We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Toni Rowan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Toni below.

Alright, Toni thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Our business is only possible with the help of our family. From my husband Eric Rowan who is our chef and co-owner, Mama Lisa, my mother who taught me everything I know and all the rest of the family always being there to help out when we need servers, give advise or simply be our taste testers. Now for some families, a family business would be a DISASTER. It’s certainly not always easy to work with family and I think that’s because they’re who we feel most comfortable around, so we’re quicker to snap at them, or be bossier than we would be to an employee we don’t know so well. And don’t get me wrong, my family certainly has their moments of being difficult to work with, myself included, but 99% of the time, we absolutely love it, We all have the same passion for food and wine. We all want each other to win and most importantly, we all have the best time together when were in the kitchen, surrounded by good food, great wine and our family.

Toni, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started Dammi Vino (which means “give me wine” in Italian) in 2019 with my now husband, Chef Eric Rowan, to blend our knowledge of food and wine with family traditions and recipes to bring our clients the best experiences we can offer. We specialize in Food & Wine Pairings, Traditional Pasta Making Classes and all things Charcuterie right in the comfort of our clients homes, offices or business.

When Dammi Vino first started, we didn’t have many credentials. I was a wine lover who also liked to cook and Eric was a chef who liked wine. We knew we wanted to bring our clients the experiences we had always had around the table but that was about the extent. All we had was good food, good wine and lots of personality.

Fast forward to present day and I am working full time Dammi Vino. I have taken and been certified in multiple Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Courses and plan to get the Italian Wine Professional Certification. We have traveled to Italy and spent time with locals, winemakers, business owners and more to partner with them so we can bring true Italian culture and products back to our clients so they can have unique experiences they won’t find anywhere else. We also have partnered with many local and online brands and business so our clients can have a local space to continue enjoying daily.

The greatest part about Dammi Vino is it is completely customizable. Our clients never have to have the same experience twice. We are always adding new, seasonal recipes to our food and wine pairings, we are always learning new pasta shapes and sauces to bring to our Classe Di Pasta and of course always staying up to date on new charcuterie trends! There are few things we enjoy more than when a client calls us and has a new idea of how they envision their experience and we can work side by side with them to create exactly what they are thinking.

Building Dammi Vino has been one of the greatest joys we have found in life, but that doesn’t mean it all came easy for us. There was (and still are) lots of learning curves. We are always looking for ways to continue to grow and learn in our trade. We, like many business suffered from the covid-19 pandemic and had to find creative ways to stay afloat in the ever changing ways of covid. We are blessed beyond our means to still be in business today and still have the opportunity to bring our clients experiences and memories right into the comfort of their own home!

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

My business partner and cofounder is my husband Eric Rowan. We met back in 2017 at a local bar in our town. After trash talking during a “very serious” game of darts we quickly realized we actually had a lot in common. We didn’t realize it then, but that night was just the beginning of our life together. We have been inseparable ever since. Now keep in mind, we didn’t start Dammi Vino until 2019 so in the years leading up to that moment, we were both in jobs we didn’t have passion for anymore, we were trying to figure out what was next for us and in the meantime, our escape from the craziness was getting in the kitchen together, making an amazing meal and pairing it with a gorgeous wine. Our date nights were more fun when we stayed home cooking instead of going out on the town.
One year later I decided to leave my job in the medical field and take a “care free” job working at the local vineyard in the summertime while I tried to figure out my next move. Turns out, that was my next move. My love of wine suddenly became a passion. I realized that everything Eric and I loved to do in our free time could be a career if we took a leap of faith. I loved working at the vineyard and I stayed as long as I could until I realized there no more room to grow in that company and the only way I could do what I wanted to do in this industry was to create it myself. Meanwhile, Eric has just opened up a Cafe in an office building with a family friend and while he loved running a cafe, there was only so much creativity he could do with a breakfast and lunch spot and just like me, Eric was as far as he could go in that job too.
So after many talks with Eric, lots of self doubts and tons of different business plans, Dammi Vino was born!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to learn that If I wanted a business I had to wear many different hats in order to make it possible. When we’re little and we dream of owning our business and doing what we love, somehow we don’t dream of the behind the scenes things we have to do in order to do what we love. So when Eric and I decided to create Dammi Vino and I wanted to be the sommelier and he wanted to be the chef and we wanted to cook for people and show them amazing wines… we didn’t account for having to also be the financial planner and the schedule maker, and the marketing guru, and the social media expert and the accountant and, and, and… the list goes on forever.
But Frank Sinatra says it best, “that’s life”. So you adapt, and as business partners, we learned what each other’s strengths and weakness were and we divided and conquered.
So now I’m not just the sommelier and Eric isn’t just the chef, we get to be business owners with multiple different hats and roles and if we do it right, at the end of the day, we get to be the Somm & the chef!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dammivino.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dammivino/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DammiVino/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dammi-vino-franklin-2

Image Credits
Toni Rowan Mally Grace Photography