THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412220081
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 202 lines
IT STARTED with a vision, as these things usually do.
But to Carrie Goodman Moranha, it wasn't a pretty one:
Dirty, food-encrusted sneakers. Stained shirts. Fingers in drinking glasses.
Moranha saw this in the workers around her as she helped serve food and beverages to guests at a $50,000 wedding reception. This was an affair with decorative moss hanging from the ceiling, 12 pieces of silverware lined up next to the plates and eight different glasses staring back at diners. Fancy.
Yet many of the servers were unprofessional: Hollering over the heads of the guests. All but tossing full plates on the tables in front of them. Unkempt looking.
Some even smelled.
Years later, Moranha's voice still rose with the memory. ``I was cringing,'' she said. ``I was just dying. Just dying.''
She squirmed in her chair. ``There was no professionalism.''
Finally, she exploded: ``Yaaah!''
In a word, she didn't like it. So in time she started a business to correct it. . . and to make some money, as well.
Caterers balked at first. No one had heard of a temporary-employees' service for servers at banquets and parties. And Moranha herself still was in chef's school.
This is how people make millions. This also is how people go bust. Seeing a need and providing for it. Finding a niche.
Moranha is a fledgling businesswoman, but also a missionary of sorts. In an increasingly service-oriented society, she believes people should expect and receive courteous, professional service, at functions fancy or plain.
``It's not about getting food on the table, it is about how the guest feels,'' Moranha said. ``I focus on that. The food is about procedures, and anyone can learn procedures.''
But not everyone can make a go of a business. Moranha saw hers - Black Tie Servers in Portsmouth - as a natural culmination of her years of work and people experience.
She knew about procedures. She was going to find out if anyone else shared her vision of how guests should feel. And pay her for it.
Going her own way should be expected of a daughter of Robert and Lorrie Goodman. He designed and built catamarans for customers from around the world at their Willoughby home in Norfolk. She pushed their five children to ignore stereotypes and do what they wanted. Moranha, their youngest child, met people from all over, traveled and even spent her sixth-grade year on a boat with a tutor, sailing around the Bahamas Islands.
Her parents ``are the only reason I have any gumption to do something odd,'' Moranha said.
She was active in theater at Granby High School and learned she liked to talk and be out in front of people.
She tried a year at Old Dominion University. ``Hated it.'' So she set out to find something she liked.
She picked up the rudiments of formal service as a waitress at the Breezy Point Officers Club at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk.
She learned the basics of training and self-development working for a motivational-seminar company. She learned computers and supervising workers in two years as assistant manager of a video store.
By now she was married to Michael J. Moranho, an instructor and carpenter with the Tidewater Builders Association, and knew she no longer wanted to put in 55 hours a week away from home. So it was back to waitressing, with its better hours and money, at Il Porto in Norfolk's Waterside and Amory's Seafood Restaurant in Portsmouth.
This was sandwiched around two years with a management-training company, where she learned how to run an office for the woman she calls her ``mentor,'' from filing tax returns to talking to clients.
``It took out the mystery'' of running a business, Moranha said. ``That really helped me figure out that little ol' me isn't any less than any other people out there. . . . I don't know everything about everything, but so does no one else.''
The new self-confidence was deserved, according to the ``mentor,'' M. J. Kratowicz of Management Dynamics, now in Northern Virginia. She called herself one of Moranha's ``biggest fans.''
``She's one of the sharpest people I know,'' Kratowicz said. ``She is a walking party. Really. . . . And she packages it professionally. . . . But she's also a very serious businesswoman. And I think that's what helps her be successful, her flexibility.''
Moranha peppered Kratowicz and, later, restaurant-owner George ``Skip'' Amory, with questions about running businesses.
``Boy, she went after it,'' Amory said. ``She just absorbed knowledge from people.
``She'd ask more than just about the job: `What joy do you get out of the job? What does the job mean to you as a person? Is it a means to an end?' . .
``I thought it was pretty cool for someone her age to research someone so deeply.''
``I liked the way he had balance in his life,'' Moranha said of Amory. He owned his own business, but still made time for other things.
Meanwhile, Moranha felt the need for more formal education. She still wasn't crazy about college, but bumped into a cousin in Richmond who had just graduated from the four-year program at Johnson & Wales University, the culinary school in Rhode Island. Norfolk has a branch of the school offering a two-year degree program.
Moranha always had liked to cook and make special presentations of her food. She had years of experience ``in the front of the house,'' or the dining room. She decided on the drive home to enroll.
She spent two years in a hair net and double-breasted white chef's coat. And loved it. And it, her. She graduated in May at the top of her class, and now teaches dining-room courses there.
