If you’re looking for one of the best Tenders in the LA area, Ira Peppers is the man to start with. Ira consistently gets asked back by clients for his exemplary work ethic, promptness, and communication skills. He has been ‘favorited’ by five clients to date in the Inland Empire and around the Los Angeles area. Over his Tender career Ira has worked over 145 shifts with Tend. We asked Ira how he is able to maintain such a consistently good relationship with all sorts of clients and cool events he works with Tend. Below are a few anecdotes of his time with Tend.
“I’ve built a good relationship and a lot of times with certain locations the clients like the consistency with particular people. They show us different systems so when you bring in the same person we are able to work a little more efficiently. Plus, the things that they like that I do is being there on time, staying a little longer, being a good team player ~ those were kind of the skills that they liked a lot.”
Ira works on the Tend app with a number of clients in different positions and capacities. He works as a bartender and server for high end events. Ira enjoys working these types of shifts on the weekends and in his words this is because, “[he] likes to work at night because of the vibe … I like to serve or bartend because I like that environment.” Ira walked me through one of his event weekends with Tend and mentioned that the clients remarked on his flexibility, “One weekend, I was working all three days. I worked the first two days as a server, then the last day I was working as a bartender. They had a little bit of a different appreciation for me once they saw I was a bartender as well. They were like why didn’t you tell us?” “Oh! You’re a server today, oh you’re a bartender today, it’s always been enjoyable working different types of events.” Ira is able to provide any customer service to our clients and we are grateful for his versatility and personality.
Ira maintains good relationships with his clients and he explains “I still keep in contact with them and they call me to see how I’m doing, they reach out to me and if they need me they know I’m available. I can’t say I’ve had an experience with Tend where I was like nah I’ll never go back there. You guys ask for a job, I come to do a job. At the end of the day, I just try to do my job, and stay consistent on the reason why I’m there.”
Ira goes on to explain the complexity of trying to work with other clients and how he has realized that the hospitality industry in a given area is dominated by a few catering companies so if you’d like to work nearby, it’s best to keep high quality and trusted relationships with all the companies in your area. Ira expounds on his viewpoint, “Plus the thing too is that a lot of these companies you might say you don’t want to work for them, but you may go to a different shift and you will run into them again.”
When asked how he manages working with a new client or new site Ira advises “The kitchen is kind of territorial, but the common denominator is that they’re willing to teach you. As long as you know what you’re doing and are willing to learn, they’re the best.”
We asked Ira why he got interested in working with Tend and found that the time flexibility was a major contributing factor. Ira recounted “The main reason I got into gig work was the time with my kids. If I work in a regular restaurant, and I let them know I can only work certain weekends, that’s not gonna fly. I need something that gives me that flexibility to where I can create the schedule and still be able to put the work in but also have that time with my family.”
The Tender community has also been a place Ira has found camaraderie and talent. “You run into a lot of the same people on different Tend jobs. We might’ve been working together as cooks and then the next event as servers. When you see someone you know is working there, you get a little more comfortable. You know that you can bust the work out and make it an easy shift when you know who you’re working with.”
We always want to know your “why” when you work with Tend. For Ira, he earns for his family so he can spend time and enjoy helping his kids grow up. When I asked him about how he spends his free time he gushed about his children “pretty much just hanging out with the kids - either my daughter has singing, or my son has basketball. You know just watching sports with them, watching them grow… they’re evolving right now, turning into themselves, they’re at an age where they’re still very receptive. You want to let them turn into who they’re gonna be.” Needless to say throughout our conversation my respect for Ira only grew the more I heard about his life and why he chooses to work with Tend.
What’s Ira’s best Tend memory you might inquire? Ira recalled “I worked [for a client] during Christmas and the district manager came in. The manager was passing around gift cards and they gave me one and said ‘you’re like an employee here Ira so we wanted to give you a gift card as well.’ I just try to make sure that anywhere I go I take care of my business because chances are I’m going to run into them again. We can always have another opportunity to connect and build. There’s networking too that happens inside of these companies too because they talk amongst each other like ‘Ira Peppers, yeah hire him’.” We salute Ira Peppers for all he does for Tend and the Tender community. We cannot wait to continue growing with Ira and staffing him on rewarding shifts throughout his Tend tenure.
