Nov. 3, 2021

This paid piece is sponsored by Vanguard Hospitality.

Come for dinner at Morrie’s Steakhouse, and you might find Anastasia Morgan behind the host stand.

Or you might find her circulating in the dining room.

Or behind the bar.

Or anywhere she’s needed to keep the evening flowing smoothly.

“I am a ‘Jill of all trades,’” said Morgan, who joined the Vanguard Hospitality team in 2019.

But the best part of this dining room manager’s job is making “guests feel like they’re gold,” she said. “That’s one of my favorite parts about my job. I get to help people relax and enjoy themselves.”

Morgan has lived in more places than she has years. While she turns 30 this month, she was born in Germany and has lived in 36 different places thanks to her father’s career as a military chaplain.

She came to Sioux Falls after her freshman year of college because her parents had moved here. They moved again. But she has never left.

“My career is here. My boyfriend is here. My friends are here. So I don’t have any plans on leaving now,” she said. “And my parents are actually moving back to Sioux Falls in January, so I’m very excited about that.”

Her restaurant career began in Wisconsin, where she went to high school and began as a host and then a server at Buffalo Wild Wings. She transferred to the Sioux Falls location when she moved here and then left the industry for five years, working for American Airlines.

“I missed the restaurant community, missed the people, missed the money, so I got back into serving,” she said. It meant going back to Buffalo Wild Wings and then the Crow Bar, where she bartended for many years, before finding her way to Vanguard Hospitality.

She began working shifts at both Grille 26 and Morrie’s, “so I would serve in the morning at Grille 26 and go straight to Morrie’s at 4 p.m. to host, and I just kind of snowballed from there,” she said.

She was named the dining room manager in August 2020.

“Vanguard is probably one of the most down-to-earth companies to work for,” she said. “They’re unbelievably supportive, and they are the kind of people that you pride yourself to be able to work for.”

The “level of humanity” at Vanguard stands out in her industry, Morgan said.

“Tim (Meagher) and Ken (Bashore) are unbelievably supportive. They’re always here, which is insane for owners to be in a building every day,” she said. “And especially now that I’ve transitioned into management, anytime I need something I text, call, email, smoke signal, whatever, and they are immediately responding. It’s incredible how supportive and real and human they are.”

Are you ready to grow your career at Vanguard Hospitality? Stop in any Vanguard location – Grille 26, Minervas in downtown Sioux Falls or Morrie’s Steakhouse – and the team will get you connected.