Celeste Young-Ramos

SBDC Center:

Celeste Young-Ramos, PHR-Ca, has a lifetime of restaurant leadership experience through her family restaurant ownership and years of large-scale multi-unit restaurant operations, human resources, and training. At Denny’s Inc, she was a Southern California Regional Management Training Manager, responsible for nearly 100 restaurants for management and employee training compliance and developing the training curriculums for the professional development of employees and leadership. Later, she became a Regional Franchise Business Consultant for Southern California, New Zealand, and Guam.

She was responsible for revenues of $90 million, led her team to numerous company excellence awards, and headed many teams for company-wide initiatives. For example, after a 1994 class action suit for discrimination at Denny’s, Inc., she was part of the elite diversity team that helped change the brand’s culture and the face of the restaurant industry.

In 2017, she founded Restaurant Success Center to help independent restaurant operators have the same resources and knowledge base that large franchise restaurants enjoy. The firm provides training resources in food safety, harassment prevention, and restaurant management and operational and HR consultants. Celeste possesses the Professional Human Resources -California Certification (PHR-Ca) and attended Brigham Young University. She has been a frequent guest speaker at the Western Food Service on diversity and has contributed to many restaurant publications.

In 2018, the Women’s Business Journal for Small Business Excellence recognized Celeste, and the Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti, awarded her during the Small Business Week for Business Innovation. She was the previous president of the WBC Restaurant Resource Council and is a current Facilitator and subject matter expert for Human Resources at the Polk Institute of Social Entrepreneurship. A restaurant consultant at several SBA-sponsored business centers, she has been a consultant at PCR SBDC since 2020 and provides service to Food Industry businesses and Human Resources.