My Skills & Experience

I left Hilton to take the position of Bar Manager at the 'Victorian' (also in Düsseldorf) which, at that time, held the most coveted three Michelin stars. After six months, I was promoted to the position of Beverages Manager for the entire restaurant and banqueting operations, a post I held for further two years, until I departed to establish my own company. During the two years as Beverages Manager, I was directly responsible for causing daily revenue in the Bar and Bistro areas to increase ten fold.

After leaving 'Victorian', I established my own company, to continue what had, in my previous spare time, become a lucrative Cocktail Party Service and 'Gastronomy' Consultancy'. Following on that, I built two, fully autonomous, mobile bar cells, which serviced private and public functions from 5 to 500 people. These functions included VIP lounges at Open Air Festivals and Dance Parties, the Sponsor's Private Lounge of Race Meetings, cash bars for and on behalf of popular restaurants and restaurateurs, both in their establishments, and at street festivals.

Within that consultancy activity, I was engaged to inspect and report on the suitability of a small ocean liner, to fulfil the requirements of a cruise from Europe to Australia . On another occasion, I was asked to inspect a motel the same client had purchased in New Zealand ; and to implement a basic occupancy, financial and inventory control system for him to be able to monitor the motel and the performance of its managers.

Over the years, my consultancy business expanded to include management services to companies and organisations, in a variety of other industries, ranging from small to medium enterprises, to large multinationals, NGO's governments departments at both a local and national level. Some highlights from within these consultancy roles are:

Relationship Management for Microsoft - restoring the rapport with one of their key Benelux clients, and realigning a flagship project along mutually acceptable lines.
Service Manager for large department (Social, Welfare & Employment) of the City of Rotterdam - building and motivating a team, and implementing new service management solutions, policies and procedures.
IT Manager of a high profile security project for the ABN-AMRO Bank - defining the security policy for a global case investigation management system, and managing the relationships between the project and technology vendors.
Project Manager for a very large national social and welfare department of the Netherlands (UWV/GAK)- defining the plan to establish a virtual data centre and migrate into this the eight old data centres.
IT Manager for a medium size security software development company (Control Break International Holding b.v. - Safeboot) - implementing, for the global organisation in six countries, a common office environment, IT policies and change management procedures, a common network topography and a single VOIP telephony network.
Network & Telecoms Team Leader for the international insurer AEGON n.v. - based out of their main IT department location in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, managing a team of 13-15 people who supported, maintained, and managed the physical network and telecoms infrastructure for the entire Netherlands organisation.
Infrastructure Manager for the international insurer AEGON n.v. - participating as a member of the core team to outsource the company's IT department to EDS, and providing relationship management services in the field of 'Infrastructure' for the AEGON / EDS contract.

I also continue to provide professional consultancy services to restaurants, bars, and discotheques/night clubs - both start-ups and existing businesses - in Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Austria.