line cook

front of house manager

kitchen manager

bartender

line cook/prep cook

Bar Louie

I wish I would have stayed longer and lasted here. it seemed like a great way to get the money i needed to sustain my livelihood, but I guess I could not cut it. My first day of training I mostly watched and had just got off from my first (physically demanding) job so I was a little disoriented and wanted to quit right then and there. but I kept at it for a few more days being a server. When I realized I was not cut out for the server position I asked the RM (restaurant manager) could I become a busser because I felt comfortable in that role and the server shifts were too late for me, I expressed switching to a different position, the manager stated and I quote "you don't have to work late to be a server" completely cutting me off so i felt coaxed into maintaining the position which ultimately ended with me bottoming out. As a server...which i had to find out the hard way because of the physical demands of the job (1) Servers do not get breaks and (2) if you close , BE PREPARED TO CLOSE because their doors close at 2am Monday thru Saturday. the employees expressed this rigidness (and contempt) that everyone had become accustomed to.   Because of their desperation to find servers and not reliable employees I was yet again another turn over. While training I encountered one young lady who was AMAZING and come to find out the young man who trained me after her said she was lazy and unfocused which i didn't find to be true at all with her work performance with me. it was a group of people who didn't like her, which i felt to be very toxic and quite strange. The great thing about being here was I was rewarded for being in a role that served me. I bussed tables on a really busy night and the servers were kind enough to tip me out which honestly if i could have just done that job all night i would have. They expressed their gratitude one of the young ladies expressed to me I don't know how we would of made it through the night without you" :)  which was encouraging enough for me to stick out the rest of my training. I really loved it. but when i didn't come back they withheld my check and didn't mail it to me, which inadvertently turned into me doing a walk of shame back to a place as "the girl that didn't stay". One of the new employees who knew my name and everything (and i knew very little about him) asked me why i didn't say, i gave him a generic answer when really I just wasn't listened to. If you are a kinesthetic worker, you learn by doing or you are a college student this is the perfect place. you learn how to interact with people you normally wouldn't interact with which helps you build a rapport with people. The young lady i liked stated i could have made good money (up to 2,000 if i stayed during the winter) and I wish this was a gig that could have worked out, but lack of communication leaves the whole world muted.

I enjoy the freedom and responsibility I have. If the place was managed and maintained well I feel it would be a very fun and lucrative environment to work in. It seems that the "higher ups" are more concerned with money than running a good business, which if you use common sense, you realize that a good business makes more money. The Bar Louie I work at is a dump and very seldomly does a regional manager or any one in a higher position make a visit to our store or send help in a crisis. The management here is weak as well.  We are constantly out of something, irresponsibility takes a toll on the entire staff as we are often out of many/most of our food and liquor items and therefore are becoming a known disappointment in the area. It is embarrassing, to say the least. Most of the employees I work with are lazy. They would rather sit and talk than work. There is no structure or accountability to change this, currently. No one gets reprimanded, nothing changes. Money is pretty good most nights, despite the failing infrastructure, 86 menu and weak management and some of the staff, though I feel the money could be even better if the business was run well and we had what we needed to do our jobs properly. No benefit package for being an employee there. Do not expect to be appreciated for your hard work. One benefit is only tip out is 4% of liquor sales to the bar and that is it, you keep the rest. That being said, One of the female bartenders currently there is atrocious to work with. Some toxic attitudes and egos in there for sure, which is annoying. Can be fun with the right people. Overall it's a 2.5-3/5 It's okay. But there is better. 

