My name is Andrew Roy, I’m the General Manager of a Restaurant, and here’s my background:

I started my waiting career in a place called Smoking Joe’s Bar and Grill. I couldn’t even find a picture, it has been out of business for so long. In a town called Pampa, Texas. 

Then I went to the Plaza Cafe. When I worked there, they didn’t even have alcohol. 

Then, in college I started working at a place called Tabla de los Santos, because they weren’t organized, needed someone, and I jumped in. BOOM.

At that location, there was a bar, and I became a bartender (First by being a bar back). Mostly by accident. All of my friends had left for winter break so I offered to help, they said I could. Then they said they liked working with me and wouldn’t let me go back to the restaurant.

Life happens, as it often does, I left for awhile.

Then I went to more of a club style bar. It shut down unexpectedly.

Then, I went to a place called Il Piatto. The food was good, but it was a pulled house, you didn’t really make that much. I had started studying a bit about wine. Between lower earnings and spending money on wines, I was constantly close on rent. I barely escaped being homeless around this time. I was struggling, pretty much constantly. Life happened again (funny how it always does). I left on a whim.

It actually worked out: I went to Coyote Cafe, and I made bank. Like, for real. If I were on my own, I would have stayed there forever. 

My girlfriend became my wife, and she pushed me to leave and help open a new restaurant (really an old restaurant that was being revamped) called El Farol. The hope was so that I could get into the advanced Sommelier course with the Court of Master Sommeliers. It worked, I got in.

Then, we moved to Tulsa OK to take care of her family, and I now have the best job I have ever had. The most secure, with the best situation and money. And the thing is, I’m not the only one doing well here. The servers and killing it too. This is the restaurant that has, hands down, required some of the highest input and buy in from servers, but also has some of the highest and more reliable money I have ever seen. 

The truth is, I fell into it. I fell into the whole world of wine. I’m fairly atypical: don’t taste super well, not a natural salesman. I mean, with lots of work, I’ve been able to polish off some of my rough edges. The truth is: I wasn’t focused for that whole time. The path of learning about wine, spirits and beer is incredibly fragmented and I didn’t have structure and organization. If I knew then what I know now…I could have done all of this in a few years. I could have been way more comfortable, had a way easier life. 

Around the time of Covid, my other side interest, programming, begin to look a little more appealing. I started working a lot on that. And, unsurprisingly to anyone who has tried it, or has crazy high aspirations like me…it was hard and I didn’t do too too well. 

I did figure out how to do a few things here and there though. Got some janky-ass websites out there. Learn enough to get some logic going. It took me a long time though. Too long. Just like what was going on with the wine. 

You see, I don’t go easy on myself. I’ve always wanted to really did into the core of things. I want to go deeper. I want to go to the original texts, see where things come from. I’m harder on myself than an outsider would be on me. I want to look into discreet mathematics and figure out what is going on. If I see a summation sign, I start wondering how to solve the problems that are in the algorithm text books. I get hooked on probability. I dig and dig, to find out if it really is all turtles down there…

Or, the above is what I tell myself. 

There’s also a version of my story I could tell myself that has me just kind of drifting along, and post hoc throwing together meaning from the chaos that was my life. 

I’m fine either way. 

There you go, a grab bag of all sorts of things. Wine. Restaurants. Computers. Math. 

Abandon hope ye who enter here!

-Andrew Roy