Texas raised.
Hospitality built.
I didn't choose hospitality. Hospitality chose me before I was old enough to have a say in it.
Growing up in Louisiana, my mother managed the bar at the Sheraton. My father co-founded a Mexican restaurant. My stepfather performed in a show band. Before I could drive, I already knew how to make pico de gallo, vacuum a dining room, and read a room. The business of hospitality — the energy of it, the craft of it, the way it lives at the intersection of food, music, and people — was just the water I swam in.
Most people who end up in this industry stumble into it. I was carried in by the people who raised me — and I never left.
That upbringing is still the foundation of everything I do. It's why I think about AI differently than a technologist would. I don't see systems and automation. I see a dining room, a team, a guest, and a problem to solve. The tools are just tools. The hospitality is the point.
Every role.
Every floor.
I started as a late-night host. Then I learned to bartend. Became a sommelier. Advanced through mixology, bar management, general management, managing partner, restaurateur. Every title was earned from the inside out — no shortcuts, no bypassed rungs.
That path matters because it means I've stood in every position on the org chart. I've been the host who didn't know how to handle a difficult table. The bartender managing a short-staffed Saturday night. The GM responsible for a P&L that didn't make sense until 2am when the numbers finally added up. The managing partner explaining to an owner why a decision I made cost us money.
I eventually found my home inside Verfurth Hospitality Group — a family of three sister properties in the area. I was GM at Lambeau's American Kitchen & Taps first. Then Shoal Creek Tavern for a year. Then, in March 2025, the ownership transferred me to Verf's Grill & Tavern with a simple mandate: get loud. Put Verf's on the map.
I walked in on day one and used AI to design a four-course Jameson Whiskey Dinner. It sold out. That was the beginning.
A parking lot.
A realization.
In the late summer of 2025, my partner and I came home from a trip — Amsterdam, Paris, London. Three cities in Europe with completely different relationships to hospitality, technology, and what a great experience feels like.
A few days after we landed, I was standing in the dining room at Verf's, staring out the window into the parking lot. I knew I needed to pivot. I didn't know where.
Earlier that year, I'd taken a Data Analytics certification at UT Austin — Power BI, data modeling, the foundations of turning raw information into something useful. That course had introduced me to the edge of what AI could do. I'd seen a glimpse of it. The glimpse hadn't left me.
Standing at that window, I decided to stop waiting for the pivot to find me and go find it myself.
In February 2026, I enrolled in online courses in prompt engineering and large language models. Then a Project Management certification at Duke. Then Deep Learning — the architecture of how AI actually thinks and processes. One course led to another and then it all clicked at once. Not gradually. All at once.
I saw exactly what AI could do inside a hospitality business — and exactly why no one else in the industry was doing it right. The technologists didn't understand the floor. The operators didn't understand the tools. I was standing in the middle of both worlds, and I realized that was the rarest possible place to be standing.
Electric Eel formed. I ran the pilot case study at Verf's. Built the systems in a live business, on real shifts, with a real team. The methodology that emerged from that pilot is what every Electric Eel engagement is built on today.
Still building.
In real time.
I am not a finished product. I am learning, building, consulting, and documenting — simultaneously, in public, in real time. The courses are ongoing. The systems at Verf's are live and evolving. The client roster is growing. The book about this journey is being written as the journey happens.
That's not a liability. That's the point. Every operator I work with is also figuring this out in real time — they don't need someone who has all the answers from a decade ago. They need someone who is actively navigating the same technology, right now, inside a live business, and can translate that into something actionable for theirs.
The AI Ambassador role at Verf's — a title I created and own, the first of its kind at Verfurth Hospitality Group — is not a side project. It is the laboratory. Every system I offer through Electric Eel was first built, tested, and refined there. Verf's is the proof. Every engagement that follows is a variation on what was built in that dining room.
The credential isn't a certification. It's a restaurant that runs better because of AI I built inside it.