Meet Nick May: General Manager of Hawthorne Food & Drink
Written By: Montana Kimel, SoJo Marketing & Research Intern
Hawthrone is a little Toronto gem of a restaurant that has been serving up sustainable, seasonal, local food as well as social impact since 2012. A social enterprise project that grew from the parent organization Hospitality Training Centre, Hawthrone’s goal is to provide vocational training to help people who have experienced a barrier to employment and/or are new to Canada to enter the workforce. Not only do they get hands-on training in a restaurant setting, but they get support in resume building and interview skills as well as placements after they leave the program.
Nick May, who sat down with me to talk about Hawthrone, has been the manager at the restaurant for a year and a half. As the manager, he oversees both the back of the house and front of the house staff. While their food story was often the focus of the restaurant, Nick has been part of the shift to educate their customers about their training program and impact.
What drew you to Hawthrone?
Nick May: Like a lot of people, I didn’t know what a social enterprise was, it was just a buzzword. What stood out to me was the not-for-profit side when I saw the opportunity. Admittedly it was close to my house, and I didn’t read too much into it. I was interested in the fact that it was not-for-profit and then learned more about the story.
What was your restaurant experience before this?
NM: It wasn’t the career path I intended to be on but I started to work in restaurants when I was very young. I started working retail at Blockbuster before moving up to the corporate office and this helped me get a sense of the many aspects of the hospitality industry; marketing department, product and buying department. Training and development was a huge part of my job at Blockbuster as well as bridging the gap between retail and head office.
Is it hard to remain a competitive restaurant as a social enterprise?
NM: The challenge is being a transitional employment place for people and like most restaurants, people look for consistency, people like seeing familiar faces, that definitely has been a challenge. Educating our customers has also been a big priority of mine, when the restaurant first opened we focused on our food story more, our mission local, seasonal, sustainable produce.
How do you balance social impact and business development?
NM: Business development is equally as important as increasing our training capacity — the two have to work hand in hand and we have learned a lot over the past few years because of it. During my time here there have been a lot of great success stories. They are very humbling and help you understand the good that you are doing. But being recognised for our food has been terrific for us, things like Winterlious, being mentioned on BlogTO and Huffington Post, it was great, brought people in the doors and we were able to further tell our stories. The more people through the door, more people we can train.
What has been a significant change in how Hawthrone operates?
NM: We were telling our food story more than our impact story — the restaurant happened, the training happened as a result. Not a lot of thought was put into how we operationalize this, and we wanted to maximise our capacity for training people. When I first started here we had only trained a couple people in the front of house, now we have streamlined our processes so we can train more people coming through. One of my strong suits is process improvement, and that’s become an integrated part of our business, rather than on the back burner.
What did you learn from that growth?
NM: Learning to appreciate and see the potential in people and also the impact you have on the individual and on the industry as well. For me personally, I wanted to see this place become as recognized as any place, so when people see it on a resume in the future it will be recognized as a world class training facility. We are working towards that, our name is starting to get out there, and it’s been this huge mix of different things. If you had asked me five years ago if I would hire somebody with no relevant experience within the industry, I would say no, but my perspective on that has completely changed since my time here. I mean it is much easier for me now to spot those core competencies in the people we are hiring.
Can you tell any of your success stories?
NM: When I first started working here there was a girl who started training here who had worked in the hospitality industry, but in Cuba. She worked on a resort there, she was really skilled and could make a great cocktail. When she came to Canada she was married and ended up being in an abusive relationship. She was living in a shelter with her child when she found Hawthrone. We brought her on here and she thrived. She was here for about a year in total, it took her about eight months before her confidence was fully lifted. That was the biggest part of her training, it wasn’t showing her the 8 steps of service at a table or how reset the dining room, she could do all those things. But because she had lost so much of her confidence over her experience of getting here, it was so debilitating for her. After 8 months she was in a much better place.
I was talking to her one day and she said “it’s my birthday this week” and I asked her why didn’t she tell me, I would have given her the weekend off and she said, “I am just happy”. I asked her what she was doing, “this time last year I was living in a shelter, and I always compare my birthday to my pervious year — and this is a lot better.” She is still working in the industry and is doing really well.
What’s next at Hawthrone?
I am looking to enhance training, get into the world of catering and getting our name out there. We just received a major gift for capital developments for the restaurant, which means we can update the decor and increase our capacity. Traditional hospitality means we still need to keep up with trends, look as cool as we are, in our social way as well.
