We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angela Winston a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?

I’ve had many jobs in many different industries, because I always got bored and wanted to try something new. My parents always came down on me for this, because in their generation, you got a job and stuck with it for decades to move up in that one industry. I just couldn’t find an industry or type of work I really loved. Because of moving around to different jobs/industries, I learned a ton of different skills from many different people that has helped me get to where I am today.
I’ve had many jobs in the restaurant/service industry, and that has helped me deal with different situations with customers and customer service.
I took a huge pay cut to work in an office at a flower farm in Hawaii, to get out of the service industry, and was moved up to management pretty quickly and had to teach myself how to do bookkeeping skills such as A/R, A/P, payroll, scheduling, invoicing, etc.
I worked as a project manager for a web development company. This taught me to be uber detail oriented with the smallest of details, and how to manage projects wisely and efficiently.
I worked for a small airline consulting company. This taught me how to efficiently use spreadsheets and how to organize multiple projects down to the most minute detail.

These are just a handful of my jobs I’ve had in my life, and each and every one of them has given me skills and taught me lessons that I use every day in my own business. I’m forever grateful for all of my past jobs, even the ones I hated or found extremely boring, because they set me up for where I am now.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My husband and I own a restaurant in Salida, CO. We opened it in the height of the pandemic in August of 2020. So far, the restaurant has been pretty successful. Successful in the fact that we are still operating, we are still growing, and the locals and tourists love what we’re doing. We are one of the busiest restaurants in town, and we proudly host live music as well.
We are most proud of building this business together, for the community, and hope we thrive for many more years to come.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We’ve had to pivot many times due to staffing shortages, that are being caused by the affordable housing crisis, that is plaguing many mountain towns in Colorado, and all over the Rocky Mountains. Because of this we have had to change our hours of operation, many times. This is frustrating to us, because we like to be consistent for the public, but we also know that this is a very weird time for staffing, and that the public should be aware of this.
At the end of the day, there isn’t much we can do, if we don’t have staffing or we don’t want to stretch our staff too thin.
There are many restaurants in our town that are stretching their staff too thin, and you can feel it when you eat there. We want to consistently give great service, AND take care of our employees, so we choose to stack our staff comfortably, and edit our hours around that.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We don’t have a HUGE social media presence, by any means, but we do have a bigger presence because I consistently post our specials and events. To be honest, I don’t like social media. I find it an absolute pain, because I have to do it daily, but I do post daily because we have people that look at it daily specifically for our specials and events. This has brought in many people on a consistent basis, which has helped out business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.HighSideSalida.com
• Instagram: @high_side_bar_and_grill
• Facebook: @HighSideSalida