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Do You Serve Food Here?

For most of his life, Rich Oettinger’s mother made a living either as a waitress or restaurant owner (server or restaurateur in modern lingo). Like any career serving the public, it involved an ever-changing cast of interesting—and sometimes irritating—characters, and their quips, comments and questions, painstakingly recorded on the pages of order pads over the course of decades, are compiled here in a hilarious book that will resonate with anyone who’s spent any amount of time working in the restaurant or hospitality industries.

Collected with loving care by her son, a restaurateur himself, it includes real quotes from real people met over the course of a decades-long career.

Rich Oettinger is the former co-owner of Fais Dos-Dos Hospitality, LLC, operator of Parish Public House, a restaurant, bar and live music venue in Albany, New York, where he now resides with his wife and daughter. He grew up in the Town of Catskill, in New York’s Hudson Valley, where his mother, Tina Oettinger, was the proprietor of the Kaaterskill Cafe, and later worked at her Kaaterskill business partner’s follow up venture, The Garden Gate Cafe. Rich has had a long career in marketing and advertising before, during and after his time served in the hospitality industry, primarily as a copywriter and editor, writing for such varied industries and topics as economic development, telecommunications, education, financial technology, entertainment, and nanotechnology. Contact him, preferably with commendations and offers of employment, below.

Photo by Tall Pines Photography (Insta: @tall_pines_photography_)