John T Self

John Self spent 16 years in restaurant management at several restaurant chains, was vice president of a regional restaurant chain, and owned three independent restaurants and a comedy club. After 16 years in the restaurant industry, he went back to school, got a masters and Ph.D., and taught hospitality management at the University of Alabama, Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and then settled in at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) where I am Professor Emeritus. John has taught hospitality management internationally at universities in Xian and Dalian, China and was a Fulbright Scholar in Helsinki, Finland at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. INVITED INTERNATIONAL KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS: • "Why restaurants fail," at GastroPRO, The Future of Hospitality, in March 2014 in Helsinki, Finland. GastroPRO is the educational arm of Gastro Helsinki, the foodservice conference for Nordic and Scandinavian countries. • "Becoming a better restaurant manager," Tallinn, Estonia for restaurant managers, December 2014. John was a guest on KPCC Southern California Public Radio on restaurants and the economic recovery and was one of the featured consultants in the Los Angeles Times series Small Business Makeover. John has many academic presentations and has published his research on turnover and restaurant failure in such journals as the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education, and the Journal of Foodservice Business Research. John gives workshops and presentations about helping new managers accelerate their careers. TMI author bio In his spare time, John loves international travel, reading post-apocalyptic and science fiction, is a private pilot with instrument rating, flying radio control airplanes, and ham radio. Likes: Cold pork and beans, cold apple pie, comedy, trivia, humor, bad jokes, pets, college football, and Morgan automobiles. Dislikes: the color yellow, restaurants that pick up dirty plates but not the dirty silverware, and really dislikes that Pluto is not a planet anymore.