When it comes to the wine-spirits environment, individuals like Melanie Rodriguez have had to adapt to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. In our discussion, we speak on her transition from Florida to Texas and contemplate what lessons were learned throughout her travels. Melanie is a hospitality industry professional with over 8 years of experience throughout various hotels, restaurants, and clubs. She has exceeded expectations by delivering impeccable service quickly and efficiently in her sales consultant positions and was recently promoted to an off-premise sales role within the Pinnacle division at Southern Glazers. Outside of the full-time role, she makes larger impacts on the alcohol industry by hosting her Munchies with Mel Instagram. This is an Instagram page that promotes top food & beverage offerings throughout the Dallas-Fort worth Metroplex.
Grayson Mask: I saw that you traveled from the Florida area. Did you grow up in that area?
Melanie Rodriguez: Yeah, so I’m not originally from Florida. I’m actually originally from New York, but when I was much younger I did move to South Florida and I lived there for a couple of years. I then moved to Broward and then graduated high school and went to Broward College for my bachelor’s. I was actually originally going for nursing but decided to completely change my entire degree. I do have my ex-boyfriend to thank for that because he actually helped me realize I wasn’t passionate about it. Nursing is a very hard track and I’m not a science girl at all. I was doing it to make my family happy, but in the end I just wasn’t excited for it.
So I went to Valencia for my hospitality degree. I lived by the main campus, but I would commute like 30 to 40 minutes every single day to the college. And it got annoying; I’m not going to lie. But I wanted to be by main campus because that’s what I had envisioned. I really wanted to be around a bunch of other students, people my age, but it got old really quick because I realized that a lot of those students are like freshmen and people that are much younger than me. So I lived there for the first year I think, I want to say like a semester. I moved in in January and then I moved out in August. I moved out in August and then I moved to live down the road from the airport. So literally it was a $5 Uber. It was so close. So, whenever I had some extra money from working or from student loans or grants or whatever the case might be, I would just take a trip to reward myself at the end of the semester. Once I got to UCF, honestly, my life just changed so much for the better.
Grayson Mask: I heard they had a Wine Club in your college?
Melanie Rodriguez: We actually have a wine course that you can take too. I became really good friends with the professor because I took a wine course and I fell in love with it. It was basically like a history class and the professor that I had was like a certified Sommelier and was so passionate about wine. So I really fell in love with wine and alcohol. And it was already something I liked, I liked drinking and I was a big party girl in school. But I never thought that it would become my career. And I was just so happy that I found my passion while I was in school because I was jumping from a restaurant job, to hotel job, to a nightlife gig. So once I took that wine class, I found out he had a Wine Club and then I decided to become a part of the Wine Club and after one semester, all the seniors graduated and no one was left to take care of the clubs. So I went for an officer position and the following year I helped develop the club. The club wasn’t really big on social media then, but I was the one that brought it on social media and made it blow up a little bit.
So I took notes on that to get an idea of what I was getting myself into. So when I interviewed for a job, I knew exactly what to say and how everything works in this industry. Our school is called The Rosen campus and it’s connected to the Rosen Shingle Creek, which is like a huge resort. And it has a golf course, a spa, these giant pools and it’s just gorgeous, honestly. I love staying there. And sometimes the students would actually take classes over there because they would do a Hotel Resort Management class.
Grayson Mask: Did you guys get crazy discounts over there?
Melanie Rodriguez: Yeah, we do actually. So I would tell my parents to come up and visit me and they would stay at the Shingle Creek because I would get such a great discount being a student. I actually ended up taking my classes at the JW Marriott World Center where we learned everything about resort management there. So their hotel is actually on Everglades’s grounds, like swamps. And it’s like a reserve. They keep it very protected because they don’t want to demolish it or anything. They want to reserve it, make it a good environment, like a natural environment for all the animals. Because they knew that they had placed the hotel on top, but they don’t want to go into any more land because they want to preserve it. So the golf course is low key like an Everglades, it’s really cool and it’s connected to a Ritz-Carlton so there are two major hotels there. We took classes at both when we learned about the spa and the master suites.
Grayson Mask: Is that like your favorite spot? Because I’ve seen your experience with serving and I was kind of wondering if you preferred the hotel environment or did you like the restaurant environment.
