Gregg Fraser’s job as a busboy at the Koko Marina Sizzler in the late 1970s launched his career in the food service industry that has endured for nearly four decades.

Today he provides support for about 6,000 food establishments as executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association (HRA).

“I thought that supporting the food service industry would mean less hours and more time with my family — but I was wrong,” said Fraser, 55. “Because what it translated into is rather than overseeing a restaurant or two, I am now supporting 6,000 restaurants.”

The association advocates for the interests of restaurants and related businesses, including distributors. The HRA also is establishing an educational foundation to provide scholarships.

It delves into everything from ensuring that legislation concerning the industry won’t negatively affect it, to providing a range of support services, as it has during the current hepatitis A outbreak, which has infected 206 people statewide.

Fraser emphasized how important it is for the public to continue supporting businesses affected by the outbreak.

Maintaining the health of the industry is critical, he said, because the restaurant industry is an economic driver: At the close of 2015, it was a $4 billion industry in Hawaii, with approximately 3,500 restaurants on Oahu alone. Statewide there are about 6,000 restaurants, employing more than 90,000 people.

Fraser, who is closing in on two years as HRA executive director, has owned and operated restaurants himself, including Hernando’s Hideaway in Waikiki.

Among his previous roles: general manager and director of food and beverage for Hotel Molokai; banquets director for the Kahala Hotel & Resort; and overseeing 500-plus food and beverage employees at the Hawaii Convention Center as director of operations for HIEmployment.

Fraser and his wife live in Waikiki. He has two children in college.

Question: Maybe you could highlight some of the major things you’ve done to increase exposure of HRA.

Answer: In the food service industry there are a number of issues and concerns to the operators, one of which is what happens at the Capitol, what happens with legislation.

What’s coming down now? Are they going to increase the cost on something? All these things greatly impact the restaurant operator. And I can’t remember the last time somebody created a bill to reduce the cost of operating a business.

So every time something new comes out, it’s creating more expense for the operator.

So the Hawaii Restaurant Association is there to go and make sense of some of those things coming out of legislation and how can we help … so that it’s a win-win, or we ask them to reconsider because it may create hardship to the restaurant operator, which is already a very small-margin, if any, business.

Q: Let’s talk about what’s in the news — hepatitis A, for starters.

A: Whenever an issue comes up that greatly impacts the restaurant industry, it’s our responsibility to get out there and do what we can to help. Right now, for the past, about a month now or so, hepatitis A has been in the news.

We looked at this at the beginning of July and we kind of took a two-tier approach.

One is reminding and getting the message out to the restaurants that they have to follow the rules and regulations and the guidelines from the Department of Health when it comes to handwashing. At that same time, we got the message out to the public that it’s not the restaurant that’s infected and let’s continue to patronize our restaurants and ice cream stores and big box stores and airlines. …

The second tier is we contacted a number of pharmacies and medical insurance providers as well as physicians. We wanted to know what it takes to get the hepatitis A vaccination shots. …

We got together with HMAA (the Hawaii Medical Assurance Association) and we put together a plan. The plan that we did with HMAA is (that) any business can contact HMAA regardless of who your health insurance provider is and they will help you to get either a clinic or get your staff scheduled at a pharmacy to get the vaccination shots. … So what we were looking for is that conduit, that one-stop shop, if you will, to answer all the questions and to help the business schedule the clinic if they wanted to do it at the restaurant or place of business or to schedule a time to ease the process.

Q: How devastating has it been for establishments that reported having an infected employee?

A: Some have lost up to 80 percent of their revenue. They’re just trying to ride it out in hopes that it goes away and people start coming back again.

We’ve been putting hours and hours and days into this particular issue. We’ve been meeting with the Department of Health, we’ve been meeting with partners, we’ve been meeting with pharmacies, we’ve been meeting with doctors. We’ve been meeting with everybody possible to try to come to the best solution or the best opportunity for the businesses. Very important. Every time you have an issue that can close down a restaurant, in the business, there’s nothing worse.

Q: Any other initiatives or issues the restaurant association is involved with?

