We recently connected with Emilio Dominguez and have shared our conversation below.

Emilio, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job

My dream growing up was to serve in our nation’s armed forces. I accomplished this when I joined the US Air Force at 18 years old and went off to boot camp after one semester at the local community college.

The military will teach you so many things, but a decade and a half later, now, these are the core tenets that I take daily from my six years of service:

– The mission is more important than the self.
– We don’t operate in silos – meaning, nothing is accomplished alone, and we depend on the team to accomplish our goals.
– Leaders lead from the front.
– Leaders take blame when things don’t go as planned, and give credit when things go better than planned.
– In our industry (food and beverage), I like to say that we have small problems with easy solutions. This mindset developed in me when working, being stressed, etc., then realizing that, comparatively, I’ve faced and overcome much more impactful problems and come out on top. This helps keep my leadership grounded and the team calm and confident.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I grew up in the restaurant business, taking my first part-time job as a busser at 10 years old. From then I was hooked on working and had many side hustles, small businesses, and generally believed in the value of good old-fashioned hard work. This helped me accomplish my childhood dream… I served in the US Air Force from 2008-2014, when I was fortunate enough to proudly serve my country, deploy to the Middle East, work with partner nations, excel in my career field, and be given many leadership opportunities.

I then went to Quinnipiac University for International Business and Finance. I left just over a semester short of finishing my Bachelor’s to relocate to South Florida and start a business in construction. This business failed, and by this time I was married with a one-year old daughter. I had to find any way to keep our family eating.

I fell back on the age-old quick-cash industry I grew up in – restaurants. Except this time I had a bit more experience under my belt and was able to get into a role where I had the leeway to build the cocktail program for a popular Mexican restaurant that, until that point, relied on cheap tequila and blue margaritas to tide over their guests. I went in, learned, self-taught, took classes, received national certifications and recognition, inquired about follow up training from distributors and suppliers, and became a subject matter expert in tequila and agave products. This helped put me on the map locally as someone who knows what they’re doing, and can be trusted to work honestly and diligently.

Then, my wife decided she no longer wanted to be a full-time stay at home mom, so we casually kept our eyes open for job or business opportunities. A small tea house with a ton of charm opened up a few doors down from where I worked, and we fell in love. It was called The Modern Rose. I was one of their first customers, even being the one to set up their Yelp page, as it didn’t exist and the founding owner didn’t know how to arrange it and populate relevant details. I’d go close to daily to work, relax, decompress, bring new people to try it out, etc. I just wanted to spread the positives vibes that had been created there. One day, the owner approached me and asked if I could help her potentially find a buyer, as she wanted to move to the mountains with her children. I asked around, but found no takers. It popped in my head – “hey, why don’t we buy it?” We expressed interest, made an offer, negotiated, and were able to buy The Modern Rose in September of 2019. Great timing, right?

COVID hit, we shut down temporarily to focus on my still then full-time job, and then there was a falling out with my employer. I decided it was now or never to fully dig deep into the business and give it a real shot. Fast forward two and a half years, and we’ve expanded the original space, opened a second location, built a team of over 20 employees, and grown sales by over 1200%. I believe we brought the right combination of team synergy, relentlessly positive attitude, a hunger for continuous improvements, an approach guided by integrity, and a bit of luck, to accomplish all of this. Now, we’ve recently launched our hospitality group, LoL (Labor of Love) Hospitality Group, and will be launching new concepts soon, as well as offering franchises of our home-run baby, The Modern Rose – a Unique Café.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

Funding the acquisition of our business occurred by planting the seed to my regulars at the bar at the time, and just assessing general interest. I hoped for a partner, but instead was offered debt with extremely fair terms by a gentleman who believed in me and my ability to turn the business around. Now, we’re talking again, but this time about partnership. Thanks to him, we have a business worth over a million dollars from a $25,000 loan. We took the risk, worked our tails off, and will scale what we do so that our children have a meaningful business to turn to one day.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Once we decided that I’d focus my efforts full-time on the business, I noticed that our social media presence and engagement had plateau’d a bit. So I made the decision one day to go on Instagram, our preferred platform based on the content we generate, and find posts similar to things we do and our target demographics, and engaged directly with them. This process took me about 2-3 hours a day, and I did it for three months on end. I’d like a few posts, follow them, and send a brief message letting them know what our business was, what we stood for, what our hours and location were, what we specialized in, etc. I followed and sent these messages to thousands of accounts, and I noticed our account go from 1500 followers to 2500 to 3500 and it started to pick up. Now, we’ll likely finish the year with about 12,000 followers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TheModernRose.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/themodernrose
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/themodernrose
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/modernrosecafe
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-modern-rose-deerfield-beach

Image Credits
Juan Duran