During any visit to The Swizzle South Shore, you’re sure to come across the friendly, smiling face of Stanford Bradshaw, the manager of the newly renovated pub and restaurant.

“I’ve been with the company since it opened, and I’m having a great time,” he says.

With over three decades of experience in the service industry, mostly in the United States, when Mr. Bradshaw returned to the Island a few years ago but decided he needed a change of pace from the hospitality industry.

But the industry is in his blood and hanging out one evening, he got into a conversation that would give him the opportunity to get back on board.

“(Paw Paw’s) used to be my favourite place to hang out,” he says. “One night I started chatting with the bartender and mentioned I wanted to get back into the business and he suggested I talk to the owner because they were hiring.”

After a long conversation with Mr. Correia, it became apparent the two had similar views on the way things should be run and managed: “We both felt that team meant ‘together everyone achieves more’.”

Emphasis was placed by both on putting together a solid team, because as Mr. Bradshaw puts it, when you work in a food service environment, you tend to spend more time there than you do with your own family.

“We look for those persons with the right kind of personality,” he says. “And the change was almost seamless for the old staff from Paw Paws — the transition was great.

“The other thing we needed was for them to be interchangeable. If we need staff from (Bailey’s Bay) up here or staff from here down there, it should be no problem.

“As the season goes on, sometimes people will find they get stuck in a routine and it can become mundane. You don’t want it to be robotic so we try to keep it fresh and exciting.”

Before returning to his passion, Mr. Bradshaw made the unlikely decision to open an alternative education school for young men. What would make someone with decades of experience leave their life’s work to enter all new territory?

“My nephews were coming out of middle school and they didn’t want to go to high school,” he says. “Talking with my brother, we said ‘How do we get them beyond this?’

“And that’s when we decided to do something to get them ‘beyond this’.”

They closed the doors of their clothing store, E42 Menswear on St. Monica’s Road, and turned the location into Beyond This Alternative School for boys, aged 14-18. The school focused on a GED programme that would help the boys earn their equivalency in two years. “With programmes designed to fit their individual needs and help them with college placements.

“We were successful with the clothing store but the need to be of service in the community was more important than selling clothes to them,” he says. “But by selling them clothes I got a chance to talk to the youth. I like the youth — they’re honest, untainted by life. If you want to know the truth, ask a young person.”

Although Mr. Bradshaw readily admits that the restaurant business is his first love, he said it’s a ‘transferable skill’: “Managing a restaurant and teaching people how to earn a living are similar.”

His advice for younger generations: “I think they should take a good look at being in the hospitality business, although I’m proud to say we have a great deal.

“But for us to endure, maybe they should be looking into the smaller restaurants if hotels are too big. A place like Swizzle is a great place for them to start, and we can’t do anything but get bigger.”