Why I Hire Foreigners Over Nigerians to Manage My Lagos Restaurant - Tracy Nwapa

It is something that I've been definitely noticing a lot more of and I'm happy to hear one business person's reasoning on why this is the case. If you go to a lot of high-end restaurants or businesses in town, you'll notice that while a lot of the staff are Nigerian, the management positions are usually filled with expatriates (i.e. foreigners).

I have always been curious about why this is the case and now during a conversation with Lilian Afegbai on Lilian's Couch, business owner and media personality Tracy Nwapa opened up about why this is the case for her in her own restaurant, Slice. She didn't just talk about though, she also talked about how she establishes a work/life balance and how she optimizes productivity of staff. Here's what Tracy said.

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Speaking about having a balance between her work life and personal life, Tracy said:

First of all, it's not balanced. It's wobbly. It's all going to the left right now. For a new child (her restaurant Spice is new), when you have a new baby, your attention goes 100% to it. Like, my personal life is suffering. My social life is suffering. But it's just the sacrifice to get it to where I need to be. Hospitality business especially in this country is very very tedious. You have to be hands on. You have to be involved, at least to set a standard. And then hopefully you have strong hands that can carry it on for you. But it's going to take me about a year or a year and a half because I talked to other restaurant owners asking them "how long does it take for you to back off?" and usually it's one year, one year plus. You cant be a madam, you need to be there and set a standard. And I want it to be a place where anybody who lives all over the world, in Dubai, in London, they come here and there's that standard.

Speaking about why her managers are foreigners and how she optimizes staff performance, Tracy said:

With staff, my managers are expatriates (foreigners) so every department head is an expatriate because I just feel like while I'm trying to empower, I feel like we still have a lot to learn. So why not work with expats who can now teach and then with time. Because I'm a very firm believer in local content but I just feel like in this industry, hospitality business, a lot of the Lebanese, Indians, they kind of have it on lock so I'd rather get the expats to train us. Cuz a lot of times we don't really know what we're doing. Like I had no experience in this. With the youth and staff, my goal is to empower them. I want to give them an opportunity, and there are good people out there. I try to motivate them. In Slice, I have 62 people working for me that I have to manage. What I do is every month, I give an award to the best maybe 10 staff in each department. If at the end of the month, I'm saying that you get 10k or 5k for being the best staff in your department, and you get a certificate, and it's hung on the wall with your picture, and we're celebrating you, who doesn't want to be celebrated? So if you want to be celebrated, you'll do your best because there are perks. Who doesn't like money? Who no like better thing? So when I do that, I see that there is an increase in performance and it makes them want to do better.

Hmmm. Interesting. So this is why Tracy hires expats in managerial positions. I'm guessing this is also why a lot of other businesses do it too. What do you think about that? Cuz I'm not really sure how I feel about it but I want to hear your thoughts first.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment either below or on my Jide Okonjo Facebook post.

That's All.

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