For Bond hospitality alumnus, Karen Westfield, Jamie Oliver’s upcoming Australian tour in March has all the hallmarks of a royal visit.
The UK’s favourite celebrity chef is heading Down Under for the official launch of his first Australian restaurant – Jamie’s Italian – where Karen has been holding the reins as General Manager since it opened in Sydney’s CBD last October.
“Jamie is truly a genuine person – exactly as you see him on TV,” says Karen, who met the man himself during her eight-week training period in the UK.
“But this will be the first time he’ll see the restaurant in operation so, yes, it’s a bit like getting ready for a royal visit!”
UK-born Karen was one of Bond’s inaugural Masters in International Hotel and Resort Management graduates, having been sponsored through the course by the School of Hotel, Resort and Tourism Management’s industry partner, Marriott International.
“When the School launched in 2009, I was working at the Marriott Surfers Paradise as their Restaurant and Bars Manager and they encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to study part-time,” says Karen.
“I’d never really thought about getting a qualification in hospitality. Like most people in the industry, I’d worked my way up from managing a pub in London and then restaurants before I emigrated to Australia in 2006 and started working at the Marriott.
“I was concerned about going back to study after so many years – the last time I’d been a uni student was in the mid 1990s when I studied Human Resource Management. There was also the time factor and how I’d manage a Masters degree while working full-time. In the end, I decided that putting in 12 or 18 months of extra effort in exchange for a degree from the best university in Australia was too good a deal to pass up.”
Now working at the helm of Jamie Oliver’s flagship Australian restaurant, Karen sees that it was a decision that has completely changed her life.
“I can’t speak highly enough of the whole Bond experience,” she says. “It’s nothing like other hospitality degrees where you are learning basic restaurant, room and reservation operations.
“Bond’s Masters degrees in tourism and resort management are aimed at the senior management level, covering in-depth financial and operational issues like cost control, marketing, accounting practices, planning and development.
“Most of my fellow students had experience in the industry and, like me, could immediately apply what they were learning to their work situation. The academic theory also helped to put a lot of our work practices into perspective by showing the psychology behind them.
“I was impressed, too, by the fact that all of our professors had worked in the industry. They weren’t just teachers; they knew how the theories apply in the workplace and used real examples from their own experience as case studies.
“I also learnt a lot from the Business faculty’s industry partners and even from the other students, particularly when we shared lectures with accountants, business managers and financial planners who were doing their various postgrad degrees.”
But in an industry renowned for promoting staff from the ground floor up, does a Masters degree really make a difference?
“When I finally decided to do the degree, my thinking was that if I’m competing against ten other candidates for a job and we all have similar levels of experience, surely having a Masters degree will help me to stand out from the crowd,” says Karen.
“When the General Manager’s position at Jamie’s Italian was advertised, they called within an hour of me submitting my application. The very next day I flew to Sydney for a face-to-face interview that lasted four or five hours, followed a couple of weeks later by another hour on the phone to the company’s London headquarters.
“The Operations Director, particularly, was very focussed on issues like business management and cost control, and asked why I decided to go back to university - so, yes, I think having a Masters degree was definitely a factor.
“I also believe it is becoming more common in the industry. Learning on the job is fantastic but career-wise, you eventually hit a wall where you just can’t get any further.
“A lot of the larger hotels are now introducing graduate traineeship programs so you’re seeing degree-qualified employees being promoted to management positions at a much younger age than ever before.
“This system is helping to establish a clearly defined career path in the hotel sector and I think this will ultimately filter through to the wider tourism and hospitality industry.”
In the meantime, Karen’s studies are proving invaluable as she manages a 185-seat restaurant spread over two levels where staff are serving up to 800 meals a day.
“Jamie’s Italian has been phenomenally successful – I think it has even blown away the UK team,” she says.
“The service style is a lot like Jamie himself – casual, friendly and set up for walk-ins. We only take reservations for groups of six people or more and we limit the number of those because we want people to be able to come and eat whenever they feel like it, rather than having to book days or weeks in advance.”
Nevertheless, there’ll undoubtedly be a special table set aside when Jamie hits Sydney town for the official launch in March.
