Jim MacNeill

Early Years

The line work and floor work came first. Before ownership, Jim MacNeill moved through the unglamorous parts of restaurant labor: pot scrubbing, service, bar management, and the daily discipline of keeping a room running. The progression ran through physical labor and front-facing service before any title at the top of the operation.

Making a Name

General manager is the position that puts someone at the operational center of a restaurant, and that is where Jim MacNeill stood before the business became his. The move from general manager to owner marked the central shift in the arc. It kept him tied to the Wells dining room rather than separating him from it.

The Present

Ownership currently sits with Jim MacNeill at the Wells restaurant. Shipping food around the country is one of the defining parts of the operation. That extends the restaurant beyond the people who walk in Wells and sends its food to customers ordering from across the United States. The present scale is both local and national: a Wells owner whose path ran from pot scrubber to server to bar manager to general manager, now responsible for a business whose food travels well beyond the room.

In Their Words “From a mathematical perspective, the increased earnings do not make sense.”