Cory Goddard was a 15-year-old high school student when she started working for Boston Pizza as a part-time hostess. Less than a decade later, thanks to plenty of hard work and some timely opportunities, she became general manager of one of three company-owned Corporate Training Centres (CTCs) in Canada.
Goddard manages the 320-seat restaurant in Richmond, BC, the only CTC in Western Canada. When she first started with the company in her hometown of Smithers, BC, she hadn't planned on making restaurant work her career. Her original goal was to attend teacher's college, after having traveled throughout Europe, but she steadily earned a series of promotions at the restaurant. "Once my GM asked me to take on the assistant manager position - which I had never considered, because I was very young - the wheels started turning at the possibility that I might be able to move up in the company," she says.
With experience came confidence, and Goddard wasn't afraid to show she was ambitious. She was a year into the assistant manager position when the field service manager for her region came to town. "I asked him how I could get to his job. He said I had to apply to be a corporate trainer, which is the entry position into head office." The prospect appealed to her. "Corporate trainers travel around, open new stores, stay for up to six weeks at a time, work 14-hour days to train the staff and management and then oversee the first couple of weeks. Being from a small town, it sounded pretty awesome. So I applied to be a corporate trainer."
She got the promotion in 2007 and moved to the Lower Mainland, where the job proved to be everything she'd hoped for. Nine months later, out of the blue, the Smithers GM quit, and the company asked Goddard to fill that vacancy. She was reluctant to return, but eventually realized it was an opportunity she simply could not refuse. "I figured I wouldn’t get that opportunity at my age anywhere else. I talked to my bosses, here, and said I didn’t want to burn any bridges and wanted to come back, but they knew what a store could turn into without a manager and gave me their blessing. I was only 21 then."
Goddard spent the next two and a half years making the Smithers operation run smoothly and profitably, while always keeping an eye on returning to the Lower Mainland. Finally, at a company conference, she met with the vice president of operations for Western Canada and made her pitch. "He said there was an opportunity at the Corporate Training Centre. I was initially brought [back] down as the assistant general manager, and five days later the GM, here, quit. They had intended to groom me for the GM position, but wanted me to get my feet wet first." After reviewing the financials from the store in Smithers, Boston Pizza gave her the job in 2010. "It just happened a lot sooner than anyone expected."
Goddard attributes her rapid progress to several factors. "I am extremely organized and detail-oriented. If you lose track of the little details, you get behind quickly, and the stress factor can be overwhelming. I am an extremely hard worker." She is also eager to take courses in business administration, marketing and accounting, usually through distance-learning at BCIT, and makes every effort to watch how her peers work. "I'm good at observing other people and their styles, and figuring whether their styles will work for me."
She now oversees a team of 60 employees and managers. She continues putting in long days, except now, her duties run the gamut, from reviewing sales and labour reports, to assisting customers during the lunchtime rush. Her current goal? "I want to get this store to a level I'm comfortable with, where I can pass it off to someone else. But I'm happy where I am right now."
See the job description of a Restaurant Manager.
