Foodservice pioneer Nick Valenti is at it again

He left a mark on everything from the food stands of top-level sporting events to some of the most celebrated restaurants of New York City and Los Angeles. And now, at age 76, Nick Valenti is at it again.

Coming out of a retirement that never took hold, the former CEO of Patina Restaurant Group and Restaurant Associates is serving the cuisines of Italy’s Amalfi coast at Simply Capri, a restaurant in Disney’s new Flamingo Crossing retail and dining complex in Winter Park, Florida.

It’s near Vivoli Il Gelateria, a sister store to the famed gelateria in Florence, Italy, and the result of Valenti’s affiliation with the Italian operators. Also not far away are Space 220 and Via Naples, two of the 12 high-volume dining places the Valenti-era Restaurant Associates developed in collaboration with Disney for its theme parks.

A second Flamingo Crossing restaurant called Flatlands Bar & Grill is in the works, and more Vivoli branches could follow.

“I’m not going to do a lot of things, but I’m going to continue to do some business here and there, when an opportunity might arise,” said Valenti, who splits his time between homes in Florida and the suburbs of New York City. With all the connections he’s made in a career that started in 1968 as a management trainee at a Restaurant Associates-managed airport restaurant, he acknowledges those opportunities are sometimes difficult to avoid.

Simply Capri, for instance, grew out of his long relationship with Disney, his landlord at the site.  He admits that relationship can be challenging, given the position of strength Disney wields in negotiations, but as lucrative as any you’ll find. “They promise to put butts in seats, and they put butts in seats,” he says. “If we call them up and say, ‘We need 400 reservations,’ they get us 400 reservations.” (Disney handles the reservations in collaboration with OpenTable for restaurants that are located on its properties.)

Simply Capri sports 96 indoor seats and another 100 on its outside patio. With an average check of about $45 per person, its sales are running at a rate that should put first-year revenues between $4 million and $5 million, according to Valenti.

About 80% of that volume is coming from locals, not tourists, he continues. Even within the remaining 20%, he says, most of the business is coming from out-of-towners who were steered toward the place by friends and relatives who live locally.

The menu is an authentic representation of what visitors would find on menus when visiting the Amalfi coast. Pizza, a specialty, is cooked in a wood-burning oven Valenti brought over from the Old Country. He also imports the flour and, availability permitting, the tomatoes that pizzerias in the Amalfi region use—when they, too, can get enough of a supply. The wines are also Italian.

Other house specialties include pastas made on premises, antipasti and seafood.  A featured component is the negroni bar.

Consistent with the cuisine of Amalfi, the recipes are simple. “Italian food is all about quality ingredients,” says Valenti. “The less you do with them, the better.”

He is no stranger to Italian food, not only via his heritage (Valenti’s family comes from Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot) but through his deep restaurant past.

Among the places he ran while rising from his airport position at Restaurant Associates to the top job was Mamma Leone’s, once the nation’s highest volume restaurant. The New York City outpost played to fans who equated Italian food to red sauce served atop not-so-al-dente pasta in a setting one step up from a joint with red-checkered tablecloths and chianti bottles used as candle holders.

At the other end of the spectrum were Restaurant Associates' restaurants like Naples 45, an upscale pizza outlet, and its Disney version, Il Naples.

Restaurant Associates, or RA, was renowned for creating and operating such ground-breaking fine-dining places as the Four Seasons, Tavern On The Green and Brasserie. He brought a strong business discipline that, contrary to conventional wisdom, championed quality as the differentiator that would make money.

It was the mindset that brought RA standout success as a contract management company and concessionaire.

The best thing a hungry sports fan could get at most arenas until well into the 1980s was an oversized hot dog and a lukewarm beer. Taking over feeding operations for the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, then held in Forest Hills, New York, RA strived to deliver something better. It ratcheted up the effort when the competition moved to its current home in Flushing, New York. Patrons could still get a hot dog, but they could also indulge in a Pat LaFrieda Steak Sandwich, named after the famed butcher, or any number of similarly high-end selections. The cocktail selections outdid what most bars offered.

Before long, the food was as much a part of the annual event’s buzz as the tennis.

RA parlayed that attention into contracts to manage the feeding operations of the Olympics, Grand Slam golf tournaments and other high-profile sporting contests. 

It brought the same approach to the feeding operations of New York City museums and cultural institutions. What were largely snack bars were replaced with fine-dining restaurants, to considerable success and a warm reaction from the public.

The idea was to bring food that a high-end restaurant might feature, outshooting expectations.

The approach also brought contracts to manage the feeding operations of New York City’s financial institutions. “I don’t think there was a major bank whose foodservice we didn’t manage,” says Valenti.

Named CEO in 1994, Valenti was at the helm through that evolution of the company. He also steered the company into management of fine-dining restaurants like The Sea Grille at New York’s Rockefeller Center and the Lincoln Ristorante at Lincoln Center.

The company’s reputation for quality led to opportunities on the West Coast, including the contract to manage the foodservices of the Hollywood Bowl. It was one of three operators that got a green light to open and run restaurants in Downtown Disney, a dining and entertainment district outside Disneyland—a predecessor of sorts to Flamingo Crossing. One of the other talents chosen was chef Joachim Splichal, who had won acclaim for his famed Los Angeles restaurant, Patina. (The third was New Orleans restaurateur Ralph Brennan.)

The situation led to a friendship between Splichal and Valenti, and then a business affiliation. RA bought Splichal’s company in 1999, and more restaurants and onsite feeding operations were brought under the umbrella of the Patina Group.

By that time, RA itself had been acquired, agreeing to become part of the global foodservice management company Compass in 1998. Eight years later, Compass decided to focus on contract management and sold Patina to Valenti and Splichal.

Patina would be sold again, in 2014, to contractor Delaware North. Valenti bowed out a year later. Simply Capri is his first restaurant since then.

Much has changed since he was a management trainee, but Valenti believes the business is easier today, at least in the market strata where he’s operated.

 “I’ve been in the quality business my whole career," he says. “The market is much more educated and much more knowledgeable about good food and beverage—quality is appreciated a lot more.  And with social media, you can spread the work very quickly.

“Quality is forever. Quality is timeless.”

This story originally appeared in FSD sister publication Restaurant Business.