Management Team
Brian Werling
General Manager
My involvement in the creation and launch of The Rodeo Grill is a story that could only take place in Albuquerque – a place where two or three degrees of separation are all that commonly exists between people.
I originally met Matt DiGregory, owner of The Rodeo, in the summer of 2006 as I was preparing to enroll in the Culinary Arts program at Central New Mexico Community College. While going to school, it was my goal to obtain a job serving in the best restaurant that I could find in order to gain valuable practical knowledge. Matt was one of the first people that I contacted because I had been a long-time admirer of the Range Cafés and his then newest offering, the Standard Diner. While he was interested in hiring me, his General Manager at the time was not.
Over the course of the following two years I completed my studies at CNM, moving on to the New England Culinary Institute to pursue my BA in Hospitality and Restaurant Management. While in residency in Vermont, I completed a business plan for a casual dining concept that I one day hoped to launch.
Upon returning home in the fall of 2008, I accepted a management position with a local restaurant chain but soon found myself longing to start my own restaurant. Once again, I found myself seeking the advice of some of the city’s top restaurateurs, including Matt. From those discussions came an offer to help him develop and open the Rodeo Grill - an experience that I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. Along the way I have been able to involve one of my CNM classmates and the manager that first hired me when I decided to return to the industry prior to beginning school, bringing many aspects of my story full circle.
Welcome to The Rodeo!
Katrina Lovelady
Assistant General Manager
They always say your past will come back to haunt you! Here at The Rodeo, it has in more ways than one! Not only am I scooping ice cream, just like I did at my first job at 14 at the now disappeared Yum Yum Tree in Sedona, but my boss once worked for me as a server when I was a manager at The Melting Pot. I'm sure that if I examine it all more closely, I will find connections to my time with Southwest Airlines, TGI Fridays, California Pizza Kitchen and Borders as well. The Rodeo has brought home all of those connections for me, in addition to reinforcing the idea that great customer service translates into any industry. Although this is my first Rodeo - it's not my first time riding this buckin' bronco!
Paul Reynaga
Kitchen Manager
Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of sitting on the kitchen counter watching my mom cook or decorate cakes. With my mother, a cake decorator, and my father, a baker, I think that it would be fair to say that I was born interested in the food service industry. By age five I had learned to scramble my own eggs for breakfast and I remember at this age longing to be old enough to have a job in a restaurant.
One thing that I take great pride in is my ability to learn new tasks quickly - a talent that I thank my dad for. His dream was, for as long as I could remember, was to have a bakery of his own. Over the years he had purchased second hand equipment for cheap whenever the opportunity would arise. When I was nine, my dad had accumulated enough equipment that he began baking bread out of the back room of our house. Of course I wanted to help. My dad began teaching me the basics and his method of teaching was very simple: “look me” he would say (my dad was born in Mexico and came to the United States at age 19 and didn’t learn English until he was about 21 or 22,so to this day he still has a strong accent and doesn’t always use proper grammar) and I was expected to watch and learn as he would demonstrate what I was supposed to do. Then he would leave me to my task and go off to do whatever it was that he had to work on. If I had trouble, he would give one more example and, if I still couldn’t get it, he would take over and I would be denied the pleasure of helping that day. Left to sit and watch as my dad had all the fun. I made it a personal challenge to never need the second demo and even now I rarely need to be shown more that once how to do something.
At age 15 I landed a job in the mess hall of a Boy Scout summer camp. At the end of the summer when I turned 16, I got my first restaurant job as a busboy/dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. I quickly learned the ropes and it wasn’t long before I was cooking on the line and throwing pizzas. I have now been in the industry for 14 years and have spent the better part of that time coming up through the ranks of the hospitality industry school of hard knocks, working as a dishwasher, bus boy, cook, baker, waiter, bartender and a manager, as well as recently completing my degree in Culinary Arts at Central New Mexico Community College.
