Private households, production kitchens, two businesses I built myself, and a members club. Different rooms, same job: make a complicated operation run without friction, and answer for it when it does not.
As Estate Manager and Head of Household for a high-net-worth client, I was the only full-time salaried manager in the home. That meant the staff schedule, the vendors, the procurement, the budgets, the maintenance calendar, and the events were all mine.
The numbers: a staff of six part-time employees, a $450,000 staffing budget, a $52,000 annual food budget plus per-event budgets, and private events up to 250 guests. The standards were exacting and included strict dietary requirements. The expectation was that the house ran without the principal having to ask twice.
I also spent five years running Chef Know-It-All, a bespoke culinary and private-event business serving VIP clients in their own homes. That work is where the private-service instincts come from: discretion, anticipation, and a very high tolerance for other people's standards.
I hold the Sage Haus Certified House Manager credential (2026).
At The Eveleigh in West Hollywood I led 28 staff across seven teams and took food cost from 26% to 18% over two years. That did not come from cutting quality. It came from rebuilding sourcing, writing real specs, tightening ordering, documenting training, and adding a waste-recovery program. The systems stayed in place after I left, which is the part I am proudest of.
At Flintridge Riding Club I reopened a cafe that had been dark for two years: new menu, new staff hired and trained, ordering and service standards built from nothing. The operation ran efficiently enough that one position became redundant and came off the roster.
At SuperFD and EcoCaters I led a team of five producing more than 500 meals a day across four formats at once, buffet, prepackaged retail, grab-and-go, and in-flight. Each has its own specs, packaging, and deadline, and they all went out the same morning.
Earlier: a Michelin-starred station at Trois Mec, 350 covers a day at the invitation-only San Vicente Bungalows, and a run from Garde Manger to Sous Chef at Hatfield's.
I founded and ran Troublemaker Chocolate, a bean-to-bar company, from sourcing and supply chain through production, pricing, staffing, and multi-channel sales across direct-to-consumer, retail, and wholesale. It never reached profitability and closed in 2025 for lack of runway. I say that plainly because the operational experience is real and the financial outcome is not something to dress up.
Chef Know-It-All ran from 2016 to 2021: curriculum development, teaching hundreds of clients, bespoke catering for VIP events, and a pivot to private meal service during COVID that kept it alive.
Owning both meant owning everything, including procurement, cash, and the decision to stop.
Across estate and hospitality roles I have scheduled and supervised preventative maintenance with outside service vendors, managed contractors against scope and schedule, run procurement and inventory systems, and kept physical environments to standard. I coordinate the work and hold vendors accountable for it. I do not perform the repairs myself and I do not claim to.