Securing a job as a part-time waiter was not a choice but a necessity for Trevor MacKenzie.
He desperately wanted to lease a large waterfront apartment in Vancouver, Canada, and although he owned a construction company he needed to make sure he could cover his rent with a reliable part-time income.
So he became a bartender, then a waiter, and today, 10 years after it all began, he presides over a global restaurant chain.
“With my business I ran quite a bit of receivables and I really wanted this apartment, so I wanted to give the landlord some stability that no matter what the rent would be paid,” says Mr MacKenzie, 41, a Canadian who now lives in Bangkok and works as managing director for Mango Tree Worldwide, a Thai restaurant chain with a presence in the UAE.
“So I went in for this interview and I was the only one to be hired with zero experience in the restaurant,” he adds during an event at the brand’s Dubai branch.
However, within just four weeks he had risen through the ranks to become the head training waiter.
And about eight months in he was waiting tables in a fine dining restaurant in Vancouver, serving movie stars like Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
According to Mr MacKenzie, Jackman became a particular fan.
“He came up and gave me a big handshake and said ‘thank you so much for the service’. He said ‘listen, nobody has ever taken care of my mother like that. You just made my mother have the best time that she has ever had’ because I focused in on his mum,” he says.
“I never fussed over movie stars. I would treat you exactly the same. You should always give people the type of service that makes them feel like a VIP anyway.”
When he was about to turn 30 he decided to go on a working holiday to Australia, stopping in Korea and Thailand, where he lived for four months. He went on to meet Mango Tree Worldwide and the Coca Holding International chief executive and entrepreneur, Pitaya Phanphensophon.
The rest, as they say, is history. He has now been a partner in the business since 2005 and Mango Tree grosses more than US$50 million annually across 70 outlets in nine countries, including the UK and Philippines, with an upcoming launch in the United States in the next two months.
The brand has been in the UAE since 2007, operating a successful restaurant in Souk Al Bahar, but it has not always been easy operating in this market. A Mango Tree bistro cafe concept in Mirdif City Centre had to be shut after four years in 2012.
“I think we just made some small errors in how we designed it. How big it was, different things like that,” he says.
Mr MacKenzie and his group are confident that they can now open a string of Mango Tree cafes in Dubai – part of a global expansion plan to have 100 restaurants by 2015 – and make them a success this time.
“I have been coming to the market for the last eight years so I have watched it develop and that middle market has grown so drastically that it would be ridiculous to think that we could not succeed. And it has worked in other countries as well, so we are very confident in our model. The key is just making sure that you pick the right location and you roll it out correctly,” he says.
The brand is considering opening another flagship Mango Tree restaurant in Dubai and up to four Mango Tree cafes in the emirate. In Abu Dhabi it hopes to open a flagship restaurant in the next two to three years and cafes in time.
Mr MacKenzie is no stranger to opening restaurants, having personally launched around 50 in his 10-year career.
While he no longer does any waitering, he did jump behind the bar during a recent restaurant launch in Jakarta, and he remains confident in his abilities – with good reason, perhaps.
“I took my mother to the restaurant that I worked in Vancouver and the manager was still there after eight years and he said ‘you know Trevor is still our top-selling waiter that we have ever had here’,” he reveals.
“I said ‘really’? You’re not saying this because my mum is here are you’? And he said ‘no, seriously, we use you as an example all the time and now that you’re this high-flying guy we like to use that example that you can start here and you can end up here’.”
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