Melanie Rodriguez: So I worked at three hotels, I believe. So my first job in Orlando was at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. I worked there and it was connected to the convention center. So that environment is very upscale. You have to look professional; you have to look poised. You have really nice clients there because it’s connected to the convention center. So you get a lot of convention business and you have to give really good service is basically what I’m saying. They hold their employees to a good standard. I actually liked Hyatt as a company, I really do. But I didn’t like that property because there was just a lot of drama and a lot of seniority. A lot of stuff was seniority and I was the baby. When I first started, I was the youngest one. I was a cocktail server. I hated working there, I really did. And it was mainly because of the drama from the other cocktail waitresses, because they felt, I guess, jealousy that I was the youngest one and I was making the same money as them. And I was just a student just blowing my money on stupid things aside from my rent. You make really good money there. I think the most I made in one night was like $600, but there were definitely moments in the high season of the convention business where you could potentially make way more.
Grayson Mask: What company was like the biggest spenders?
Melanie Rodriguez: Oh my God. Anything with having to do with construction or the medical field, those people blew money or anything having to do with law. Because it’s all lawyers, doctors, contractors that have these big construction companies, they don’t care about blowing money whatsoever. So sometimes I would Uber too while I was in school and right after I would work. I would go Uber the late-night parties because a lot of people would buy out like Disney or Universal Studios or something for like a buy*out, like a convention buy-out. So like no one was allowed in the theme park, unless you worked or were a part of that convention. So they would host a lot of these convention parties or after parties around I- Drive, which is where I worked, I went to school. So it just worked out perfectly. I was always there. And so a lot of I-Drive was just covered in convention business. You have to know something; these conventions are intense. So people are there literally from 8 in the morning, 7 in the morning sometimes. So 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM when they get out, they drink like fish, they drink alcohol like fish, and it’s insane. I’m so serious; it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I remember this one guy spent close to a $1000 and the entire weekend he was drinking Sambuca to the point where we ran out of Sambuca because he ordered all the Sambuca out of our star. No one orders Sambuca, ever, but this guy came in and he cleared out or he cleared out our entire Sambuca stock.
Grayson Mask: I guess that transition from Lowe’s and Hyatt over to your inside sales role at Southern Glazer’s, so it didn’t prepare you that much for that role.
Melanie Rodriguez: It did actually, because at a young age I learned how to deal with a certain type of clientele like the convention business clientele. They’re very demanding, they spend a lot of money and they expect things to be done at a certain standard and that includes serving the food and serving the cocktails. You have to serve the food to the right of the person; you have to put in table numbers and make sure you’re putting in everything correctly. When those server systems come out or the busser or whoever’s delivering the food, even yourself, you have to make sure you’re serving the food exactly how you bring it in. You guesstimate and then call out the order and be like “okay, who ordered this? Or who ordered that?” No, you have to already know, you have to use your table and seating numbers and you have to know who it belongs to. I don’t know if it was this hotel or if it was Lowe’s, but you have to address the customer by the last name. You have to know their last name. So the host will tell you the last name of the party. So you call the party, like the Rodriguez party or whatever they’re called. If they give you their credit card and you see their last name, make sure you’re addressing them by the last name and make sure you’re holding a certain standard because Hyatt wants to give off this image that they have a good standard when they hire these employees. So you have to make sure you’re hiring people who have good work ethic and they meet and look the part. I used to have red hair, they made me dye my hair because I had red hair and I couldn’t have red hair at Hyatt. I was so sad because my red hair was a part of me.
Grayson Mask: How was your move to the Texas area? When was that?
Melanie Rodriguez: I moved to Texas and I was like the initial team of inside sales that was that branch of inside sales. That was from my Miami that moved to Texas. I started that team. I was already technically a veteran with the company. I had moved from Miami with a couple of other people. I want to say it was like 10 people that they recruited from Miami to move out here. Some people ended up moving back, some people ended up staying out here and loving it. Some people are still here and they moved on to other things that are not with the company anymore. Everyone just branched out and did their own thing once they got to Dallas. But we did all stay with the company for at least six months. Someone actually left once a Budweiser and then a couple of other people moved back home or they got fired or they just left, whatever the case may be.
But I ended up staying with the company and the first year was rough because I didn’t really know anyone and I was always just working. So, it was kind of miserable for me and the office was like in Addison, so it was a much more boring part of Dallas. It was like North Dallas. It wasn’t like in the center of the city or anything. I’m young, I want to be like in a city, I want to be a city girl and enjoy people my age and the nightlife, and I want to balance having a social life and my work life. I don’t want to just work forever, but living in Addison definitely made it difficult to do that because it was like a small town, it was like a strip of bars and then that’s it. There wasn’t really much to do, everything was here in Dallas.
