Veteran waiter David Hayden took off his apron for the last time

Waiters and waitresses leave the restaurant industry all the time. Serving just isn’t perceived as a career — or at least a professional career — in the United States (unlike Europe), but more of a steppingstone job until something better comes along. (Believe me, I know this from personal experience.) But David Hayden, who may be Kansas City’s best-known waiter, finally made the decision to take off his apron for good last night after 20 years on the floor, the last three at the Majestic Restaurant.

Hayden’s celebrity status comes from publishing his own training manual for servers, Tips Squared, now in its eighth printing; his five blogs about the hospitality industry; and his awards: Pitch readers voted him “Best Waiter” in the Readers’ Choice poll for the 2010 “Best of Kansas City” issue, and the staff voted him “Most Ambitious Server” in 2011 and “Best Server” the following year. 

“I was down to two shifts a week,” Hayden says, “and I still enjoyed it a lot, but my other business was taking more and more of my time.”

Hayden’s other business is Hospitality Formula Consulting, which he started three years ago as a sideline venture, but his ability to create website design and online marketing campaigns for both restaurants and non-culinary clients took off in a big way. “I’m also a consultant to new restaurants who need help training their staffs.”

One of Hayden’s non-restaurant clients is the Iowa-based Up Down arcade and bar, which is launching its first Kansas City location in the former Hamburger Mary’s space at 101 Southwest Boulevard. Hayden has been a contract consultant for the company, but will handle public relations and marketing for the Kansas City location when it opens in March.

The 39-year-old Hayden says that over the last two decades, he worked as both server and manager in 13 different restaurants, beginning with his first gig at the original 54th Street Grill in Gladstone.

“I didn’t fall in love with the profession immediately,” Hayden says. “I’m really a fairly introverted person — it takes a lot for me to go out and be social — so I had to learn a lot about myself to go up to tables of complete strangers and make a connection.”

For a lot of servers, the chance to finally say sayonara to waiting tables is a happy moment, but Hayden says it was a bittersweet choice.

“I really liked serving,” Hayden says. “And it’s nice to know that I could always go back and do it again.”