It was near the end of her first year that she ran into the service that gave her the idea for her business. As a waitress or server, she was known for doing things right, even if it wasn't exactly her job.
Once, on another serving job while in school, she noticed the silverware was mismatched. She ran around and reset the tables, matching up the various styles of utensils and impressing the caterer.
``I think that's why she's a good instructor, because she certainly believes,'' said William J. Travis, Johnson & Wales' director of academics.
But it took her parents to put two-and-two together, talking one night around the dining-room table. They were the first ones to envision her starting a business where she would train and hire out professional servers to caterers and private clients.
She looked back and saw where each of her jobs, each experience had prepared her for it: food service, training, business management.
``It's so funny, how all that leads up to what I'm doing now,'' she said. ``It looks like a mishmash . . . .''
So she began.
Still in school, she had a practice job interview with a food-service company for one of her classes. She told her interviewer about this ``little business'' she had. The interviewer said he'd like to try it for an upcoming event. She tried to stay calm, but was freaking inside.
``I thought: . . . I don't even have a name for my company,'' she said.
He asked for a business card. She, of course, didn't have any yet, but said they were at the printers. She dropped by an office-supply store on the way home to see what should be on an invoice.
She and her husband brainstormed names, and came up with Black Tie Servers, because of the uniform she wanted of black ties with tuxedo shirts. She asked city officials what forms to file to make her business legal.
She hired classmates. She even hired some of her Johnson & Wales instructors. And she persisted. She picked and trained her own people in four-hour sessions, to her own standards, everything from which side to serve from to how to dress to how to talk to guests. Her policies are strict - workers aren't allowed to smoke on the way to events because the odor gets into their clothing.
Above all, she wanted her servers to be more than just ``warm bodies in tuxedo shirts.''
At first, they got hired by caterers in binds with large weddings or civic events, then used more as caterers began appreciating the service. Word-of-mouth spread in what's largely a word-of-mouth industry.
``A temp service in food and beverage is kind of unusual,'' said Deanna E. Freridge, co-owner of Toques Creative Catering in Virginia Beach. She gives high marks to Moranha's servers' quality.
``I think her concept is great. It's just as long as she continues to keep up with the training, it should fly.''
Moranha said her Black Tie Servers is making a go of it. She keeps 65 part-time servers working regularly, and had as many as 95 at times during the summer. They're college students, homemakers, a South African woman with a doctorate in humanities, a retired French waiter and restaurant owner. Some work two to three times a week.
Moranha said she hasn't made money yet, but the business is busy, particularly during this hectic party season. She's chalked up these first 18 months as ``marketing'' and plans to expand across the state.
The ``marketing'' has including work at the grand opening of Nauticus in Norfolk, events at The Chrysler Museum, The Hermitage and the Virginia Zoological Park in Norfolk, and at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts.
Moranha's best memory is of the opening of the refurbished Harrison Opera House in Norfolk last year, while she was still in school. Her 30 servers, dressed to the nines, entered and marched in single, evenly spaced file up a spiral staircase. The sequins-and-diamonds crowd stopped and watched.
``I was like: `Oh, God. I did this,' '' said Moranha, clutching her chest.
They were cleaning up at Temple Israel in Norfolk after a thank-you banquet for fund-raising benefactors. Leftover raw vegetables were bulldozed into a trash can and dip, punch and unused glasses were cleared. It had been a big banquet. And busy. Three hundred twenty dinners served in less than an hour.
Even while cleaning, Moranha's workers still wore their starched white tuxedo shirts with black studs, black bow ties and cummerbunds, black dress pants and shoes.
``She's very professional. Very professional,'' said Nomsa Sibeko-Brown, the South African Ph.D. and a full-time bank accountant who's one of her team leaders.
``She's very consistent in her policies,'' said Beth Robertson as she helped Sibeko-Brown clean up. Robertson works for a mutual-funds company during the day.
``It's pretty neat for a part-time job,'' Robertson said. ``The hours are flexible. . . . And the money's not bad.''
Kratowicz called Moranha a top example of figuring out what you want and going after it. Moranha, 32, remains a little amazed:
``I can't believe I started all this at the dining-room table with my parents.'' ILLUSTRATION: BETH BERGMAN/Staff photos
Server Kelly Argus, left, and Black Tie Servers owner Carrie Goodman
Moranha peek at desserts before serving them at a Temple Israel
banquet in Norfolk.
Servers Nomsa Sibeko-Brown, left, and Jacques Bergeron look on.
Bergeron whizzes through a crowd at Temple Israel on his way to the
kitchen. Black Tie Servers in Portsmouth employs 65 part-time
servers, and as many as 95 in the summer.
by CNB