Ellie got her first job at a restaurant when she was 18 years old. With resume in hand, she walked into Brixx Wood Fired Pizza and was offered a job on the spot. With no prior restaurant experience, she was trained and shown the ropes by her fellow servers. Ellie worked at Brixx until going off to Tennessee where she played Division II Soccer at Tusculum University, and then picked up another serving job at an Italian restaurant, Gondolier. When her college went remote due to COVID-19, she moved back home to Virginia and later started working at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse. A few months later, Ellie picked up her first experience with fine dining at South and Central, where she was introduced to refined hospitality practices, such as one-liner descriptions of each dish and tableside wine service. Post-COVID-19 she transferred to Francis Marion University in South Carolina, continued to play Division II soccer, worked at a casual barbecue joint, Wholly Smokin’, and received a Bachelor of Science in Biology as well as an MBA. 

By the time she graduated with her two degrees, Ellie had worked in five restaurants. Unsure of which career to pursue, she decided to apply to the highest rated fine dining restaurant in her hometown, Fleurie (French cuisine), on the Charlottesville Historic Downtown Mall. 

“I went from being this server who was super efficient - I could handle lots of volume and run circles around people - to someone who was in an environment where yes, speed still mattered a lot, but it was just as much about the hospitality side,” she said.

After a year at Fleurie, she decided it was time to put her education to use, and instead became the marketing coordinator at Early Mountain Vineyards, which is owned by Jean & Steve Case (co-founders of AOL) and was voted the #1 tasting room in America. She found her new office job was not a perfect fit and decided to go back to the fast-paced, exhilarating life of serving (at Early Mountain). Although her love for learning about wine and hospitality began at Fleurie, it certainly continued and flourished at Early Mountain.

However, Ellie was still looking for something more. She wished to get out of the industry and pursue a career tailored to her education and, not long after turning 25, an idea came to her. Ellie knew from experience that training and service standards across restaurants had been declining for quite some time. She also knew those from her generation and younger were struggling to develop social skills - along with other crucial soft skills necessary for life - due to technology removing many of the conditions that demand and develop them. However, these conditions still exist in restaurants at a high concentration. Ellie saw this as an opportunity to create an online serving platform with the dual goal of raising service standards, as well as to encourage young folks to join the industry to expose themselves to its rich environment that gives you no choice but to develop true character and vital life skills.

Thus, We The Servers was created. Ellie first launched @wetheservers on TikTok in July 2025 and has attained over 32,400 followers and 514,000 likes. She then took We The Servers to Instagram in March of 2026, where she has gained over 24,500 followers. Her short-form content consists of foundational knowledge for servers such as restaurant lingo, greeting guests, advice for tough situations, as well as demonstration videos that cover topics like opening a bottle of wine, table-side bottle service, and how to efficiently clear the table. Before a new server even steps into their first role, she wants to be the resource preparing them through her online content.

“When you start serving in a restaurant, there’s all these terms - pretty much another language - that you use to efficiently speak with your coworkers, and no one teaches you that stuff,” she said. “Of course, you naturally pick up the terminology and operational steps of service over time, but when you first start out and your trainers are explaining how to do things with terms you don’t yet know and understand, this leads to confusion, lots of mistakes, and servers who don’t reach their full potential.”

We The Servers teaches the foundations of how to provide both exceptional technical service and hospitality to patrons. According to Ellie, serving is not just about taking orders and delivering food. It’s about learning how to read people through developing high levels of emotional intelligence so you may effortlessly tailor your own actions and attitude to better serve and assist others. 

“The more that I matured as a server and started valuing the hospitality side, the part of my job that I began looking forward to the most was not a tip, it was talking to my guests and forming genuine connections,” she said. “I realized that work used to socially drain me, but now, it energizes me. I don’t want to stop talking to people and making them happy even after the end of the shift. I believe the number one way to make yourself happy is to stop thinking about yourself and do things that make others feel happy and valued.”

The overarching goal of her social media - as well as her long-form server training course that will be coming out soon - is to equip new servers with not only the proper logistics they need to hit the ground running, but to also equip them with a mindset that will allow them to extract everything they can out of the job. She wants servers to have the necessary knowledge to succeed in the workplace, while also showing them how to hone in on the real-time development of skills the restaurants demand of their employees: multitasking, adaptability, prioritization, problem solving, teamwork, communication, customer service, emotional intelligence, and spatial awareness. She hopes that with her materials servers will have the heightened ability to transform themselves into confident, competent, and capable human beings. 

“The mental clarity that you have to have in the middle of a rush, it tests your character, it tests your competence, and it develops you so quickly,” she stated. “I've learned so much more about myself and how I operate as a person. I've learned more about myself in a restaurant than I ever have in a classroom.”

The ideas for her TikTok and Instagram posts come to her while on shift when she sees or hears something, and then jots the idea down in her server book. Next, she decides if the topic would be best represented by a carousel of photos, a demonstration video, or an educational video where she sits and speaks directly to the viewer. The planning, recording, and editing for her short-form video content takes Ellie about an hour.

She is currently developing an online lecture course called The Story of a Restaurant. The course dives into major vocabulary terms and geographic areas of restaurants and the roles of those who work in them, so the server can see not only their responsibilities, but also how they fit into the bigger picture of the restaurant. This teaching style aims to instill systems thinking into the audience to easily aid them in solving and preventing their own problems and mistakes along the way. 

Hospitality and larger purpose material is sprinkled throughout the story but, most importantly, Ellie makes sure to highlight the true power of serving: transforming yourself into someone truly excited and ready to pursue life in a world where technology has largely altered how we operate within it. The first portion of the course will be released on YouTube for free. 

“When people think of We The Servers, when they think of Ellie Wray, I don't want them to think ‘oh, that's that girl that helps people make bigger tips,’” she said. “What I want people to think is ‘that's that girl helping others transform themselves through the hospitality industry.’ Money is great, but the most valuable thing being developed here is you.”