening at Brooks Tavern - friendly, helpful service professionally rendered.

We knew from the get-go that building a team was not going to occur overnight, but when it finally happens it is a beautiful thing to see. And Kevin and I appreciate it more than anyone.

We'll talk about the team in the kitchen next time.