Mark Freeman, senior manager of services at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond Wash., caught the foodservice bug early on while working at a local restaurant in high school. Since then his skills have been honed at pizza parlors, colleges and B&I locations, as both operations manager and client liason.
“I really got my start in high school. I worked at a local restaurant, which is now a historical site, called Spar Café. They had the reputation for the strongest coffee in town. It was a mashed potatoes and gravy kind of place at that point. I started doing dishes there while I was in high school and eventually I moved to working the pantry making salads, which was a big deal at the time. I also worked as a cook during my time there. I kind of got the bug at that point.
I continued to work in restaurants, in front- and back-of-the-house positions, when I was in college. I went to Washington State University for three years in its hotel and restaurant program. During that time I worked at a local pizza parlor called Pizza Pete. At one point I actually quit school because I decided I was going to get rich making pizzas, which didn’t happen. I had a fantastic manager who was a great salesman. I worked my way through the ranks from pizza maker to chef to assistant manager to manager. I was on kind of the fast track, so it seemed like the next step would be to own my own restaurant. It was one of those soul-searching things that I got into. I never did end up opening my own restaurant, but that was a good thing because it turned out it really wasn’t what I wanted to be doing.
I decided to go back to school and get my degree and see what the world had for me. I
went to Evergreen State College in Olympia. Looking back, it was the right decision because that pizza chain is out of business now. After I got my degree I needed to get a job, so I applied at the college foodservice at Evergreen, which was run by Saga at the time. They hired me, and I started feeding college kids, mainly around the Northwest.
For me, foodservice is intriguing. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to have everything be the same in my life. With foodservice you deal with the public so no day is ever the same as the last. When I was feeding college kids this was especially true because they are pretty creative.
Eventually when I had a family, business and industry was looking pretty good because you only serve two meals a day. So I switched and went into B&I and ran an American Express account in Salt Lake City. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven.
I started out as a chef so I have a few dishes I really enjoy making. I worked in a natural foods restaurant as the chef and introduced a few vegetarian dishes that were pretty good, mostly made with beans and tofu. I have a legendary enchilada dish that I make at home that is a real hit when we have guests over.”