4/17/25
Today I walked around Manhattan for a bit after work and talked to a couple folks in the hospitality industry.
I met a nice Asian lady at the Trump Tower near where I live and she allowed me to enter Jean-Georges there and I got to speak with the manager briefly which was great.
Then at night, I got to speak with two people at Masa near Trump Tower at the Columbus Circle plaza (might not be the actual name of the place) and I discovered that Masa has a design team.
The bartender there told me he would speak with that team’s head to convince before I show up tomorrow at 1 PM which is exciting.
———————
The above sounds more like a random journey.
Let’s talk about what I learned about hospitality today instead.
So today as I was walking back from Columbus Circle after talking with folks at Masa, I saw two flowers with soils on the ground in front of the sidewalk before the crosswalk.
I assumed they fell from someone who was selling flowers in little plastic pots.
As people were crossing the road, the flowers had a high chance of being stepped by people.
And they just looked like they didn’t belong there to me so I grabbed them and placed them more to the right so it’s away from the main road.
But then it was right behind the hot dog stand guy and the guy said, “Hey this is not a trash bin.”
So I said, “Oh.. sorry, I just wanted to move them away from there (pointing at the sidewalk across from the light) so that people don’t step on those flowers.”
And then he put them inside the trash bag that he had and said, “you are all good.”
I thought this interaction was pretty interesting because if I didn’t explain to him or if I had not given him a clear context of the situation, the he could’ve been really angry.
What I could do differently next is just ask the guy if I can throw these to your trash bin before I move them next to the hot dog stand guy.
So I guess I was not aware of the fact the hot dog guy was looking at the ground or something.
4/18/25
Today I spent a night as a host for One White Street in Tribeca, NY.
It was my second day as a host and there is still probably like 100 more things to learn in terms of human-interaction type of stuff related to restaurant host job that I need to learn to become very very good.
As I was doing that and as I was thinking about both pursuing hospitality in general and the rent that I need to pay, I thought maybe I could clean up spaces for the guys that are renting out the space I live in right now in the Hell’s Kitchen.
They own several rooms I believe in Manhattan and I think I can just clean these rooms, not all obviously, but at least this floor which has four rooms and a shared restroom.
There is a guy that comes to clean the rooms every time a guest leaves the space and I am thinking maybe I can learn from this guy for a month and then do it myself for some of the spaces.
But other than saving the rent which is important, an important question to ask is, how could this experience help me as I pursue hospitality?
My time is up for journaling.
4/21/25
Today I worked as a host again at One White Street and I am now more comfortable with bringing guests to different tables but the thing I need to work on is listening skills which I hope will get better with more experience.
When my co-worker today left the host stand at one point and I got a call, I could not fully understand everything she was saying.
I am glad it’s not me who is doing everything and I have a team that’s helping.
Just working as a host recently also made me think about this one project I did a month ago or so in one of the restaurants in Northbrook, IL in which I had to design 3 different TV screens for the host stand.
It was a Mexican restaurant called Cabo and their host stand was inside the restaurant and there were 3 wall-hanging TV’s behind them that had menu’s on them.
The owner wanted to change them to something else so that it’s more of a background than something that stands out to the point that the guests ignore the hosts and just stare at the menu’s.
My time is up & I am going to keep writing about this again
4/22/25
Going back to the Cabo host station story, let’s talk about things that can be improved in terms of hospitality not just for Cabo restaurant in particular but also for other restaurants with a host station that has large screens in the back.
The hosts should be obviously welcoming or be very confident about the food and experience that the guests will be having to the point that you are not necessarily bubbly but something else.
The TV screens in the back should just be more subtle decorations not a full on menu.
An image of Cabo restaurant with their menus behind the host station