Great Customer Experience Program
Expanding the GCE Team
how amazing they thought I was and offered me my first full time gig. I was so overwhelmed I had to hold back the tears. Over the next few years my confidence and skills grew, the job offers would come more often but I would stay loyal until I needed to grow. I spent a couple of years at Stillwater under the Camerons and learnt the art of fine dining, which set me on a path of excellence while still being able to maintain a cheeky attitude which occasionally drove them batty, but I think they secretly loved it. My genuine care and thirst for experience and knowledge continued to grow and was rewarded with great venues and amazing bosses who invested in me because I invested in their business with my hard work. I managed bars, restaurants, F&B in hotels, and ran a small coffee place where I would bust out hundreds of coffees every day. Each time I was soaking up something new and bonding with amazing people, every new venue was a new family. I learned how to lead, create great experiences and teach others by sharing what I knew and seeing how much they grew and felt the same buzz as me when someone would grab them and thank them so much for an amazing day, it was infectious. I landed at Mud Bar in Launceston in the late 2000’s and started the most important journey with Scott McMurray and Kif Webber, which would lead me to eventually moving to Hobart and working across Frank and Smolt. Again, they invested in me and I returned the love with my care and commitment. Part of that care was looking after the staff too, so I put my time into learning HR to support other aspects of the industry. When an injury benched me from the hum of a busy restaurant floor I moved into a role at an international conservation organisation doing HR full time for the past seven years. I was terrified of the change thinking I wouldn’t fit in, but years of hospitality teaching me communication, empathy and hard work was all I needed to be successful in this world too. Which brings me to here, when the opportunity to join HT and its GCE program presented itself it seemed like a gift, an invite to be able to come back home and be able to be part of and contribute to this amazing industry and support all the glorious people in it and champion this wonderful part of the world that we live in. What a privilege.
The GCE program continues to grow in popularity with hospitality operators, and we are excited to introduce our newest member to the team Angie McMahon. A well known face to the industry, Angie will join Anita in looking after the southern region.
Welcome Angie
Being Tassie born and bred, originally from Launceston, I’ve always been the biggest fan of my own backyard. I get so excited about sharing my home and telling people there’s no-where else they should be you would think I had shares in the place - and working in hospitality I guess I kind of do.
At 15 I was working in a kitchen in Launceston as an underwater ceramic technician on the weekends. When it came time to leave school, I ended up in hospitality traineeship working in a kitchen being an absolute menace to all the chefs, but I meant well! Eventually I gravitated towards the front of house, I was a little introverted and nervous but then it happened, I found my place. Looking after people was my calling, from remembering the regular order of the guy who barely spoke but liked his toasted sandwich the same way every Thursday to helping the hilariously inappropriate pair of 70-year-old ladies back to their car (probably shouldn’t have been driving) most afternoons, I was loved, and I loved it. I worked cafes in the day and restaurants in the night and cleaned offices after that, the original hustle culture, until one day someone asked me to sit and chat and told me
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Tasmanian Hospitality Review December/January Edition
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