Tom Dugan - From Leading the Kitchen to Leading the Sales Floor

Tom Dugan has been in the kitchen since he was nine. He transitioned from using restaurant supplies to selling them when COVID struck. Now, he says, this understanding of what chefs need is one of his greatest sales strengths. ?

Tell us about your journey from chef to sales manager!?

I’ve always been around food, even as a child. My family owned a catering business, and they had a little deli. I always make the joke that I started washing pots and pans at age 9. When I got older, my first job in the back was making cheesesteaks, and from there I started working at fancier restaurants. I ended up working for a prestigious chef in the Wilmington area, running a few restaurants for him. That was great, but I was looking for a change. I was approached by Ethan Quirk of The Restaurant Store, who said I looked good in forest green. He swayed me, so I interviewed, and I’ve been here ever since.??

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How does your experience as a chef equip you to be sales manager??

?As a former chef, I understand where they’re coming from, so I think that helps me be effective at my job. It might be a Friday night and their fryer just died, and they’re stressed because they need that fryer ASAP. I’ve been there before, so I know I can just put the fryer together for them here, so all they have to do is load it in their car, take it to the restaurant,?and hook it up. Just understanding the stress that they have and understanding their pain points, I think makes me pretty effective at my job.?

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Do any customer relationships stick out in your mind??

There’s so many...there’s one guy, Jay, who owns a sports bar called Fibber’s near here. It’s funny – the first time he came to our store, we literally only talked about a spoon, and now he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars with us every year. And we have a great relationship. So that’s what I always preach to the people on my team. Simple conversations and showing customers that next level of service builds relationships.?

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How has your team grown since you’ve joined The Restaurant Store??

In the past few years, we’ve been building out an entire sales team here at Plymouth Meeting. So I have six people that I manage now, and I work with them to differentiate their roles and figure out what they do best. We have two people who know a lot about equipment, so they’re focusing more on that. We have a couple people who are knowledgeable about replenishment items, and so on. So it’s been great to see our team grow and to see everyone succeeding in their new roles.??

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How is your leadership style different as a chef and a sales manager??

When I was a chef, I was much more exacting in my leadership style. You're going to follow my rules, and we're going to do things a certain way. The old saying is that you're only as good as your last plate, so I want to make sure every single plate went out perfectly. Whereas here, I'm a little bit more trusting in my team, and I know that if they make a mistake, that's fine, and I'm there to help them and support them through that. It's nothing that can't get fixed - everything is fixable. I just try to support my team and make sure they have exactly what they need.?

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What’s unique about working at The Restaurant Store??

What’s unique is that they genuinely care about you here. They want you to succeed, they want to invest in you. I mean, the shoe reimbursement ($100 towards a new pair of shoes every six months) always gets me, because certain restaurants I worked for never even bought me chef coats. Here, they genuinely care and want you to be at your best, which is really nice.?