I always have my work cut out for me upon arrival for a shift. Some days are slower than others, but there's always something to be done, if not for yourself then most definitely for others. I have learned never to have idle hands (passes the time quicker and makes for a smoother sailing shift--FOR EVERYONE) and that, in the restaurant business, your co-workers become your family, at least, that's how it should be and has been in my experience at Bar Louie. Servers, bartenders, hosts, and even managers will come and go, but you remember every one and miss them all the same. My managers, past and present, have been pretty awesome with a few exceptions. At one point, I was concerned with how they might be treating the female staff and with some selective treatment of staff that didn't quite deserve the special treatment they were dealt as much as others that worked twice as hard, but those concerns have moved on to other store locations with the manager(s) that prompted them. My co-workers are all wonderful in their own ways. Some days/nights they might reach their wits' end quicker than others because it is such a high stress environment at times, but overall, I enjoy my team. The hardest part of my job would probably have to be juggling so many things at once, but really, that only pushes me to be a better me. I really get to see what I'm made of there. My favorite part of working at Bar Louie probably has to be getting off of work after a Sunday brunch shift and having 2 for 1's with my co-workers and even some regulars. I enjoy knowing that, whenever I decide to move on, my Bar Louie family will always be my family. It's a great first restaurant job experience for anyone, as long as they're willing to work HARD and be a team player.

Bar louie  closes 7 days a week at 2am.Other than the anticipated friday and saturday night pop, you'll have different busy nights throughout the week.Long hours would lead you to believe that you made money all the time but that wasn't always the case.Its a hit or miss.The bar itself is still fairly new so it has a lot of kinks inside and  out that needs to be worked on.I enjoyed the watching the bar blossom from when it originally started.The bar culture isn't defined yet because of its newness.One thing that was hard to work with is how big the place was to communicate anything to another employee.It felt like a revolving door where you had to look all around the world to find a fellow employee to communicate something.If we had walkie talkie headsets it would cut down time away from our section and efficiency in our shifts.Management wise..Its getting better as new managers step in a make better changes for the restaurant.Some are good with cutting servers.Some have cutting servers the last thing on their mind.We tip out 3% of total sales fridays and saturdays.We have bussers those nights but not a food runner. A good server will try to run their own food to their own table.We cant run our own food if we're  running for the bar,hopefully for ourselves,and for other tables.Why do we have to tip out so much if we dont have a food runner on busy nights?That takes attention away from our section and tables.3% doesnt seem like a lot but friday and saturday nights are not always consistently busy.

A personal day for me would begin around 8 am. I would open the kitchen and do line checks, place utensils out and check equipment for proper functioning as well as opening line food duties until the kitchen staff arrived at 10. I would then have one hour to do administrative duties. Once I finished those things, I would work the line as a line cook until I was needed to do a walk in interview or something else management related. Once shift change came around, (4 o’clock) I would begin getting the line set up for the night shift: making sure our prep was up to par for the night, the line was restocked, et cetera. When the second half of that days staff had come in, I would then have the last 2 hours of my shift to finish any other administrative tasks. If someone on said shift called in, I would cover said position and more than likely work through the nights rush. I learned that I had to be the most dependable person on my side of the restaurant because I was almost always there. I was one of two managers in our kitchen and my manager couldn’t come in after a certain time, as he wouldn’t allow his wife to pick his children up from school, and couldn’t work past 3. The culture was very friend forward on all levels, so the hire your friend was in the hierarchy the more you could get away with. The hardest part of the job was working 15 place hour days 6 to 7 days a week, and the most enjoyable part was going home.

A typical day at work included serving tables, greeting guests, bussing, expo, and running food. I learned to treat guests with the best attitude and go above and beyond in service. Management was horrible, one manager would say one thing and another one would say the opposite. Managers just sat in the office doing nothing or sat at empty tables with headphones watching videos and eating food from the kitchen. Managers did not treat employees with respect and would talk bad about other servers out loud in the dining room as well as to other servers. Managers couldn't maintain a clean environment had multiple health violations multiple times. Kitchen got away with everything talking back and walking out whenever they wanted. Managers had bad tempers and would go off on employees and scream and make a scene in front of everyone including guests. The workplace culture was depressing since there were few tables with more than enough servers on shift so people would get cut early and sometimes leave only after having 2 tables. Always had to tip expo even if bussed all tables and ran food and other servers food. The only positive part of the workplace were the other servers that made it easier. The hardest part of the job was making barely enough money and working long hours and dealing with management 

Typical day :
Clock in, open your line, do your prep list, yes, because the managers here (for the most part) don't even know what they're supposed to be doing and throw everything to the other employees

What did I learned? :
I learned that this company would hire anybody to be a manager, all you need to do is lie on your resume and say that you have experience as a manager when you have no idea about labor, knife skills, or inventory, so many more I could go about.

