Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club Director of Food and Beverage Josh Nylin got his taste for front of the house around COVID, of all times. He started at Las Sendas Golf Club in Mesa, Ariz., as Executive Chef, and in 2020, he transitioned to General Manager.
“My F&B director at the time said, ‘Can you manage the operation until we figure out what we’re doing in the front of the house?’ So I managed the kitchens through the sous chefs, and I was helping manage the dining room out on the floor. And it gave me a taste for that side of it.”
A year later, though, Superstition Mountain G&CC in Gold Canyon, Ariz., reached out with an Executive Chef opening. It was an offer Nylin couldn’t pass up and an opportunity to affect major change.
“I came on in the middle of the season. My first week, I was in the HR office with a server and a cook, and they were screaming at each other,” Nylin says. “Looking back at it, I probably could have fired them both. But I looked at the situation—they’re burnt out, they’re tired, they’re exhausted, they’ve been beat down. … I pulled some of the back of the house together and said, ‘Give me patience, grace, and understanding, and I’m going to fix it. … Fast forward two years, the GM says, ‘Josh, you did it with the back of the house. Now do it with the front of the house.’”
Leading the front of the house requires a bit of a shift in perspective, a softening in leadership style, Nylin says.
“The back of the house, to me, is pretty straightforward,” he says. “You can either cook an omelet or you can’t cook an omelet. You can cook 50 omelets or you can’t. Front of the house, I’ve had to soften a little bit; the egos and the personalities are a touch different. But at the same time, it’s all just dealing with people and holding everybody accountable.”
Be the Bridge
On the flip side, Peter Angelakos, Executive Chef of The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., had five-plus years of front of the house experience before he decided to attend culinary school.
“I grew up in a Greek household where cooking was pretty prominent,” Angelakos notes. “I always enjoyed cooking growing up, and then working with talented chefs in the front of the house and watching them operate in the back only grew my appreciation.”
Ultimately, his front of the house experience shaped his perspective as a chef, and it acts as an asset in his current role.
“I always say to my team, ‘Try to put yourself in the other person’s position,’” Angelakos says. “It also helps when I communicate with the front of the house during preshifts. A lot of time, they’ll have questions, and I can be a bridge between the management from the front of the house to the back of the house.”
With the servers, he and the management team with together to ensure all changes are communicated effectively through open dialogue as well as menu tastings.
“I try to make it interactive,” he says, “where I’ll explain a few things, and then I’ll throw it to them, and ask, ‘How would you describe it to the member?’ And the front of the house management also helps in that regard. They will jump in and ask different questions so we can explain it in complete detail, from the ingredients, the allergies, to the service.”
Angelakos typically meets with the cooks for preshift separately. His leadership style shifts a bit in the back of the house, he notes. But when you have a tenured team, it’s relatively seamless.
“When you’re in the back of the house, you’re not in front of a member or a guest, so it’s a little more relaxed; there’s typically more camaraderie with the kitchen staff,” he says. “But it helps to not have high turnover in the kitchen. They know when you need to get things done or when it’s time to get serious.”
Angelakos also sees value in bringing the back of the house team to the front whenever possible.
“For a lot of our events,” he says, “we have action stations where the cooks get a chance to interact more with members, and the familiarity with the back of the house grows by the year. It’s exciting for the cooks to see the members, and they get a chance to swap, almost as a front of the house employee.”
The Bigger Picture
In an effort to shift perspectives and bring the team together as one, Superstition G&CC hosted a role reversal dinner during which front of house staff worked the line, with chef oversight, and the back of house served the members a pared-down menu, also with leadership oversight.
“That dinner was an absolute blast from the member standpoint, the front of the house standpoint, the back of the house; everybody, at the end of the night, had a wonderful evening,” Nylin says.
Nylin’s favorite part of the evening, he says, was family meal.
“We had a couple of servers in charge of creating family meal that night,” he notes, “We ate together and talked and laughed and had some very eye-opening conversations.”
The key, he says, is to understand that both back and front of house have difficult roles in different ways.
”[The front of the house] has to be smiling and on stage at all times,” Nylin notes. “And when the kitchen overcooks a burger, they’re the ones on the front lines dealing with that member—good, bad, and ugly.”
The back of the house, of course, has its own set of challenges and aspects of the role that the front doesn’t see.
“Our broadline vendor actually showed up and the order had to get put away, so the [front of the house team] got to see that it’s more than just cooking,” Nylin notes. “We actually had a couple of servers who volunteered to work the dish station, which was a surprise.”
Ultimately, though, the front of the house acts as ambassadors to the chefs and their menus.
“We have to educate the front of the house about what is going on behind the scenes—the blood, the sweat, the tears, the passion, and all of those things that the chefs put into their food. We need to make sure we’re properly educating the front of the house and taking that time and energy and teaching them as much as we’re teaching the back of the house and the chefs,” Nylin says.
Over the past few decades, he’s grateful to see a distinct shift away from the ‘us versus them’ mentality that’s long plagued the industry. The key, he believes, is to focus on the bigger picture.
”If the server comes in and says, ‘This is overcooked,’ you don’t need to argue whether it’s a perfect medium or not,” he says. “We have a member in the dining room with an empty plate. Let’s make that our focus, not whose fault it was.”
“At the end of the day,” he adds, “we’re one team. Everybody has their own piece to play.”
