Matthew Fulwider

Assisted staff with training and conditioning in all areas in back of the house production. I had previously worked for the owner running a small business cafe at Keystone at the Crossing business park where I improved her net sales by 27% within two years creating a rotating specials menu of my recipes and building customer relations to build catering business.

She texted me at 6am on a sunday morning years later because she was so desperate for help in her main kitchen and hired me as Kitchen Manager immedately. I spent the next three and a half months working open to close everyday until I managed to get the staffing and training under control. Ruth's Cafe is a high speed breakfast and lunch location on 86th street

Houlihan's was simply a part time job but I added to the list because of a great experience working with them. I spent most of my time as Broiler chef and the rest of my time as Saute Chef as needed. I had a very good relationship with the managers. They have the best quality meats I have worked with in a kitchen. New Years Eve I cooked 65 filet mignons and only had 1 come back to the kitchen, I checked the filet and it wasn't even off temp.

I was hired on as Sous Chef with expectation to take over Kitchen manager. This was a very challenging position due to the conditions of a high abused and neglected kitchen. I had to train a staff of beginners in which most was their first kitchen job. I worked 6 days a week from 60-75 hours and often spent my one day off coming in to deep clean because that was how neglected the kitchen was. I had an intensive 7 hour inventory every Monday. This is an international company with very strict labor and food cost percentages that I was able to meet almost every week while I was in the lead.

I entered Sahm's working catering preparations, then was moved to creating a midwest dinner menu for another locations trying out a from scratch dinner menu. I shortly became a kitchen manager for this location because of my influence. Another struggling position because most of the staff thought they knew better than me, so making positive changes was difficult.

I worked with Sahm's for six years although it didn't seem like it because he kept moving me to new locations to help filling voids. My last location was a business dinning location at Duke Parkwood at College and 96th. I personally made all the specials, daily soups ( 80 gallons a week ), and all of the catering events.

Oak Hill Mansion was a banquet house mainly holding weddings and business events. Feeding the masses is what the Head Chef called it. They Had Mostly a simple menu pertaining a lot of bulk meat and produce preparations, buffets, and plate-ups. Easter and Mothers Day we normally fed around 800 people. With formal ware table sets we could easily have over 1,300 items to wash after the event.