At 28, Bitcoin Mogul Ryan Salame Owns Nearly Half of Lenox’s Full-Service Restaurants | Business

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Ryan Salame, 28, a native of Sandisfield, is an international cryptocurrency mogul based in the Bahamas. At Lenox, he is best known as the owner of half a dozen commercial restaurants under the new Lenox Eats marketing banner.

GILLIAN JONES THE EAGLE OF BERKSHIRE

LENOX It all started when he was 14, his first job as a dishwasher at the old Martins restaurant in Great Barrington.

Ryan Salame, a native of Sandisfield, was a student at Monument Mountain Regional High School at the time and continued to work at Martins for seven years, doing a little of everything including waiters and management help, recalls it with emotion.

I loved being in the restaurant industry; his hard work, chaos, everybody screaming, he told The Eagle during an interview on his Firefly Gastropub on Church Street. The relationship with all Martins staff was excellent.

LENOX The gathering place where everyone knows your name often compared to Cheers in the classic TV sitcom of the same name is changing

Fast forward: Salame graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amhersts Isenberg School of Management with a Business Degree in Accounting, then earned a Masters of Finance from Georgetown University in 2019. Since then he has been a Bitcoin tycoon. growing as the newly created CEO of FTX Digital Markets in Bahamas, a subsidiary of the global cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com.

But, in downtown Lenox, now 28-year-old Salame (pronounced Salem) is best known as the owner of half a dozen commercial restaurants under the new Lenox Eats marketing banner.

In July 2020, he acquired Firefly Gastropub, thanks to a long friendship with longtime former owner Laura Shack. In March, he bought the Olde Heritage Tavern from owner John McNinch in a $ 1.5 million deal for the Housatonic Street building, plus an additional amount for the company.

Since then, Salame has added Café Lucia; The scoop; a vacant Franklin Street property that will soon be a restaurant and commercially zoned home behind Lucia, planned as the site of Salames new Lenox Catering Co., which will be operated by Donna Navarino, with upscale dining experience for over 20 years years, and as an auxiliary facility for the reincarnation of Lucias, with details of this undertaking to be announced.

The bottom line: Salame, whose parents still live in Sandisfield, has invested around $ 5 million in the town’s downtown restaurant scene, and he now owns nearly half of the full-service dining establishments in the city. shopping districts.

I never really planned on owning a restaurant, he admitted, but when Shack called to offer him his business as restaurateurs struggled to overcome the challenges of COVID, he jumped at the chance. It happened at the right time for me and it made sense, he said.

Salame, with so much on her plate, considers Lenox the perfect city for everything I do; it’s the right size, he said. A lot of things are moving, a lot of investments are coming, mainly in the hotel industry.

Some longtime restaurateurs have retired, died or are exhausted by the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

Salame has invested around $ 5 million in the downtown Lenox restaurant scene and now owns nearly half of the full-service dining establishments in shopping districts.

GILLIAN JONES

THE EAGLE OF BERKSHIRE

The hire of Firefly, her favorite haunt during her college days, served as a learning experience for Salame, as there was a team in place under the leadership of Jane Blanchard, who continues to be in charge of the daily while also managing the Lenox Eats group. Cosmetic changes aside, Firefly remains pretty much the same.

The Olde Heritage is also largely unchanged, which McNinch and his family had owned for 20 years before he and his son Tucker opened 101 Restaurant & Bar last summer, a restaurant with a Southern-influenced menu. in the Holiday Inn and Suites on West. Pittsfield Street.

Heritage was another long-standing place that I loved, Salame said. Becky Piccolo, his heart and soul while owning McNinchs, is now the official manager, he added.

With multiple establishments, we can save a lot of expense at the end of the day, he pointed out, with food costs going up and wages going up, as restaurants have to charge increasing menu prices (your burger goes up d ‘a dollar and everyone somehow wants to end your life, he joked.) amid other increased costs of doing business.

Regarding the widely publicized staff shortages, what helps here is that you build a bigger vision so that there are more benefits to working in one of these restaurants, Salame said. , citing beneficial efficacy.

Ryan Salame is shown outside the Firefly Gastropub, one of the restaurants he bought in Lenox. Salame also owns the Old Heritage Tavern, The Scoop, the former Café Lucia, and plans to start a new operation, Lenox Catering Co.

GILLIAN JONES THE EAGLE OF BERKSHIRE

Management roles appear, creating opportunity and excitement. It’s like a team of people, which makes it easier. The current membership of the Lenox Eats group is around 25, but that total will increase significantly for the summer.

His overall vision is to make Lenox the Berkshires food hub for locals and visitors, he said. I want Lenox to be the first place you think of which will benefit every other restaurant as well. I will add where I can and try to supplement where I can.

Other acquisitions quickly followed the purchases of Firefly and Heritage:

After meeting co-owner Nadine Atalla as the health of her husband, Jim Lucie, declined before his death on June 13, Salame expressed interest and followed up on the recent purchase of Café Lucia.

There is a lot of potential there, he said. We haven’t determined exactly what will happen with this.

An adjacent vacant home on commercial-zoned Tucker Street, also acquired by Salame, will allow her to combine the footprint, subject to city approval, for additional alfresco dining and to house her new catering business. .

I think we won’t keep it as Café Lucia; that was really Jim and Nadines’ vision, and it would be difficult for me to move that forward, said Salame. After renovations, he plans to reopen the establishment next March as a year-round restaurant, but not as an Italian restaurant.

In October, Salame acquired The Scoop, a popular ice cream parlor and candy store owned by Jennifer Nacht for 13 years. New manager Cheryl Murray, an incredible pastry chef, he said, will expand it into a small cafe with quiches and coffee, renaming it Sweet Dreams, combined with an adjacent storefront on Church Street, formerly Twigs, which will house the candy store.

Last month, Salame bought the property of the long vacant restaurant at 7-9 Franklin Street, which once housed Lenox Pizza for $ 625,000. It will reopen as a restaurant, with the concept to be decided.

And after?

We have a lot of things to focus on right now, Salame said, so unless something pops up, it’s an opportunity that won’t always be there, probably not.

Since Salame is based mostly in the Bahamas for his cryptocurrency work, he points out that the team manages 98% of their Lenox investments.

It’s almost entirely delegated, and then I’m involved for 2%, he said. I like to be here; I prefer to be in the Berkshires with my family first and foremost, but it has been quite busy for me in the Bahamas recently, a little more than I expected. In an optimal world, I would spend half of my time here and half there.

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