And he always listens to what they need and puts them first, even if that means covering a shift behind the bar himself if multiple people need the day off. Joey Carzo One of Carzo's employees, Tiffany Pence, a bar lead and key server who has known him for 16 years and was the first to train him when he initially started moonlighting at Outback says he “is absolutely all about his people.” He “just creates this energy in the restaurant that’s positive and everybody wants to help him because he’s always helping them," she adds.įor instance, she says, Carzo invites staff with nowhere else to go to his house for Thanksgiving. Every day I wake up to take care of people.” When asked via Zoom what it was like to win the award, Carzo replies, “To me, it meant everything I am to my core. “I tell my team all the time they’re the ones who make me look so good,” Carzo says. “Talking to people and really bringing people together is my thing,” he says, and he couldn’t do that in a typical 9-to-5 job.Ĭarzo also was quick to give credit to his employees, including senior manager Cesar Jacabo, operations managers Rob Riesgo and Tyler Randall, shift lead Zach Keeler and all of the region's managing partners and managers. After reaching that goal in 2016, Carzo rose to managing partner at the Metrocenter location in 2018 before returning to the Surprise location in 2021. He called Outback and told them he wanted to become a manager. “I looked at her and said, ‘I quit,’” he recalls. Then in 2015, he recalls a time when he returned to his full-time job after a vacation and his boss didn’t say hello or ask him how the trip went, she just asked if he knew how much she had to do while he was gone. At one point, he and his brother, sister, sister-in-law and cousin all worked for the Outback in Surprise making it truly a family affair. He started at Outback in 2007 because he wanted a part-time gig in addition to his day job and his brother worked there. “It taught me from a very young age that you have to work hard to have what you want in life.”Īnd although the phrase “we’re all a family here” might be a workplace cliche, he insists it’s true for him, both literally and figuratively.Ĭarzo previously worked other jobs, including in banking and as a buyer for a manufacturing company. “My dad has always worked and he has always held down these jobs that have taken care of the family through the roughest of times,” Carzo says. Throughout his upbringing in an Italian family in upstate New York, Carzo's parents and grandparents instilled in him a passion for hospitality and a strong work ethic. He’s a managing partner working toward becoming a joint venture partner for Out West Restaurants - the parent company for Outback Steakhouse franchises in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada - and he's spent nearly 17 years with the company. From a field of 220 nominations, the finalists for manager of the year were whittled down to Carzo, Elsie Lee of The Vig-Fillmore and Gerardo Sanabria of LON’s at the Hermosa Inn.īut Carzo is not just a cog in a corporate machine. Typically, many of the honors are bestowed upon independent restaurants and bars or homegrown hospitality groups. At the Arizona Restaurant Association’s Foodist Awards on April 24, among the accolades was a somewhat unlikely winner: Joey Carzo of Outback Steakhouse in Surprise was named restaurant manager of the year.
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