Management? :
Pff.. Some of the worst managers I hace ever met in my life working in this industry have been in this company, thief's who would give away so much product and alcohol and put the money on their own pocket

Workplace culture :
A joke, don't even want to talk about it.

The hardest part of the job? :
Dealing with all the problems in a place where I wasn't supposed to be dealing with, I love the industry and I wanted to help, but even the upper management don't want to deal with the problems and they would trust anybody when they come lying about stuff.

The most enjoyable part of the job?
I was doing 80+ hrs a week at the same place doing extra OT 

Bar Louie always had bumpin' music, high-volume, and great happy hour specials.  The food was a wide variety and the beverage list was quite large.  A typical day at work would begin by setting up for each shift by restocking, cleaning, and organizing.  Team meetings were held before the rush as we would go over what needs to be done and get everyone on a positive note for the shift to begin.  This was a corporate restaurant so the standards were very high.  A lot of turnover happened during my time at Bar Louie so keeping up with management was very difficult to keep up with as each person ran things differently, but I stayed regardless.  My coworkers were all high-spirited individuals and I enjoyed working along side of them as well as spending time together on days off work.  The most enjoyable part of my job was my "regulars" I grew to develop over time.  I was the only day bartender on and sales grew during the day time as I would have a busy bar.  I also carried over many regulars to my next job, which was awesome!  Bar Louie was also a tight-knit community and a great place to meet people.

I loved my job for a long time. In the end, I felt really let down. The company brought in a new GM and none of the employees or other managers thought they had any experience in the department. Unfortunately, there was a clique and it seemed like their favorite pastime was talking behind people's backs about whatever they felt like.
Bright side was mid-level management. They were very supportive and mostly personable, kind, funny, etc. GM and clique were terrible.
If you do work here, you will probably have to keep to yourself until you learn who you can trust, which is a job (unpaid, of course) in itself.
Oh and don't worry about not getting hours if you are front of house; they'll give you whatever shifts they feel like giving you, so you'd better not have a life outside of work.
Also, you will be asked to work every holiday the GM or clique don't want to work (which happens to be every holiday).
The GM is a liar, too. And they got stressed out over everything...not helpful in a rush (especially when they leave in the middle of it).
I regularly worked doubles, sometimes by myself. I mean you get to keep all the $$ which is nice, but I was crying at night (not nice).
Honestly, saying all that, I don't even remember why I left.

Fun and easy going work environment. My managers and entire team got along extremely well, for the most part, and despite the extremely high volume, it was mostly a stress free work environment. My only complaints would be with higher ups in the company. Demands were heavy and often given with little to no explanation. Constant harassment from directors and zero understanding when it came to working through problems. I would get calls or texts every day of the week, working or not. They were never truly kind to lower staff members and essentially acted like they didn’t exist. Menu roll-outs were almost never done well and many food and drink options were questionable at best. They were the fake-friendliest people to your face and would send scathing emails to us as soon as they were off the premises on things we couldn’t afford to fix or change. 90% of the maintenance in the building was done by managers in order to stay in budget and not get screamed at, all while being promised a remodel for at least 6 years. Great people and fun work environment. Horrible, horrible company that doesn’t know what to do with all of their money/resources.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Line cook 53 salaries reported	$19.46 per hour
Front of house manager 3 salaries reported	$48,000 per year
Kitchen manager 2 salaries reported	$62,500 per year
Bartender 9 salaries reported	$23.07 per hour
Line cook/prep cook 3 salaries reported	$15.25 per hour

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