Video: Serving Up a Career in Hospitality
BU senior Bayley Fox combines her classroom knowledge with hands-on experience at local restaurant to pursue her dream of working in the food and beverage industry
Serving Up a Career in Hospitality
Serving Up a Career in Hospitality
Hospitality has been a part of Bayley Fox’s life for a long time. She began working at restaurants at 17, first as a host before slowly transitioning into serving and bartending positions as she got older. When she arrived at Boston University, the psychology major decided to add a minor in hospitality administration from BU’s School of Hospitality Administration, hoping to better understand the industry.
“I love the food and beverage industry. It’s something that I’m passionate about,” Fox (CAS’26) says. “I knew immediately that I wanted to take Food and Beverage Management.”
That class—taught by SHA adjunct faculty member and BU alum Seth Gerber (SHA’12, Questrom’21)—immediately became a favorite. Fox says the course introduced her to aspects of the field she hadn’t known about—like restaurant management and menu engineering—while reinforcing her desire to pursue a career in the industry.
“It was a class that exactly aligned with everything that I wanted to learn,” Fox says. “[Gerber is] amazing to have as a professor because he explains things in a way that is both easy to understand and exciting to learn about.”
By the end of the course, Fox told Gerber that she wanted to pursue a career in food and beverage, and he offered her a chance to work at MIDA, the Italian restaurant in the Fenway he co-owns and operates with chef Douglass Williams.
Fox works as both a server and bartender at the restaurant. She says the experience has allowed her to take what she’s learned in class and apply it to how she interacts with guests. She thinks of every service as a performance—playing a character that best suits the needs of her customer.
“The classroom experience is really valuable because it teaches you the black and white and how things should be on paper,” she says. “But everyone knows that, as you get into service, the real world happens and you have to completely adapt. Just being able to prioritize and think on your feet is really what makes you be able to improve your service.”
For now, Fox is focused on becoming more knowledgeable about serving and operating a restaurant, but in the future hopes to pursue sommelier training. She says her time at MIDA has helped her fall in love with wine, and she wants to expand her education on it.
“[Working at MIDA] has shifted what I want in my career completely,” she says. “When I was able to see Seth as such a successful industry professional and really understand that this is so many people’s full-time career, it gave me a lot of hope and excitement about my future.”
With graduation just weeks away, Fox, who since January has also been working as a maitre d’ at Columbus Hospitality Group, plans to work as a manager in the restaurant industry.
She credits Gerber’s mentorship with helping guide her future career goals.
“Seth gave me honest feedback about the role of restaurant manager and what my life might look like post-graduation and posed a lot of questions about what was important for me in choosing a company to work with.”
She also credits SHA for giving her the foundation to launch her career. “Without SHA, I wouldn’t have the connections, the knowledge, or the support that I do.”