Yesterday I told you how my move to Chicago has extended my baseball watching season, but I’m not sure that I mentioned that I have tickets to today’s Cubs game! I’m pretty excited about it, although I’m not excited about the fact that it might get into the 40s tonight during the game. October baseball is not for fair weather fans – the types who might prefer a catered event at the stadium to a real baseball game. Whether you’re a fair weather fan, an insanely devoted fan who just wants to be as close to your team’s stadium as possible at all time, or even if you just enjoy fine dining, a job with Levy Restaurants might be something worth thinking about. They’re a company that is all about hospitality and dining experience, and they happen to do catering/events at some pretty amazing venues – Wrigley and U.S. Cellular Field included.

The Levy Difference

A caterer doesn’t get the right to cater at top flight sports venues with out offering a fantastic experience. Levy Restaurants attributes their success to what they call “The Levy Difference.” There happens to be a video on their website with the same name, so we’re going to recommend that you watch that before you dig deeper into internships with Levy Restaurants.

Now that you’ve watched the movie, let’s take a look at Levy Restaurants’ entry level job offerings. Their job descriptions don’t offer a lot of detail, but we’re pretty sure that a number of their jobs can be considered entry level. If you look at all of their current job openings, you’ll see quite a few Assistant Director of Operations positions (Conseco Field House – Indianapolis, IN; Live Nokia Theater – Los Angeles, CA; Qwest Field – Seattle, WA; Sprint Center – Kansas City, MO; and STAPLES Center – Los Angeles, CA). Any job title that includes “assistant” has a pretty good chance of being a well suited to new college grads. There are also an Accounting position at Lambeau Field (Green Bay, WI) and a Marketing Coordinator position at Chase Field (Phonenix, AZ) that may be worth looking at. Finally, there are a number of jobs as Sous Chef (many locations). These require significant culinary knowledge, but may be considered entry level for you if you just graduated from culinary school. Levy Restaurants is based out of Chicago, IL, but has locations all across the country, so be sure to check out their list of venues to see where they might be hiring in the future. They don’t provide an HR contact or an e-mail address, so the only way to find out more information about jobs with Levy Restaurants is to apply online directly from the job descriptions.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• LevyRestaurants.com
• Jobs and Internships at Levy Restaurants
• About Levy Restaurants
• Levy Restaurants’ Dining Experience
• The Levy Difference (Video)

Have you ever experienced the Levy Difference? What’s it like?

Waiting tables isn’t what most new college grads want to do with the degree they (or their parents) just spent 5 to 6 figures on. In most cases that makes sense, but with the Chicago based Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises even jobs waiting tables can lead towards a career in restaurant management. LEYE is a restaurant empire – they have over 70 restaurants and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 employees. Restaurant management is tough when you have one location to watch over, but somehow founder and CEO Richard Melman has been able to repeatedly launch and then manage successful restaurants.

I’m Uncoordinated and Would Drop the Food

It’s ok if waiting tables isn’t something that you can or want to do, Lettuce Entertain You has other job opportunities for new grads too. LEYE has jobs in Management, Corporate, and, of course, in their restaurants. Despite your lack of coordination, let’s look at the restaurant jobs first. LEYE’s restaurants include Antico Posto, Hub 51, Reel Club, Ben Pao, Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, R.J. Grunts, Big Bowl, L2O, Scoozi!, Brasserie Jo, L. Woods, Shaw’s Crab House, Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, Maggiano’s, stripburger at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, Chi. Flat Sammies, The Magic Pan Crepe Stand, Tru, Di Pescara, Mity Nice Grill, Tucci Benucch, Don & Charlie’s, Mon Ami Gabi, Twin City Grill, Eiffel Tower, Nacional 27, Vong’s Thai Kitchen, Everest, Osteria Via Stato, Wildfire, foodlife, Petterino’s, Wow Bao, Frankie’s 5th Floor Pizzeria, and Pizzeria via Stato. They all offer hourly positions, which you can search by job title on their website. These jobs include just about anything that you could do in a restaurant.
 
LEYE also has a fantastic internship program. They hire a significant number of their new managers through this program, so it seems possible that a new college grad from a hospitality management program (and who interned at another restaurant) could also have a shot at being a manager in a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant. Finally, LEYE also has corporate positions. Right now they have jobs in HR and Graphic Design that require some experience, but nothing that goes beyond what you would expect for an entry-level hire. Usually companies with strong internship programs do significant entry-level hiring, so it should be possible for you to find a great first job with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• The Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Home Page
• Jobs at LEYE
• The History of Lettuce Entertain You
• Richard Melman’s Bio

Have you dined at an LEYE restaurant? What’d you think?