Editor’s Note: The hardest working people in your restaurant are probably the managers, and el Restaurante’s Manager of the Year program has honored hundreds of the best managers of Mexican/Latin restaurants since it started in 2016. We thought it would be interesting to see how some of the early winners are doing. This is what we learned!
Miguel Solano, 2016 Winner: Now He’s in Charge
When Miguel Solano won the first-ever el Restaurante Manager of the Year contest in 2016, he had worked at Azteca Restaurant in Toms River, New Jersey since he arrived in the United States from Mexico 15 years earlier. He had been the manager for eight years, and he told us that loving the job is the most important part of being a good manager.
He still loves his job…but now he owns the restaurant!
Solano’s transition from manager to owner began when a fire destroyed the restaurant in July 2018. He kept his job because he also was managing an Italian restaurant owned by the same person, Tony Schiano. But Schiano decided not to reopen Azteca Restaurant.
“A lot of people were asking if we were going to reopen it, and [Tony] said no,” Solano recalls. “So I told him, ‘Would it be OK if I open it?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, go ahead, reopen it.’”
So Solano reopened Azteca Restaurant in a new location. Schiano was very helpful during that time, Solano says, particularly with the paperwork involved in starting a restaurant. And their working relationship didn’t end -- Solano continued managing the Italian restaurant for Schiano, an airline pilot.
“So I was running back and forth between the Mexican restaurant and the Italian restaurant, and then, a few years later, we got the opportunity to open another location closer to where the restaurant was before it burned down,” Solano says. “So at that point I had two Mexican restaurants and I was still managing the Italian restaurant.”
When Schiano decided to exit the restaurant business altogether a couple of years ago, who did he turn to? Solano, of course, who bought the Italian restaurant from him!
“Then I had two Mexican restaurants, an Italian restaurant, and I had opened a catering business on my own,” Solano says. “So a lot of things have happened in the eight years since I won!”
To keep all those businesses running, Solano relies his family. His son Miguel Jr., who was in culinary school when Solano won the contest in 2016, now manages one of the locations of Azteca Restaurant. His son Cristian helps manage the Italian restaurant.
“I want to make it clear that without my family, we can do nothing,” Solano says. “We keep it all going with them.”
In February Solano sold one location of Azteca Restaurant, but there is still plenty of work for everyone. The 2016 Manager of the Year is pleased with how his career has progressed.
“Everything is running smoothly,” he says. “I mean, it’s like any other business, there is a little headache every now and then, but we keep it going.”
Jairo Navarro, 2019 Winner: Survived COVID, Storm
Jairo Navarro had worked for Felipe’s Mexican Taqueria for five years, and had been in charge of one of the restaurant’s locations in Naples, Florida for most of that time, when he was named the 2019 el Restaurante Manager of the Year. We all know what happened at the beginning of 2020…and COVID was just the beginning of the challenges Navarro faced!
“Back in 2019 we had three locations in Florida and then things went really, really hard for us,” he recalls.
The first challenge was COVID, which negatively impacted nearly every restaurant in the world. But just as the pandemic was easing, Florida was raked by Hurricane Ian. That terrifying storm in September 2022 destroyed the Fort Myers location of Felipe’s.
“It got flooded with nine feet of water,” Navarro remembers. “We lost that location. We supported the team members a whole lot during those hard times, and three of them from Fort Myers still work for one of the Naples locations. The main office (in New Orleans, where Felipe’s has four locations) was very, very kind to make sure everyone was taken care of.”
Staffing has been another challenge for the restaurant. Occasionally staff members are lured away by promises of more pay at other restaurants, Navarro says. Nevertheless, a core team has remained.
“We’ve been able to keep the main team for eight years since we opened in this market, so that means we’re doing something right,” he says. “We try to take care of them and make sure that they’re happy. We like to make it more like a family environment than just a regular job. If our team members are happy and our guests are happy, we will be able to meet any goal.”
Navarro says he is focusing on strengthening his team in Naples now, and developing new leaders. He hopes that will allow him to launch a new location in South Florida next year. “That’s the main key right now for me,” he says.
But Navarro’s personal life also is on focus: After about two decades in America, he became a U.S. citizen in March!
“That is something that everyone wants to get,” he says. “It was another accomplishment.”
