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I have passion for working in the restaurant/service industry. I started when I was 14 working at a restaurant named ‘Cookers Bar and Grill’ located in Sterling Heights, MI. Here I learned the basic of prep from scratch made soups, pastas, sauces, and mostly the early morning preparation to get the restaurant started. While picking up night shifts dishwashing. This was my introduction to the business, learning all the basic skills of the industry.
Two years later moving to Roseville Michigan, I received a job offer as a line cook at ‘Ruby Tuesday’. This was a very busy restaurant located on a main road in a very populated area. I learned all the skills as a great line cook from working all their positions: 1st – 3rd prep, pantry, saute, fry, broiler, and expeditor. I worked there for a couple years and then moved to Harrison Township MI. I had received a job at a restaurant named ‘Fishbones’. They were located on the water of Lake St. Clair and specialized in fresh seafood, steaks and a New Orleans style of food. While I was working there I had a friend that was the general manager at ‘Mc Donalds’ and he offered me a job as a shift leader. I took this knowing that I had a chance to learn about the management part of the industry. After 6 months of being there I was the assistant manager at seventeen years old. During that time I worked both jobs and graduated high school at ‘Lanse Cruse High School Central’. After finishing high school I wanted to learn more about the management, so I decide to go to ‘Baker College’. After two years I graduated with an Associate Degree with a 3.8 GPA. At that time I was ready for the next step. I looked for restaurant management jobs online and received a job offer in Fairfield Ohio at a restaurant named ‘Ryan’s Steak House’. This was located near the 3rd largest mall in America. They sat 400 + customers and had 14 cooks on the line daily and 22 servers. This was great experience for me as restaurant manager. After two years I moved up from manager to General Manager at the age of twenty-one. I was working 6 hours away from my family for 2 years; I started looking for a job so I could make it back to Michigan. With much more experience now, I received a job as a Kitchen Manager at ‘Lone Star Steak House’ in Roseville MI. This is where I learned to cut all types of fresh fish, steaks, and seafood. ‘Lone Star’ ended up closing in the end of 2005. This left me looking for a job.
After that I received a job at the ‘Hamlin Pub’. They were a 6 chain Sports Bar / Restaurant that serves the southeastern Michigan. When I started with them in 2006 they only had 3 locations. I came in as Kitchen Manager that helped them open and operate their locations. This is where I helped mold this business by building efficient programs to help them be successful. For example: built-in inventory / vendor list programs, labor / scheduling program, cost of sales programs, menu cost programs, and many more systems within each location that helped them run smooth and efficient. After multiple location openings, I was promoted into District Manager / Executive Chef Position. I overseen: all stores revenue, cost percentages, manager training, menu development, and bottom-line profit and sales projections. The ‘Hamlin Pub’ has grown to be very successful and with them I have grown to be able to design their concept from a local bar to a large chain sports bar, that does catering and special events. Within this company I have done several live T.V. segments with Detroit’s Channel 2 and Fox’s Cooking School. Also organized and catered thousands of events from: eloquent weddings, large corporate events, baby showers, sports events, graduations, backyard barbecues, wine dinners, beer dinner, and even huge offsite festivals where we served over 50,000 people.
We (me and my wife) decided to take the next step and open our own restaurant. We moved to Upper Michigan an purchase a restaurant west of Marquette. The Restaurant was called DeRocha’s 41. It had been under the same ownership for 39 years. It had its glory days but was slowly dwindling downward. Because it was in such poor condition, we decided to give it a total overhaul and bring something needed to the community. That’s when Jerzi’s 41 was created. Just like we are doing now, we believed that a real sports bar was a better fit for the community. We were right! Our fresh new menu, our new atmosphere and our young and eager personalities were just what the community was looking for. We had to put in very long days and spend a lot of time training the right people to get it off the ground. And even after we had our staff trained, we continued to be very present in our business. We found that people appreciated knowing us and wanted to continue to spread the word to all their friends to come give us a try. Once we got them in the doors, we floored them with our friendly greeting, amazing menu, attention to detail, consistent top-quality food and our great service.
With all the support from the community we wanted to give back. We strongly believe that one hand feeds the other and we want to be a good example to everyone around us. We set up a monthly give away, collected school supplies, and collected donations to feed our less fortunate children in our community, throughout the school year. Every year we would select 6 families each year and provide not only Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, but gifts for the entire family. We got the employees involved in collecting donations, the teachers at the school involved in wrapping the gifts and the local sheriff’s office would help deliver the gifts to the family. We took every opportunity we could to give back to our community and by doing so we were able to grow our business more and more every year. We eventually were known for not only great food and service, but for the giving people that we are.
This came into real time when covid hit. Beauce of all the times that we were able to help our community, our community, to our surprise, helped keep us afloat during the shutdowns. We have been able to adapt and work the hours needed to keep our business not only surviving but thriving. Because people saw how busy we were, it was not hard to keep our employees during those hard times. We have a level of respect and appreciation for our staff that our competition doesn’t seem to match. This is why, while other restaurants were closing their doors, we were able to expand our hours and keep our full menu going. We were one of the only restaurants in our area that didn’t have to restrict their days and hours of operations, due to staff, and we also never sacrificed quality. Our guests really appreciated that and while our competition was closing, we were growing.
In the short 7 years that we owned Jerzi’s 41 we were able to increase our sales by 400%. We were able to create an amazing catering service that had not existed prior to us owning it. We were able to provide up to 60 jobs at any given time for our community. We were also able to expand into having a large dessert inspired Food Truck. We really reached the top of our market and were able to stay there comfortably.
We ended up selling the business in 2023, although we loved the Upper Peninsula, our family is located below the bridge. So, we felt it was important to be closer to our family. When we had listed Jerzi’s 41, we weren’t thinking that it would sell as quickly as it did. But to our surprise, we had a local who had his eye on it. He was very excited to take it over and is currently building it into what he wanted it to be. Just as we did there, we are 100% confident that we will be able to build our next restaurant to be the maximum success. We are committed to putting in the hours and plan to incorporate some of the qualities that we had at Jerzi’s 41 into our next venture Roasted Sports Bar and Grill.
The restaurant industry is very hard industry to adapt to and change around. Restaurants / Concepts need to be new, fresh and need an operator that has passion and love for the hard work. I know that this is where my heart and soul rest; I love to put the work in and see it go from start to finish. Pleasing people from setting the right ambience to creating the art of great food and drinks is very rewarding and has been my life’s work.
I look forward to meeting you and your family
