line cook

host/hostess

server

front of house manager

bartender

City Winery

While working at this location- which is under a year old, is something I consider fun, there are a lot of cons that wear away at you. Shift management, not all, either struggle to maintain professionalism (who wants to work around that?) or uphold personal responsibility of being present and available to assist staff members who are running in circles and need flames put out. Too often (due to dissatisfaction w venue seating chart) customers are upset and making your life miserable. Frustrating customers are to be expected, but it is another thing to deal with that, and then have to harass several managers to please take a stand, jump into action, do their job and assist you in making things right with a customer. Not pass around responsibility, avoid confrontation with customers. Yes it’s a city, yes customers can be… interesting, but you have a job to do and trying to shrug off responsibility, in front of your employees that get on their knees to cash out customers, is very insulting. It sets the tone, “let’s all care the minimum amount required”. Bleak environment. While I believe upper management of the company is responsible for a lot of “conceptualizing” that isn’t fully realized or executed in a way that sets customers, hourly staff or managers up for success and a thorough positive experience, the venue has a lot of potential that just needs to be tended to. Don’t just hire anyone, hire management that is professional and nice to staff- someone people want to work with and can trust, ensure your management is managing and assisting to help service run smoothly and not watching staff miserably try to pull service off. Establish in-depth SOPs so that service is consistent and not a rat race that the customers uncomfortably witness. Now the pay is decent. It fluctuates (tips) due to different artists bringing different crowds, but it is possible to make your quick several hundred in 5-6 hours. About half of your tips go to the bar, who try their best, but at worst give you a hard time about doing anything to fix a drink, tweak it, do something that would satisfy the customer and put more money into both of your pockets. Sometimes you have to rush and do a little extra work to get your money’s worth. Servers are met with resistance to go above the average, to elevate customer experience on several fronts, when the CEO preaches hospitality and “having a good time”. After taxes and tipping the bar (on cash and card payments), all of the running around and playing a maze game to serve your customers is hard to deem worth it. Especially when you are not supported. Now, again you can make decent money (bare minimum for serving) $500-$600 a week, at least, if they have a few decent shows scheduled, and they offer “family meal” which is another concept that often falls to the wayside, you are discouraged from ordering off of menu (reasonable during service) and receive a 50% discount on menu and retail items (including bottled wine).  Most enjoyable: other staff, getting to see live music for free, weekly pay. Least enjoyable: lousy work culture perpetuated by some management and balance of responsibility/consistency between shifts. Overall, if you’re starting to serve, money is okay and it will make you a multitasking, pressure handling server who can make the most out of stances.

I was hired and, within 20 days let go because of my "performance". The first week was training and by the second week I was told that I was underperforming in my role. The  role has no clear expectations and coming from a more structured background in hotels I was not prepared for all of the unspoken rules that come with working her. The people are nice but not warm and instead of investing in the onboarding process they want to fire you and let you go early if you arent hitting their made up KPI's. I had my livelihood snatched from me at random and the upper management could not have cared less. When asked why I was being let go I was told " We arent going to go into the reasons but the decision has been made..grab your stuff" I would have more respect for senior leadership if they admitted they did not have the compacity to onboard but to fire me out of the blue is so unprofessional and distastful. It is definitly a toxic power dynamic there as well.  They are hiring at the lower end of the pay scale for events managers in Nashville and it seems like their expectation of the role was not properly communicated between teams. They are looking for senior level experience at entry pay. They are not doing good business practices and do not seem to truly care about their associates and the people who work there. There is continous turnover and gossip and you would think a room full of adults would act more mature, instead everyone bad mouths each other and in my short time there it felt like "high school" The General Manager is very sweet and was one of the only peopl who made me feel welcome but it is a very professional tense work enviormentfor no reason especially when they do not have much going on event wise.

I've worked at City Winery for 2 years. The culture and venue is unique and ever changing, which has been enjoyable. However, the quality of life for managers is terrible. It is expected to work long hours in this industry, but this is a completely different situation here. It would be easy to say most management is completely burned out here. Especially since there is at any given time around 5 events and potentially over 800 people in the building at times. The company has become increasingly corporate and stingy, particularly involving dedicating funds to hire sufficient management staffing and also in compensation for its current management staff. This is, unless you are part of the elite management that is sitting in the office, pushing buttons and delegating mountains of tasks to the already over taxed floor management. 

We have upper management that doesn't know how to use point of sale functions, and executive management that doesn't know how to merge the worlds of hospitality and entertainment. 

Bottom line is, greed has gotten the best of this once delightful, quirky and interesting place to work. Managers perform miracles most days getting production off the ground, and coping with angry guests who are uncomfortable in tiny seats and paying a premium for lackluster food and overpriced made in house wine. It has become transparent all the owner of this company cares about is butts in seats and dollar bills. Such a shame.