A: Yes, we’re addressing issues like hep A. There are discussions of Styrofoam. There’s litter campaigns that we’re doing. Labor issues. We’re working on employee needs, staffing needs, other operational costs that keep going through the roof. We’re addressing all of these types of issues and seeing where we can help. …

The Hawaii Restaurant Association has brought a high school level culinary and management training program called ProStart (into the school system). Currently 32 high schools across the state have culinary programs. They use a variety of curriculum.

ProStart is a curriculum that was created by the National Restaurant Association and our intent is to — what’s the word — consolidate all curriculum across the state so that all high schools that have culinary programs are using ProStart for a number of reasons. One reason is right now if you’ve got multiple materials or curriculum that you’re using for teaching, you’ve got students graduating with varied level of skills. If they all come out learning the same material, we have a better chance of them all coming out at a consistent level. Whether they’re going into the workforce or they’re going on to post-secondary continued education, we know that this has a better chance. We’re talking about a solid pillar of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. … We aligned the curriculum with the Hawaii State Standards with the Department of Education, we got Kapiolani Community College to buy in and allow the certificate of achievement of the ProStart program to transfer into credits to go to the school, to go to post-secondary. …

Q: What does the association recommend with regard to tipping policies in light of the 9th Circuit ruling on tip pooling?

A: Tip pooling … is now deemed illegal. Tip credits … a lot of people don’t understand how to use.

How are these things impacted by the increases in minimum wage, the increases in our labor costs and the challenges for hiring and keeping good employees? All these things are intermingled.

When the restaurants were allowed to do tip pooling, they asked the front of the house, servers and bartenders, to share a portion of their tips with the back of the house — cooks, dishwashers. This allowed the back of the house staff to go home with a little more income. When the 9th Circuit solidified the rule, it really got everybody worried about being audited.

Now that we stopped tip pooling, we’re taking that additional income away from the back of the house. What do we do to offset what the back of the house was making?

All restaurants have different ways of coping with the increasing costs of doing business. Some restaurants will simply raise prices on the menu to offset that need. Some places might cut back on staff, which cuts back on service, which creates a problem. Some may cut quality, and some may get as creative as to add a service charge to your guest check for kitchen staff. We need to remember that this service charge that is put on your guest check is not meant to be an additional service charge, it’s meant to reduce the amount that you tip the servers and giving that 4 or 5 percent to the kitchen staff.

Q: Are you as a restaurant association suggesting ways to comply?

A: I can say that I’d like to wait and see before we say this is what’s working.

If it’s working for an individual restaurant, then it’s working for that restaurant. I can’t say that it’s one size fits all.

I can’t say that no tipping is the answer to the increase in minimum wage, because there are some restaurants that will never offset that hourly tip amount that you’re getting. Never.

Are you going to pay someone $40 an hour? It’s not going to happen.

Getting back to what a couple of the restaurants are doing here creatively, you have to respect the fact that they are trying to A, stay in business and B, not dramatically increase the prices on the menu, which passes on to the customer. …

The servers that have been making 100 percent of their tips for the longest time might have a problem with giving any percentage of that to the kitchen. The kitchen staff, whether they’ve been receiving a tip pooling portion or not, work equally as hard as the front house staff, but typically get paid, or at least their take-home pay is typically less than the front of the house.

Two sides of the coin is that the servers are out front and they are the customer service, they are the face of the business, they’re the ones addressing their customers.

Question to servers: How good would your tip be if your food wasn’t so good? How big would your tip be if it took long for your food to come out? It’s a team and, you know, we need to start thinking more that we are all parts of this team.

Q: How do you think things are going with the state Department of Health’s placard system?

A: I think that the green placard is a very proactive and responsible effort that the Department of Health has implemented in the state of Hawaii.

Prior to the green placard, no one knew — they assumed — but no one knew that any food service operation had been inspected.

And in the past, when they were inspected, we had no idea what kind of grade they got. Again, we assumed that if they didn’t get a passing grade. the inspector would go back and check up on them until they had a passing grade.

Now it is very clearly displayed on the front window of your establishment and if you don’t get a passing grade that’s displayed, if you get a failing grade, you’re closed until you change it.

I think being a past operator and now supporting the entire food service industry, I think that it’s a very good way not only to communicate it to the public, but to hold the restaurant operators accountable for the rules and regulations set forth by the Department of Health.