Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Munich-born chef Andre Zotoff charts his progress from kitchen apprentice to manager of some of the most prestigious hotels in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. In February, he was brought to Vancouver as general manager of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, in part to spearhead a major facelift of the city's iconic downtown hotel.
"I grew up in the low-income social housing projects in Munich. I went through 10 years of school and chose a three-year culinary apprentice program when I was 16.
"I remember, 10 days on the job, I was in the corner washing lettuce, and there was a guy coming by in a suit, and I said, 'Hey, good morning.' And the guy looked at me like I was a piece of garbage.
"He was the food and beverage director. I said to myself, 'If I am in a position like this one day, I am never going to treat people like that. I tell the employees here, 'Every manager tells you there's an open door, but sometimes there's no open mind – you will always get both from me.'
"In 1980, I worked in London, in Brussels, then Berlin, and when I was 25, I opened a restaurant for the InterContinental Hotel in Düsseldorf and became a master chef. I did my culinary degree and went to hotel business school.
"I got a lot of offers and I wanted to leave the Intercontinental. The general manager said, 'Why are you leaving?' and I said, 'I'm bored. I need to do something else.' So he said, 'You want something new? Move to Toronto, because we're opening an InterContinental Hotel there.'
"Then, at the end of 1990, the executive chef position at the Mark Hopkins (InterContinental) Hotel in San Francisco became available, and everyone said, 'This is the perfect job for you; you should go there.' I was 29 years old.
"In 1999, I moved to New York to become regional food and beverage director for InterContinental Hotels, which was then bought by Holiday Inn. In 2000, the Fairmont Chicago was looking for a food and beverage director. The first thing we did was build a new restaurant – Aria – which was tremendously successful.
"By 2007 I was general manager. In that time, we did a full repositioning. We took a hotel that felt like the '80s and made it current. When the Hotel Vancouver opportunity came up, the goal was also to make it current.
"The Hotel Vancouver is such an icon. We need to make it more current without losing the beauty of the traditionalism. A business traveller, which is an important segment for us, is looking for this old richness but still wants the amenities of today's world.
"One success in my life in hotels is the connection with people. What we do is simple. We give people a room to sleep in, we serve them a meal and a drink, and we ask for a lot of money when we do that. What you need to do is make people feel good about it, and you need people to make people feel good about it." •
