Submitted
Jerry Smith
The restaurant rescue business By Gene Marrano Putting a lifelong passion and a background in analytics to good use. The Roanoke Regional Restaurant Association isn’t a trade group but a consulting firm with offices in Blacksburg and Roanoke – and the brainchild of Jerry Smith, who works with a small handful of eateries at one time, locally and elsewhere (including Denver recently), on makeovers and improved business plans. “We go in and help restaurants that are struggling with whatever they might have
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a need for.” It’s done on a contract basis says Smith, who has an MBA in business analytics and worked in the industry while in college. He left a related 7-year corporate stint in northern Virginia to start his own firm. Chef T – Torrece Gregoire – has been executive chef at Radford University’s Dalton Dining Hall, the chef for The Black Hen & Bar Blue
