After 38 years on the floor, Lynne Gomez has left Ray’s on the River.
If you’ve ever been to Ray’s, there’s a good chance Gomez was your waitress. She started serving at the Sandy Springs staple on Aug. 20, 1985 and retired last month. Throughout her years at the restaurant, she not only gained work experience but a family as well.
Gomez used the word – family – multiple times when I spoke with her on the phone about her time at Ray’s. She recently moved down to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, with her husband. The beach is not a bad place to retire, but she recalled the beautiful scenery she used to enjoy during her downtime at the restaurant.
“That’s really cool to look at, as far as the river goes, and the landscape and everything,” Gomez said. “It just doesn’t get old, you know?”
As a parting gift, Ray’s Restaurants gave Gomez a Mazda Miata convertible, a vehicle she described as her “dream car.” In an emailed statement, Ray’s Restaurants Founder Ray Schoenbaum complimented Gomez’s work ethic over the years.
Credit: Ray's Restaurants
Credit: Ray's Restaurants
“We will miss her as will the staff and so many of our guests and wish her the best in her retirement,” Schoenbaum said.
During our conversation, Gomez reminisced about her working relationship with Schoenbaum. Whenever his family or friends would come into Ray’s, she would usually wait on them. As much as she’s grown up in the restaurant, she’s also watched his children grow up – from little kids to adults, now with their own families.
“It’s just crazy how much time Ray and I have actually gone through. He hasn’t had anybody else there at the restaurant that’s experienced all his growth,” Gomez said. “So, it’s kind of sad.”
I spoke with Gomez about her time at Ray’s and her retirement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Are you originally from Atlanta or did you move here?
A: I moved down here with an ex-fiance at the time, and a couple of other people from Cleveland, Ohio. We moved down because he was going to go to [Life University] chiropractic school.
Q: When did you start working at Ray’s?
Gomez: August of ‘85. When I first moved here, I couldn’t get a job with Macy’s or Rich’s doing visual merchandising, which is what I did up north. So, I ended up getting a job at Confetti’s nightclub, because I did a little bit of cocktailing right before I left to try to get some money together.
One of the girls that I worked with, she went to Ray’s and they hired her as a manager. She was like, you need to come to Ray’s! And I’m like, well, I need something to do during the day, I guess I’ll come over there. When they interviewed me, they at first didn’t want to even hire me, because I didn’t have food experience. They took a chance on me. And not even halfway through training, they were like, you need to get her on the floor. So, it’s just been one of those [things] that I guess came easy for me.
Q: Thirty-eight years is a long time. What kept you at Ray’s for so long? What was your favorite part about working there?
A: It was just fun for me to go there. It was like a family. Everybody that I met, I just joshed with, right off the bat. There were four of us girls, and we were all around the same age, and it was just like family right away. We all just meshed really well.
I just enjoyed it, you know. But I hadn’t planned on being there that long either, because I was engaged at the time thinking I was going to be moving in five or six years, But after a year and a half, we broke up and I ended up staying.
I finally got a job at Macy’s three years later, so I was doing visual merchandising for Macy’s. But I was still working at the restaurant like, five shifts a week. I was still working almost two full-time jobs basically, really. Because retail is retail, and you don’t make that much money. So, I had to stay and work and make some money. I enjoyed it, too.
Q: You talked about that first relationship ending, but I know that you also met your now-husband through Ray’s.
A: Yeah, one of the guys that I waited tables with knew my husband. He used to work with him in Florida at a restaurant. I guess he knew that he worked out at the same gym that I worked out at. He wanted me to give him a message, and tell him to call him. After two weeks, I finally figured out who he was and went up to him and said, “You don’t know me, but you know Doug, and you need to call him.”
So he called Doug that night, and then every time I would go into the gym we would just start talking. That was kind of that.
Q: You also had your wedding at Ray’s, right?
A: Yeah, we got married two years later in 1993. My husband ended up working there too, part-time running food. He was there for about four years.
Q: Did you have a favorite thing on the menu when you were there? Did it ever change?
A: Oh, it’s changed a lot. I went through three renovations, so when I started it was a very casual restaurant. We wore khaki pants, shirt, and now we’re wearing black with white shirts and a tie, you know? Every time [Ray] remodeled, he raised the bar. He’s not afraid to spend money on that place, you know. It’s his baby, so he’s not afraid to spend the money and do what it takes to make it what it is now.
Credit: Rough Draft Atlanta
Credit: Rough Draft Atlanta
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