For the past three decades, Cindy Moran has worked throughout various roles in hospitality in every corner of the sector.
Having joined the workforce at the age of 12, Cindy Moran has held a number of jobs from delivering newspapers to working in a jean factory, retail, and a major accounting firm in Auckland before moving to Europe. There, she took on various roles in nannying, pubs, an advertising agency and holiday resorts in France.
When she returned home, she stumbled into a role as a restaurant administrator nearly 30 years ago and has been in senior roles for 25 years. She said she hasn’t looked back since.
The most valuable advice she has received has been to always work hard, take time off to recharge and ignore the haters.
While she said she hasn’t had a single mentor, she has been fortunate to work alongside and for people like Kelvin Gibson, Philip Sturm, Mark Wallbank, and Krishna Botica.
“We share a common goal: creating great restaurants with excellent food and service while treating everyone fairly. They are all hard workers who value their staff and customers equally.”
Since she joined the industry, Moran said that hospitality has become far more digital. Timesheets and rosters in Excel are long gone, and now, staff have rosters on their phones, so there’s no excuse for missing a shift.
“However, I’ve noticed that staff today are less resilient and prefer texting over phone calls,” she said.
“I also feel that the strong sense of hospitality community we once had, has faded. It might be because I’m older and not as involved, but I remember when we had a hospitality softball league that ran for over 15 years, those were great times.”
Moran would like to see more people choosing a career in hospitality as a long-term career. She said that with the advent of AI taking over lots of admin heavy human roles that there will be a return to service industry roles, unless those get replaced by robots.
Throughout her career, Cindy Moran said there have been too many highlights to count. Standouts for her included organising two incredible birthday celebrations, as well as being part of opening some fantastic venues for visionary people, such as Coast, Otto’s, MooChowChow, The Blue Breeze Inn, Chop Chop, Go Go Daddy, and Woodpecker Hill. She said each was an exciting journey from concept to launch.
“Will there be another? Who knows! That buzz from start to finish is unbeatable,” said Moran.
Above all, it is the people that continue to motivate Cindy Moran.
“Hospitality is a living, breathing beast, and an unpredictable rollercoaster. Sometimes it bites, sometimes it’s pure fun, and then there are those perfect, sunny days when you step back and think, yeah, that was awesome.”
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