1. I was at a conference of food service CEOs in Las Vegas a few years ago, 200 people in
the room, and the presenter has everyone stand up. Then he asks, what‘s the most
important part of our business? Is it the company’s bottom line? All the people who said
yes sat down. Is it how many stars the food gets? Everyone else sat down as well.
Finally, I‘m the only person standing and the presenter asks me, what’s the most
important thing to my business? I tell him the most important part of my business is
going around to every table to make sure everyone is satisfied. That‘s what I train my
managers to do, make a connection! At the end of the day, I want to be able to walk
into every place I work and say, ’hey, what‘s up!’ to all the people eating there.
I don’t come from a silver spoon. I grew up in Harrison, New Jersey, in a rough little
neighborhood. We lived in an apartment over my grandma. After working my way
through Kean College in Union, NJ, I was accepted at Yale for grad work in History. But
heck, I needed to make money so I took an entry-level position with a food service
company in town. A year later, I had been promoted to account manager in the Bronx.
The company started paying my way through an MBA program at Farleigh Dickinson.
When they cut the tuition reimbursement, I knew it was time to fulfill my lifelong dream
of going to culinary school.
I graduated from the French Culinary Institute of Manhattan in 1994 and started Tasty
Enterprises Inc. soon after.
For me, food is a service that we provide to people. Somebody says, ‘Richie, I’m lactose
intolerant and I have to drink soy milk, ‘ I make sure there’s soy milk. A client wants a
nice rice pilaf made with farro and chicken stock, we make it happen. Or I ask a client
what is the worst day of the month? They say Tuesday, so we decide to give all their
employees pizza on their way out the door on that Tuesday.
I say keep it real. Say what you do and do what you say. At Tasty Enterprises, that’s
working with clients to serve the best food possible to the people in their organizations.
