Best of Restaurants

Best Waiter/Waitress: Rebecca Tesch

By Alyson Fleming

A longtime Rochesterite, Rebecca Tesch has found her niche in the business of serving others. Tesch began honing her skills in town at Grandma’s Kitchen at the age of 15. After attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Tesch found her way back to Rochester and has called Broadstreet her home away from home for the past eight years. “I love it,” she says. “I love the place and I love working for a family restaurant.”

Customer comes first: Tesch takes an unobtrusive approach to her job.  “It’s not the squatting at the table, talking about yourself and cracking jokes that makes a good waitress,” she says. “It’s about reading your customer and not making yourself the highlight of the night. It’s really about making it about them and making it easy.”

Know your role: Tesch recognizes that a lot of business is conducted at Broadstreet, so “you really have to pick and choose when you can speak or when to be seen and not heard,” she says. “Sometimes we’ll have bigwigs taking out very exclusive surgeons from Zimbabwe. They’re busy doing they’re job so I’m supposed to do mine.”

No selfish servers: An important thing to keep in mind as a server is that you’re part of a larger entity, Tesch says. “Here at Broadstreet it’s all about teamwork ... We have a lot of larger parties that we have to split with [colleagues]. So it’s not just about the customer, it’s also about the coworkers.”

Write it right:  According to Tesch, there’s no substitute for writing down the details. “I’ve never liked the idea of waiters not writing things down,” she says. “I know that they think it makes them a little bit better, but to me, if I were to go in and not write it down I feel like it’s semi-insulting to the customer. Almost as if I’m not really paying attention to them.”

Fancy food in translation: Keeping customers happy also means making the menu easy to digest. “Half of these words on the menu could definitely overwhelm someone,” says Tesch. “It can become a huge deal or decision and I just try to act more as a guide than a server.”

Appreciate the perks: Tesch enjoys the freedom her job allows her. “I can be a stay-at-home mom all day,” she says, “and then my husband can watch the kids for three hours a night while I work.” The idea of having a job that only allows two weeks of vacation a year “petrifies” Tesch. “If I wanted to take three months off to explore the hills of a foreign country, I can take a sabbatical.”

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