Meet new Pounders General Manager, Greg Maples:

Greg Maples, who joined the Polynesian Cultural Center management team on August 1 as General Manager of Pounders Restaurant in the Hukilau Marketplace, brings extensive experience in the food and beverage industry.

Maples, who is originally from southern California, served in Kaneohe in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves years ago and has been back to Hawaii multiple times since as a visitor. After studying at Rick’s College and Utah Valley University, he and his family settled in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985 where he started working in the food industry and eventually owned 80 Sonic Drive-Ins. He and his wife, Trish, have six children and six grandchildren.

After selling their businesses, he and his wife lived their “dreams” for two years — he became a sheriff’s deputy, and she a hair stylist — before moving to Las Vegas where he most recently served as Chief Operations Officer for Curry Development, overseeing 196 Subway and Winchell’s Donuts outlets while she became a top stylist at The Wynn.

“Around the beginning of June 2016 we started having the feeling that we needed to do something different. We didn’t know what it was. We felt like something needed to happen, and I actually quit my job with nothing to go to,” he continued. One Wednesday soon after, an email message popped up on his phone. It was PCC President and CEO Alfred Grace, whom he had spoken to briefly when his parents, Elder and Sister Joe and Janice Maples, served at the Center three years earlier as senior volunteers.

Maples was prompted to send Grace an email, asking if he had anything for him to do. Grace emailed right back and told him, “I think I might have something, but I’m not sure if you’re interested.” Grace handed him over to Eric Workman, who oversees Pounders Restaurant, and who suggested he visit the Center again.

Maples was prompted to not wait, and flew over that Sunday night with his wife; but by the following Wednesday morning, he woke up with high anxiety, wondering why the COO of multi-million operations would come to Laie to run a restaurant.

“What am I doing? What am I thinking?” he asked himself. “Mentally I was thinking, I just can’t do this to my family and my wife.”

He had decided not to accept an offer on the morning of his last day in Laie, when Workman asked him to talk to Grace one more time. Before Maples could say he wasn’t coming, Grace related the PCC’s “back story” of the historical and spiritual significance of the Laie community, and the Center’s mission to help BYU–Hawaii students complete their education and return to their homelands “ready to hit the ground running.”

“In my mind I saw this vision of these students that I was going to be working with. I saw me training them and mentoring them, and seeing them in the future,” Maples said, “and it was all happening while Grace was still talking. That’s when my ‘testimony of the PCC’ came. When he asked me at the end, what do you think, I said I’m in.”

“My wife had received the same feelings, so we sold everything in Las Vegas and moved here.” She is two semesters from completing her online bachelor’s degree at BYU Idaho, and has set up a small hair salon at their home in Punaluu. Son Zack, who served a mission in Tahiti and was studying at BYU Idaho, gladly came with them.

Two months later, Maples has found that Pounders Restaurant “is a beautiful facility. There’s no reason why we can’t meet our goals, [but] I told Eric [Workman] we have to be consistent. Let’s find our niche and do that.”

“I can’t say enough good about what Losa Moors (the previous manager) and Fifita Unga (PCC VP of Food and Beverage) were doing running it. To go from a food and beverage buffet to a full-service restaurant is like as night and day as you can get, but they did a very good job. I give them a lot of credit.”

“The first thing I have done is focus on staffing, and properly training them. It’s interesting, as we started to get our staffing ‘legs’ underneath us, our numbers have significantly increased over the prior year, and we haven’t done any other changes yet.”

Maples pointed out that Pounders has only had two chefs since it opened about a year-and-a-half ago; and for now, with the help of Elder Jean Seiler, a senior service missionary who used to run the food operation at Ruby’s Inn in Bryce Canyon National Park, he’s looking at “cosmetic” menu changes.

“The current menu doesn’t tell guests what’s in our products,” Maples said, adding that Elder Seiler, who has become his “right-hand man,” has developed a menu with pictures and better product descriptions, “so servers won’t have to explain every single thing.”

Maples has also pumped up Aunty Emily’s Polynesian Bakery, which is located inside Pounders Restaurant: “Now everything that’s in there is made fresh daily on site, and we’ll continue to bring in fresh product.” He’s also working with daytime bus tours, getting some of them to pre-order so they can eat lunch as soon as they arrive at Pounders.

Meanwhile, Maples said Pounders’ “Korean kalbi [Korean-style grilled ribs], with ‘ulu [breadfruit] mash and a tropical side salad is by far our number-one seller; and our mango mascarpone [an Italian cream cheese] is our most popular pizza. We also make a really delicious rib-eye steak. After that, our katsu [Japanese-style deep-fried chicken slices] and garlic shrimp are incredible.”

Maples said a guest recently told him, “Our menu has a little bit of local, a little bit of normal, and you hit the sweet spot in the middle. For example, we have the Loco Moco Burger, which is gigantic.” A popular local Hawaii dish, Loco Moco starts with rice, with a hamburger and fried egg on top plus brown gravy.

Maples said he and his team will continue to “fine-tune the Pounders menu” as they monitor guest response, “but we’re not going to escape from who we are and what’s working. I believe guests want consistency. They want to come in and get great chef-quality food served by our wonderful BYU–Hawaii students. We couldn’t do it without the students. I believe they bring a spirit to this place that you can’t get anywhere else.”

“I tell people who ask me, I work in paradise, I live in paradise, and the people I work with came from paradise,” Maples said. He added it’s been a “long time since I’ve worked on my feet so much, but I’ve got to tell you I’ve never had so much fun. It’s a blessing to be here every single day, and to be around everybody.”

For more PCC October 2016 news, CLICK HERE