Aja Beard

Aja Beard is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Ask Aja Restaurant Consulting. Their mission is to provide restaurateurs with the fundamentals for long term success. A.A.R.C. provides business coaching, health inspection preparation, ServSafe Food Safety Management training and industry specific webinars on food cost, labor cost and budgeting. Aja is a native Angeleno and a UNLV Rebel. She has been in the hospitality industry for 26 years; 18 of those years were spent managing and opening new restaurants. Her industry experience includes fine dining, quick service, catering, banquets, food trucks and cottage food licensing. She spent 14 years in Las Vegas and assisted with opening the fine-dining restaurant Sensi at the Bellagio Hotel and Resort. She was the Hotel Manager at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino and later took on the role of Food Service Director for United Healthcare's corporate café with Aramark and Compass. While living in LA she opened Boca, a fine-dining restaurant at The Conga Room in LA Live and was the General Manager of The Lab Gastropub, part of USC Hospitality. Aja's company partners with small business development centers to bring restaurant-based training and business coaching to startup food-based businesses. In 2020 she assisted PCR SBDC with creating a Restaurant Academy which features 8 rotating workshops every month that focus on food-based businesses. In 2022, she created Food Service University at Vermont Slauson Economic Development Center. This cohort style training provided students with 7 weeks of industry training that culminates to a graduation “pop-up” featuring a live launch of their business. You can also find her teaching Restaurant Start up classes for LACC as well as a frequent panelist on multiple food industry platforms.