A Toast to Tlayudas, Beach Shacks and Business School with Amanda Wilson from Tortazo

Tortazo is a fast-casual Mexican concept by 7-time James Beard award-winning Chef Rick Bayless with locations in New York and Illinois. The up-and-coming Mexican restaurant brings authentic Mexican cooking to the U.S. with bold flavors and high-quality ingredients, highlighting Mexico’s favorite sandwich, the Torta.

At Toast, we create technology to help restaurants thrive. We also know it takes a team of hardworking people from front to back of house to power great hospitality experiences every day. The “Toast to…” series salutes those individuals and gets to the heart of what makes this industry so special. We sat down with Tortazo’s Vice President of Food and Beverage, Amanda Wilson, to talk about her pivot from college to culinary school, her passion for the business side of hospitality, and balancing growth with quality.

Tell me about yourself and what led you to the restaurant industry.

I’m the Vice President of Food and Beverage at Tortazo and have been here for about two years now. My first food-service job, though, was in my hometown in Connecticut. There was a local deli, called Uncle’s Deli, that opened up a beach shack in the summer that serves burgers and hotdogs. I was on the beach all day searing burgers and hotdogs. I loved it, and I worked as a cashier in the deli during the school year. I sometimes joke that this is how I want to end my career, too—flipping burgers at the beach shack. 

I majored in business in college, knowing I wanted to be in restaurants in some capacity. During college, I worked in hotels to build up that experience. I was about to pursue a master’s in hospitality when I decided to move back to New York City to go to culinary school at the Institute of Culinary Education instead.

Wow! That’s a big shift. What inspired you to make that decision?

It was very random that I did that—my family isn’t in the restaurant business and I didn’t have that experience growing up cooking with my mom or grandma that a lot of chefs talk about as part of their journey. I just knew I wanted to do something in restaurants and someone along the way told me that whether or not you’re a chef, you need to understand how a kitchen operates because it’s the backbone of a restaurant. So I took that advice and figured I’d cook for a few years here, but my plan was always to return to front-of-house operations. I cooked at Union Square Cafe and Daily Provisions, both of which are part of Danny Meyer’s group, and ended my time there as Director of Culinary Provisions. I never left cooking. I love being in the kitchen, and I love the craziness of it.

Tell me about Tortazo and your day-to-day work there.

Tortazo is a Mexican restaurant by Chef Rick Bayless. We’re focused on the torta sandwich, but we have a variety of other dishes like tacos, quesadillas, soups, and salads. Our goal is to bring authentic Mexican flavors to the U.S. under Tortazo, we also have the Tortas Frontera brand, which is well known at Chicago O’Hare, and a restaurant in Disney World called Frontera Cocina. I’m on a small team trying to grow the Tortazo brand nationwide.

As VP of Food and Beverage, I make sure food and beverage is made consistently across all markets. We’re in Chicago, New York City, Florida, and Las Vegas. I travel a lot and I do anything from work on menu development with Chef Rick, to costing strategy, kitchen design, training…really all operations. My day-to-day is always a little different. I’m working in the kitchen less than I was in my old job, and my main focus right now is creating systems that make our business more efficient, help us be a successful brand, and allow us to grow this restaurant.  

It can be hard to juggle all the different aspects of my job—from making sure our existing stores are functioning well to working on new openings simultaneously, all the while balancing other projects too. Because we’re such a small company, I feel like I actually make decisions that create change  and see them all the way through. For example, I’m currently working on a project that’s redoing all of our packaging for our to-go orders, and it’s cool to know that my decisions will impact how tortas are packaged for takeout.

How do you use technology at work?

I work with our VP of Ops on menu builds in Toast so the food is presented to our guests in the right way. For example, we tweaked our menu to position side dishes as modifiers for guests. It’s helped to boost our sales!

I've also seen a decline in food made incorrectly after we switched to Toast on our KDS screens.  We highlight modifications for the cooks so it's easier to read during a busy service.  

And what’s your favorite thing on the menu?

It’s only available at our New York location, but my favorite dish is the tlayuda which is a very authentic Oaxacan dish. We import the actual tlayuda, which is a giant corn masa tostada, directly from Oaxaca. Some high-end Mexican restaurants make them, but we think there’s something special about importing the ones made in Oaxaca. The soil in Oaxaca makes them unique and impossible to replicate. 

This interview was edited for space and clarity.

Amanda Wilson is the Vice President of Food and Beverage at Tortazo. To learn more about the restaurant or to book a table, you can visit their website, or follow them on Instagram.