We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Farm a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Daniel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The more we talk about good leadership the more we think good leadership practices will spread and so we’d love for you to tell us a story about the best boss you’ve had and what they were like or what they did that was so great?

The previous owner and a close mentor of mine, Robert Rabinoff, gave me the tools and confidence to be able to run my own business. Back in the day when he started out, he graduated from Johnson and Wales and worked in and for many talented chefs in and out of Boston. He opened his first restaurant and even got best breakfast, called Eats and Sweets.

I joined Rob and his son, my good friend Michael, in 2010. Before we knew it, we were more busy than we could have imagined so we opened a second location. After 13 years, Rob decided to retire and sell me his smaller of the 2 locations. I still have Rob around, whether it’s for delivering, filling it for someone being out. Most importantly, he is still around to help me with any questions that i have about running a business. It has been a truly blessed and scary adventure and i look forward to many more years to come!

Daniel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started working in an Italian bread bakery and also a brick oven pizza restaurant. Truly fell in love with everything. The hustle, the ingredients, the pace… I decided to head to Arizona with some friends and attend a culinary program out there. After working in a few fine dining restaurants, I decided to move home.

Upon moving back, I started working with my friend and his father. We grew the business and expanded to a second location within an amazing corporate park owned by R.D. Scinto. After being with Rob for 13 years, he decided that it was time to retire. He sold me the smaller of the stores. I never had the intention of doing catering like we were doing in the past but something in me loves to provide the customer with an amazing experience and delicious food. After a few months of ownership, word of mouth started to travel and we began to get busy with catering. Not even 2 years later and the business has grown substantially.

Within that time, I competed in numerous local chili cookoffs, competed in ranked cookoffs and eventually made it to the world chili championships, 2 years. My recipe is featured in “Seriously Good Chili Cookbook” by Brian Baumgartner (Kevin from The Office).

What’s most important to me, which has shifted over time and experience, is customer experience. I love to make sure that the customer is happy, well fed and is looking forward to being a returning customer.

Now being on both sides, cook and owner, I also want to make sure all my employees are happy, well fed and looking forward to coming in the next day. I see them as family, just as my previous employer saw me. I just want to make sure everyone is happy =)

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Going from culinary school to working fine dining, I learned a lot of fancy techniques and delicious food. It was an absolute amazing experience. When i joined the cafe where i now own, i had a lot of expectations to change. What i had learned was very difficult to apply where i am. Not to say that i was a bad thing, just completely different.

A couple things that i learned were consistency and less is more. Consistency is so important to a business. It’s something that i heard from my father (big pizza guy) and would hear through out my life. If someone comes in and has an amazing sandwich, the next time they come in they will want that same thing. If it’s not the same, there’s a great chance of losing that customer. Also, word of mouth is very important especially in the restaurant industry.

Less is more. Having the fine dining background, there was usually a lot of different ingredients to a single dish. Something that i was used to and always geared towards. It was a very difficult habit to break. From my experience now, in the everyday of things people like the simple yet delicious meals.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Right before COVID hit, the business that i was working for was booming. On pace to have a record year. I was working a ton of hours, running the whole time. I was starting to get burnt out. Then COVID hit. the world slowed way down. I wasn’t sure if this was still the right career for me. I had a son on the way and i was worried that i wasn’t going to see a lot of him. I also wasn’t sure if i still had it in me to keep up the volume that we were doing. I started considering getting out of the hospitality industry. Then the opportunity to become a business owner fell into my lap. It was a fresh start. A new beginning. Not really knowing what i was doing but with the right people by my side to help, i bought a restaurant. Truly life changing.

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