The pandemic hit and then we got furloughed. So when the pandemic hit in April or technically hit in March, but we didn’t get furloughed until April. We got sent to work from home in April and then about two weeks after that they furloughed us because it was the beginning stages of the pandemic where we didn’t know what was exactly going to happen to our company, industry or anything in the world as a matter of fact. We were all freaking out. I’m sure everyone remembers at this point in time. Everyone was like “Okay, I’m going to die if I catch this virus. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” It was just very what-ifs. So they furloughed us because they didn’t know what was going to happen and my job was to talk on the phone at the time. So we could very much do everything remotely. But when we finally figured out how to work remotely, it was a learning experience. This is something that my job had never done before. When we had to work remotely, we had to over-communicate to our managers because we weren’t in-person anymore. So, we always had to make sure we were emailing them or available on the teams’ chat or if we needed something, definitely reach out to them; make sure we’re accomplishing all of tasks that we are doing in the office at home. It was one of things where I had to learn how to over-communicate because I was so use to doing everything on my own in my office and if I ever needed my manager, I could just walk over to his desk and ask him something. But now, it was just a big transition.
Grayson Mask: I was going to ask, with sales up so much, did you have any thoughts on that new law out in Texas with them permanently allowing to go alcohol sales from restaurants or bars?
Melanie Rodriguez: I think this happened a few weeks into the pandemic where that law came out. So my book consisted of off premises and on premises accounts, a little bit of everything like gas stations, grocery stores, bars, restaurants and lounges. All the lounges were closed because we had to social distance so only certain businesses were open and some businesses actually went out of business because they didn’t make any money anymore from the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, people had to be very, very creative to keep their business afloat. And something I gathered from this pandemic is that, if you’re an on premise business and you don’t have good social media presence, your business is going to fail. That’s the way I see it now. Because what happened is, a lot of people when they switched over to a lot of E-commerce, a lot of online ordering. People are glued to their phones now. That’s what happened during the pandemic. People stayed glued to their phones because they had nothing else to do. We have to quarantine. What else is there to do? Go on social media and rant about your life, right? But with that comes scrolling through different feeds of Instagram, It comes with seeing different comments on Twitter about certain businesses. Seeing what people have to say about when the order take-out from Chilies and they first tried their take-home margarita cocktail kits or whatever. We have restaurants in the area that were doing, make your own cocktail kits. And they were selling those instead of drinks. And they were doing like family kits of food where they would sell the stuff that you could prepare for a meal but you had to make them yourself. And actually, the restaurants like that; they are the ones who survive this pandemic because they thought out of the box. They though “What can we do aside from selling food to go? What can we do to appeal to our customers?”
Grayson Mask: I wanted to ask on the Instagram page Munchies with Mel, if you had any cool encounters with any of these local bars and restaurants lately or anything like that.
Melanie Rodriguez: So I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been pretty inconsistent on Munchies with Mel because I started my new job. So before my job was remote, it was really easy to just get on Munchies with Mel while I was working, because I was having access to a computer and my phone, if I was put on hold, I would just go on my phone and posts, but I’m struggling to find balance with posting on Munchies with Mel while also balancing this new job, because everything requires me to be more in person and I have to be driving from a council account. So I don’t want to be texting and driving either. But the last recent encounter with a business in the area, Postino’s Wine in deep Ellum. I live in Deep Ellum here, like literally walking distance from Deep Ellum, so it’s really easy for me to access some of these restaurants and bars. And I had heard about Postino’s opening and I was really excited because it’s a wine bar, it’s my passion. And I was like, “okay, I definitely have to visit this place.” So a friend of mine from Miami was visiting and she was staying with another friend of mine here in Dallas. And the three of us, we went out the day that she was leaving Dallas. Before her flight, we went to Deep Ellum. We got some food at Stir, which I’d never been to, but they have really good food. I definitely recommend there. And then after that we just walked around. I need to post this content because from that day I have a bunch of content because we hopped around and I got photos from my blog, but I just haven’t gotten around to posting it. That’s a problem. But I went to this alcoholic Popsicle place and I definitely recommend that because their popsicles are actually really high in alcohol content. So they’re strong and they’re really good. They’re fruity. I got the strawberry daiquiri and strawberry daiquiris aren’t usually strong, but that tastes like a hurricane. Yeah.
