Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephen Dewey. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Stephen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
We made big changes this year that I believe have scaled up our business. My business is not significantly larger today than when we started, but rather we are growing and changing as a business. I believe we are getting smarter and better, continuing to adapt as the environment and people change.
I started Barone Meatball Company back in 2013 as a means to an end. After working in the Restaurant industry for 16 years, first as someone who just needed a job while in school and then as someone who truly fell in love with the food creation, customer interaction, and freedom that the business allows, I was ready to start something on my own. My goal was to have this great place that brought the amazing food I grew up with up North into a more casual comfortable environment down South. Watching TV as a kid I loved watching Three’s Company and seeing Jack Tripper follow his dream and open his Restaurant. I wanted to do that. I also always loved watching Cheers and how comfortable everyone was in that Bar, almost like they were coming home every time they walked in those doors. I thought it would be great to have a Restaurant with the feel of Cheers. I had a real vision, but had to start somewhere to make it reality. I knew that there was no way I could afford to start a Restaurant. When food trucks started popping up all over the Triangle Area in 2012, I realized that this was my best option. Back then, the best food trucks were niche trucks such as dumplings, Detroit style pizza, porchetta, etc. Rather than just another Italian Food Truck, I knew that focusing on different variations of meatballs, particularly the generations-old recipe in my mother’s family, would be the best way to go.
The beauty of meatballs was that I could literally make anything as long as it was in ball form. I started simple, Mom’s Italian Meatballs, Buffalo Chicken Balls, and Southwestern Veggie Balls. Over the years, we created: Bacon Cheeseburger Balls, Taco Balls, Zucchini-Smoked Gouda Balls, Korean Balls, Cuban Balls, all together more than 30 different varieties. My goal was to create a large customer base and then transition into a brick and mortar.
We struggled finding consistent employees. The truck broke down several times. The generator broke down many times. We had so many roadblocks over the years that sometimes the successes were hard to celebrate. I even started to forget what my ultimate goal was to begin with. This is where changing and learning happens. It’s not as easy as open a food truck, gain a customer base, and then magically open a fantastic Restaurant. It takes hard work, money, and a lot of help from a team of great employees.
I had to make a change if I was to ever reach my ultimate goal. I was ready to finally open that restaurant I had longed for, but after surveying the landscape and recognizing how difficult it still is to find employees, I decided my best avenue was to build a new truck, less chance of breaking down, instead of trying to build and staff a brick and mortar. Over the last 10 years the most successful trucks changed. They were no longer niche trucks. They were Korean, Mediterranean, Mexican, and any other type of food you could think of. I saw this as an opening to be able to expand our menu. With the new truck, we rebranded as Barone Italian Grille. We kept some of our staple menu items, but are now able to add other Italian dishes. A favorite of our customers is the Italian Brisket. This is a dish that we never would have been able to do on a Meatball truck.
Although our truck is not a restaurant, the new truck moved us closer to my goal. I am back on track to having my dream of a restaurant where our customers feel like family become a reality. While we have not scaled up in the usual sense, we have learned, grown, and made the necessary changes to build toward our future. We will continue to scale up.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and my parents are from New York. I grew up eating great food, especially Italian food, as this was a favorite to our Sicilian family. We moved around a little bit, so I grew up, not only in NJ, but also Texas and then finally North Carolina. Although I have always had a fondness for the food from up North where majority of my family was, I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to taste food from other locations. I regret that as a picky kid, I did not try as much as I now wish I would have. That being said, I now view that pickiness as an asset. I started learning to cook, because my mom went out of town when I was in middle school, and I refused to eat my dad’s cooking. He told me that I either had to eat what he prepared or make something myself. I got up and made myself dinner. I am much more openminded when it comes to trying new foods, but still very picky when deciding what is good and worth eating or making. I think this is what has gotten me to where I am today. I worked in restaurants in high school and college, and then learned the most at Cloos’ Coney Island and Bella Monica as an adult. I now pride myself on consistency and quality in everything that I do in my business. I really enjoy seeing the happy faces when they get food from my food truck, Barone Italian Grille
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
One of the hardest times for me, as it was for most of us out there, was those early stages of Covid in March of 2020. Up until that point, I had run my food truck with a schedule based mostly setting up at offices for lunches and large events on the weekends. The day that everything shut down, almost everything on my calendar started to cancel. I was left on a Friday, looking at the following week that previously had 8-10 events scheduled, now only had a brewery on that Friday night. I wasn’t even sure the brewery was going to be open. It was really easy to feel like my whole business was coming crashing down around me. I took a day to feel sorry for myself and then started to brainstorm ideas. The only place that people were at that point was their home and grocery stores. I decided to email every contact I had in neighborhoods and see if we could set up and feed their neighbors. Suddenly we went from having almost no shifts, to then 3 shifts that following week. I had pivoted my whole scheduling model. We then went on to serve almost exclusively in neighborhoods and breweries for over a year. We also started online ordering, so that people could just stop by and pick up their already completed orders. This has all turned out great for us, as offices started opening back up. We now have blended our previous scheduling model with this new one.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I have felt from the start of my business, that caring about my employees is the most important thing. The only way to ensure that an employee works hard is to make sure they care about what they are doing. I can’t expect them to care if I don’t care about them. It’s important for employees to be seen. I believe that open communication and honesty are all keys to this. It’s amazing how many new employees are so untrusting because of the bad experiences they have had in the past. It takes time to establish trust, but the best way to do this is to be honest and trust them. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Contact Info:
- Website: baroneitaliangrille.com
- Instagram: @baronemeatball
- Facebook: @baronemeatball