WILMINGTON-For those who regularly dine at the Maple Leaf Tavern, employees Analia Franco and Erick Mackay have become familiar faces.
Though it wasn't necessarily in either of their life plans to live in Vermont, both say they've found stability here thanks to the willingness of owner Sean Pusey to help them obtain visas to continue working at the restaurant at 3 North Main St.
Franco and Mackay hail from Paraguay and Honduras, respectively. They met while working at Mount Snow through separate visa programs. They each loved the area and wanted to get to know it better.
Franco said that during the 2023–2024 winter season, she decided she might be open to having a second part-time job, since the mountain was closed in the evenings. She was on a walk when she noticed that the Maple Leaf had a help wanted sign in its window.
She popped in and let the front of house manager know that she was interested and that she had experience - she'd worked as both a server and a bartender back home.
"He said, 'Do you want to stay here and train?' I said yes."
During that on-the-spot training, Franco called Mackay, who she knew was also considering taking on a second job. She told him to come right away, and he did. By the next day, he'd found a place at the restaurant as a line cook.
Mackay said he quickly discovered he liked the restaurant, in large part because everyone who worked there was respectful to him and to each other.
"Sean was great to me since the beginning," said Mackay. "Very respectful. Some places I've worked, people aren't respectful. Chefs can be angry. They're tired. It's the heat of the kitchen.
"An electrician likes being an electrician, but doesn't want to do it under the sun," he continued. "That's what happens in kitchens. I'm familiar with it. I'm not like that, but I know why it happens. But when I came here, the chef treated me with respect, Sean treated me with respect. It was different."
'We're doing the right thing'
The pair quickly became indispensable at the restaurant. Because each was there on a temporary visa, Pusey asked if they would be interested in continuing to work for him if he were to follow the appropriate channels to keep them in their positions legally.
Both enthusiastically agreed. Pusey engaged a lawyer to secure appropriate visas for them.
"He wanted to do the right thing, always," said Mackay of Pusey. "Myself as well - neither of us wanted to be caught in the middle of anything or whatever. We can freely speak about it, we're doing the right thing."
"We are so thankful to Sean," said Franco. "He trusts us to stay here. He gave us stability and a place to stay. He has been great to us."
"I'm very glad to be able to embrace this opportunity with these two employees," Pusey told The Deerfield Valley News. "Seeing motivated individuals looking for a greater good for themselves and the place they work for is, sadly, a rarity in this day and age. When you've got a diamond in the rough with people who are wanting to really be driven and succeed and also give back, it's pretty compelling."
Because Franco was initially in the valley on a J-1 visa, a student visa that allows international students to work during a school break, she had to return to Paraguay until her new visa was secured.
When she returned, she began training as a bartender, which she found was very different than bartending was back home. For example, she said, at home, patrons don't expect to talk to the bartender. In America, bartending is a very social task.
"I didn't like it at first, because I was like, 'Ah, I'm not good talking to people,'" she said.
However, she's grown to love the post and the access it gives her to conversations with patrons, whom she's grown to enjoy getting to know and learning about the area from. She also loves working alongside people who have lived in the area for a long time.
'People like my food'
In addition to bartending, Franco works as a line cook and assists Mackay with presentations, preparations, and recipe replication.
As a culinary artist, Mackay is encouraged to make cultural contributions to the workplace as part of his visa. It's a call he's embraced fully. He's excitedly introducing new menu items all the time, all of which are inspired by the cuisine he learned to cook in his earliest days as a cook at home with his mother and grandmother.
New dishes Mackay has introduced at the Maple Leaf include pork belly sliders with a sour slaw, conch soup, and empanadas made with corn instead of flour so they're gluten free.
Mackay said that visiting with patrons when he can and hearing that they enjoy his food has been the most fulfilling part of his journey working at the restaurant so far.
"People like my food, and at the end of the day, that's the satisfaction I get," he said. "When I was a kid and I started cooking, my mom would say, 'Don't do it like this, do it like this.' I got it better and better and then she started to give me complements.
"That fulfilled me. I feel like that's when I really started liking how to cook. I wanted to do something better and give something better to my dad and to my mom," Mackay continued. "Now, to do it at this stage, it's even better."
He said it "feels really good when you see people so happy with the food, with the service, and everything."
"We really appreciate Sean and what he's doing," Mackay said. "He's doing this for us, and we really try to be here for him. If someone is sick, we're here. We're trying to stay open every single day no matter what so we can be consistent with the business. We're trying to do everything right so we can do it better for him."
A version of this story appeared in The Deerfield Valley News, The Commons' sister newspaper.
This News item by Lauren Harkawik originally appeared in The Deerfield Valley News and was republished in The Commons with permission.