This place is a complete mess. For starters, the managers lack basic organization skills and are never on the same page. Management changes every 3-5 weeks so it’s hard to know what you’re supposed to do. Each manager is drastically different from the next but one thing stays the same: they don’t care about your opinion as an employee. You can make suggestions, have countless conversations and voice concerns but they don’t care. The schedule is inconsistent but you will usually make good money. The biggest issue is the quality of workers hired, many of those who work there are constantly using drugs and alcohol both before and during shifts. There is never any discussion with these people and they are often rewarded for the poor quality of work with first choice in sections. There is major favoritism among workers. Finally, they put the short staffing and bad management fall back onto the servers. When they don’t hire good enough employees, they make everyone else pick up the slack (if they even have enough people). The bartenders complain constantly, are unbelievably slow, and argue with servers and customers when they are criticized. They are given bigger sections than servers in addition to tip outs, higher hourly wage and a full bar area despite all of this.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Learning about wine. Gaining access to the wine making process. Upscale establishment that values the product. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The customers. You need A LOT of patience to deal with these customers, because everyday it's a minefield. Because the venue has a minimum, they always argue over having it. Managers don't always push for it to be enforced to keep the peace and that puts us in a compromising situation. You will often do a lot of running for little to no reward. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Everyone is very individualistic. There's not a lot of teamwork. They value knowledge, but dont demand it which is great, because your growth is your choice. Right now they're making a lot of changes so we'll see how things go going forward.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Get to work, roll silverware, check section,  light candles, preshift. We go over wine of the month information on reservations or venue tickets sold. Taking orders with preauthorization, running drinks,

What is the best part of working at the company?
It's an all around awesome company. If you love good wine, good music, the convenience of the city & a beautiful venue...City Winery is perfect! We offer all of the above. I love the fact the I can go to work and experience something different everyday, meet new people everyday & assist people in simply having a great time!

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Trying to accommodate 200 people at the same time. We have live shows(music, comedy, live podcasts) just about every night of the week. It's a more intimate venue, but we can seat up to 220 people and we want everyone who joins us to have the best experience. Sometimes being able to please every person 100% of the time is a challenge. However I still try my best

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work environment is laid back & fun. I work with & for awesome people. I have yet to have a bad day at work. Culture can be a bit different any night of the week. We have shows of all genres and welcome everyone.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
It goes by fast because I love what I do.

A typical day would begin with me preparing the hostess station and the main restaurant for lunch service. The work is not difficult unless you have difficulties with communication or working in a team. However it does take some getting use to and you will need to be very independent and a fast learner as they offer little to no training in their positions.

Management is a tough pill to swallow. Many of the managers keep high stress levels and tend to let that leak into the way they deal with their employees. Because of this I've learned the importance of remaining professional and productive under stress and sometimes unreasonable treatment.

Its a very diverse environment of workers and so everyone finds they're place. 

The hardest part of the job was dealing the with sometimes confusing demands and harsh treatment of management. The most enjoyable part was being a part of a restaurant/music venue/event space! You get to see and meet people from many different walks of life and learn about restaurant and wine culture.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part of working at City Winery is the camaraderie among my coworkers, it’s a healthy environment, zero stress.  I’ve been working there 3 years with 2 different management team and both has been a good experience. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
I would describe as physical stressful only when we get slammed during service. Other than that, no complaints; supervisors interact with us (employees) in a friendly manner and with respect 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Thumbs up!! City Winery is a melting pot, I love the environment among other cultures which I always get a good energy and positivism.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
A typical day would be getting to work early morning, set up my station, interacting with coworkers in a friendly manner, always getting offers to be help and feeling a positive energy around.

This isn't a bad place to work, but you're going to really work your tail off here. This is unlike any other restaurant job in the city and the minute you step in you'll notice. If you aren't working in the actual restaurant then it's a crapshoot for servers. You tips are dependent on whether or not people purchased tickets to see a show. If it's sold out prepare to become an order taker vs a server as there's very little time between guests being sat in you section and you trying to speak with others guests and guide them through the menu. The work environment is good around your fellow servers, bartenders, and kitchen staff. There is a huge disconnect with the office staff and the employees though. Heavy handed rules makes this place a drag when it shouldn't be. A few of the managers are great, but most are just there to do a job and go home. Rarely do you see them step in and provide any real assistance when it's needed.

I went in thinking it was supposed to be a finer dining music venue but most staff who deal with the daily customer contact are jaded and more temporary. Was just there over a year and can't even list how many staff I saw come in and out with the ridiculously high turnover rate. There are very few people who were there for years and those who still were were extremely jaded and ready to leave or taking advantage of the favoritism. And when they were at the low slump of the turnovers, they would have you do more than your job but not be compensated for it. Always busy so training is nowhere near as thorough as it needs to be and the everyday staff are taken for granted and not listened to despite seniority experience dealing with the environment. Overall it made it extremely difficult for those who were actually trying to make it into a good setting 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Line cook 36 salaries reported	$21.32 per hour
Host/hostess 26 salaries reported	$17.93 per hour
Server 24 salaries reported	$20.44 per hour
Front of house manager 36 salaries reported	$69,431 per year
Bartender 23 salaries reported	$18.96 per hour

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