Founding Farmers cultivate new ground
May 1, 2012
Edited by Bob Krummert
How can you tell whether a restaurant concept has untapped potential? Here’s one way to judge: Ask if the consultants who had a profit-sharing deal on its first iteration want to take an ownership position on the second. That’s how Dan Simons and his partners in Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group (VSAG), the idea team behind Washington, DC’s Founding Farmers restaurant, wound up with their piece of its suburban spin-off, Potomac’s Founding Farmers. The new place, located 19 miles up Interstate 270 from the original, opened in Potomac, MD, last November.
VSAG’s clients for the original Founding Farmers restaurant were real-life farmers— lots of them.
The 42,000-member North Dakota Farmers Union (NDFU) owns that restaurant, which opened in 2008. In an era when many restaurants strive to make the farm-to-table connection, Founding Farmers proved that the commercial implications of a direct farmer connection could be massive.