Most people imagine their dream career long before they ever live it. Andy Salas spent years building toward his — and then stumbled into it entirely by accident.
Today, the 42-year-old Filipino is the Group Hospitality Manager of Rosy Hospitality, the team behind some of Dubai’s most talked-about dining concepts: CQ French Brasserie, with locations in Mövenpick Hotel Jumeirah Lake Towers, Grand Millennium Barsha Heights, and Souq Al Bahar in Downtown Dubai; the Central American-inspired Girl & the Goose at Anantara Downtown; and Butter by the Dozen, spread across key spots in the city. He oversees the performance and direction of each brand — operations, finances, team development, and the kind of experience that makes a guest want to come back.
But none of this was planned.
A radio mic and a detour through training rooms
Before Dubai, before the brasseries and the boutique hotel dining rooms, Salas was a radio personality in the Philippines — juggling broadcast work alongside a full-time job, honing instincts he wouldn’t fully understand until years later.
“Those years played a big part in shaping my confidence and strengthening my ability to communicate, connect, and relate to people from all walks of life,” he says. It was unglamorous work in the way that formative work often is: loud, spontaneous, and quietly educational. After the mic, he moved into training and development, working with international businesses to sharpen their customer-facing operations.
Service excellence. Communication. Meaningful interactions. The vocabulary sounds like a hospitality manual now, but at the time, Salas was building a foundation without quite knowing what he was building it for.
In between, he took culinary classes — drawn by a long-held dream of opening a restaurant on a farm someday. “At the time, this was not directly aligned with my career,” he admits. “But it planted the seeds for what would become a lifelong passion.”
A layover that changed everything
He had flown in from Singapore, just passing through Dubai to see what the city was about. He wasn’t looking for a job. Then he walked into CQ French Brasserie.
“Meeting the owner and sharing my ideas for operations was a turning point,” Salas recalls. He started on the floor as part of the waitstaff. No fanfare, no shortcut — just a man with a background in radio and training manuals, learning the rhythms of a restaurant from the ground up. “From that moment, I immediately fell in love with the hospitality industry.”
That was over a decade ago. Dubai has been home ever since.
What he found in the industry wasn’t just a career pivot — it was a mirror for everything he’d already been doing. The radio work. The training rooms. The culinary evenings. All of it had been sharpening the same instinct: the ability to read a room, read a person, and make them feel something.
“I realized how much I enjoy meeting people, interacting with them, and creating memorable experiences,” he says. “That connection and energy is what makes this industry truly amazing.”
The first Filipino in the room
Salas went on to become the first Filipino Group Director for Operations of licensed venues in Dubai — a distinction he carries, as he puts it, “with both pride and responsibility.” He has since been recognized and nominated by respected organizations in the F&B industry, accolades that mean something but don’t define his measure of success.
What does? “Seeing team members grow, succeed, and support their families — whether here in the UAE or back home.”
His support system has been as crucial as his work ethic. When he first arrived in Dubai, Filipino friends helped him navigate the unfamiliar terrain of a new city. His boss, Ziad Kamel, and Kamel’s family became something closer to a second family. The pandemic — the test that broke many in hospitality — became a strange kind of proof. “Because we leaned on each other, we came out stronger,” he says.
His mother’s voice still echoes through the harder days. “No matter how big a problem is, there is always a solution.” It’s the kind of advice that sounds simple until you actually need it.
His personal mantra — constant and never-ending improvement — is less a motivational poster slogan and more a quiet daily discipline. It shows in how he talks about his team, about the business, about what he still wants to build.
Coming full circle
Salas is clear-eyed about where this chapter ends. He calls his time abroad “my first and last overseas experience in this industry” — not with resignation, but with intention. Everything he is doing now is, in his words, “with that purpose in mind: coming full circle and making it count back home.”
His plan is to return to the Philippines and build a business rooted in everything he’s learned — a venture in food and beverage that creates employment and opportunities for Filipinos in his community. The farm restaurant dream hasn’t gone anywhere.
For fellow Filipinos navigating life abroad, his advice is both practical and hard-won: “Stay patient, stay grounded, and build a strong support system.” He understands the weight of adjusting to a new culture, the anxiety of managing finances far from home, the difficulty of maintaining relationships across time zones. He’s lived all of it.
“Invest in yourself,” he says. “Grow your skills, nurture your passions, and stay committed to your goals. Challenges will come, but they also bring opportunities to learn, adapt, and emerge stronger.”
It’s the kind of counsel that could only come from someone who took a layover in an unfamiliar city, walked into a French brasserie, and decided — without quite meaning to — to stay.
