Ryan Fitzpatrick
“Making people happy one smile and drink at a time, Fitz demonstrates that happiness is the key to success”
Name: Ryan Fitzpatrick
College: Champlain College
Major: Hospitality Industry Management with a focus in Hotel/Restaurant Management and Event Management
Hometown: Vernon, NJ
Facebook: Ryan Fitzpatrick
Twitter: @ryanfitz124
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryfitzpatrick
Email:Gmail
Phone: 1-973-214-0529
The Brief:
If you’re in the mood for a dedicated, self-motivated employee in the hospitality industry who demonstrates leadership, customer satisfaction, communication and most of all service with a smile, Ryan Fitzpatrick is this week’s Hire This Grad special. In addition to his background in hospitality, Ryan also serves up computer skills working with different types of POS systems, knowledge of cost control, and knowledge of social media.
What captured Ryan about Hospitality? When he first attended Champlain College as a marketing major, it left him wanting more. He loved food, had the personality to be in the hospitality business and had a strong desire to one day own his own business. Through his Champlain education, he’s received hands on experience between cooking and serving food and successfully planned a banquet for one of his final exams. He realized that he could find a happy medium working in the hotel/restaurant industry and still using the marketing skills that he got as a marketing major. In fact, he’s currently reading Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman to add to his social media and marketing knowledge.
Through his work, Ryan has demonstrated his excellent hospitality skills by performing tasks without supervision and being depended on to complete these tasks, stepping up to supervisory experience, and helping to plan events on campus. He’s also demonstrated them through his experience working with various restaurants and organizations, including:
The Essex Culinary Resort and Spa (formerly known as The Inn at Essex)
New England Culinary Institute
Tiley’s Café
Great Gorge Country Club, McAfee, NJ
Crystal Springs Golf Resort, Hardyston, NJ
Ryan’s other passion is sports, and his secret goal in life is to have a talk show on ESPN Radio so he can rant and rave about sports. When he’s not talking food, he’s talking about sports. His other hobbies include video games, playing golf, lacrosse (he coaches a youth lacrosse team in Burlington, VT) and cooking, especially grilling.
Serve up some success for your business and Hire This Grad!
The Interview:
Sum yourself up in 140 characters or less:
fun, loves food, loves to make people happy, caring, obsession with sports, gamer, jersey boy, ilovevermont, always has a good time
What does success mean to you?
Success means that I accomplished something by making someone’s day, whether it was serving them coffee, preparing a meal or just having a great conversation. If I made you happy and you can remember me from that, I did my job.
What do you consider your biggest success?
My biggest success has to be catering my first wedding for 250 people while cooking out of a barn with 4 propane burners and one single stack oven. This was the first wedding that I have planned fully and executed with a team of Champlain College students and some friends of mine. The wedding went on without a single problem, and everyone loved the food and the staff. The most satisfying part was when the father of the bride came up to me during the wedding and said how proud he was of me and my business partner for pulling this off.
What is something you’ve learned from your mistakes?
That mistakes are just a new opportunity to build from. I have failed before but failure has made me a stronger person and a better leader. Mistakes are building opportunities.
Describe your ideal working environment:
I would love to own my own sports bar. It would have TVs as far as the eyes could see, pool tables, dart boards, and a beer pong table. I would get to come in and everyone would know my name. Everyone would say, “Let’s go to ‘Fitzy’s’, the game’s on and that guy is the man.” My staff would be the best at what they do and the friendliest. That would be awesome.
You have a million dollars. What do you do with it?
I would probably pay my parents back for college, buy a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback, put money aside for my kids. Take my wife on a vacation. Then, I would play a lot of golf.
How do they get the cream filling inside a Twinkie?
I have no clue, I’d like to think that magic elves put the cream in but we all know it’s probably some fat guy sitting on machine putting it in there.
If a newspaper wrote an article about your leadership style, what would the headline be?
“Making people happy one smile and drink at a time, Fitz demonstrates that happiness is the key to success”