Midtown Tampa’s new Real Foods Kitchen marks a homecoming for CEO

Christine Barone’s parents generally clip and send out her nearby information stories about the new Genuine Food items Kitchen area at Midtown Tampa, the $500 million blended-use progress just off Interstate 275 and N Dale Mabry Highway.

“Every solitary update on Midtown,” she said.

She’s satisfied to get them, simply because she’s also psyched for the new restaurant, a wellness-centered speedy-relaxed chain established by wellness expert Andrew Weil and backed by Oprah Winfrey.

That reported, Barone does not require the clippings to remain up to date on Accurate Foods Kitchen.

She is, immediately after all, the company’s CEO.

“I have been looking ahead to this restaurant for these kinds of a prolonged time,” explained Barone, a Plant Substantial University graduate whose mothers and fathers have lived in Tampa since the ‘80s. “My entire workforce understands, ‘Oh, it is Christine’s hometown!’ My dad and mom go by and have seemed at the restaurant like each and every one working day since it’s been constructed.”

When Genuine Food stuff Kitchen opens Feb. 28, Barone, who now lives in Arizona, will be there with buddies and family members at her facet. The chain’s 40th restaurant, and fifth in Florida, feels like “a loved ones affair,” she said, “so it feels really particular.”

It is not just the path Barone, 48, observed for herself when she graduated from Plant a few yrs following her spouse and children moved to Tampa. Barone was a higher faculty math whiz who acquired applied mathematics and enterprise levels from Harvard, and labored as a economical analyst at Raymond James Fiscal and Bain & Business soon after graduation.

At Bain, she dealt with a large amount of shopper-struggling with companies, doing work with them to get past roadblocks to development.

“I favored aiding to determine out the future that you simply cannot determine by means of finance and math, and pondering by, ‘How do you determine out what men and women want in advance of they even know they want it? How do you map out the upcoming?’” she claimed.

That led to a function at Starbucks, wherever she headed up the company’s food items division. It is also wherever she was when she initial ate at Real Meals Kitchen area, which released in Phoenix in 2008.

“That optimism I felt in the cafe was like, ‘This is so interesting I want other folks to experience this way and discover new substances,’” she mentioned. “I unquestionably cherished the meals and almost everything about it, but even additional so, how do we delight our friends? How do I figure out how to put a thing new on the menu that surprises you, and would make it feel like extra than just a meal?”

That was partly Weil’s aim with the to start with Accurate Foodstuff Kitchen. The 79-year-old health care provider, writer and pioneer in choice and integrative medicine envisioned Legitimate Foodstuff as a source for “consciously-sourced seasonal components,” together with natural and organic, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-helpful choices.

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The wellness angle also caught Winfrey’s eye soon after she dined at a Legitimate Food Kitchen. She turned an trader and board member in 2018, kicking its development into overdrive even though remaining mostly fingers-off.

“As you may well guess, she has a incredibly vast array of factors that she’s associated in, so I do not converse with her that frequently,” Barone mentioned. “But of course, currently being a feminine small business leader, it is outstanding to have any time with her to truly understand how she’s designed her organization organization, and all of the care that she’s taken to get there, and the awareness to element to get there. That, for me, is a really unique possibility.”

Tampa had been on Real Foods Kitchen’s radar considering the fact that “well before COVID,” Barone mentioned, particularly provided her knowledge of the space. She’d considered putting a restaurant in Hyde Park or South Tampa, but recognized Midtown’s outdoor neighborhood-like vibe meshed with the Accurate Food stuff mission.

“We were just one of the to start with to indicator up,” she said. “When the Midtown project was first staying made, pondering through that that’s wherever the Whole Foodstuff would be, and the REI, it just definitely felt like a terrific put to set the Legitimate Foodstuff as well.”

Although Barone doesn’t have a culinary track record herself, her company management has served steer Legitimate Foods Kitchen by way of the pandemic with no closing dining establishments, even even though dealing with provide-chain shortages and the increasing price of labor.

“I’m in each individual single tasting, serving to to immediate and tutorial the menu,” she claimed. “I am not a chef, but undoubtedly, I am an avid lover of new trends in food items and what we can try. Dr. Weil will assistance us feel by useful elements and what could possibly lower your blood sugar though feeding on it. My role is to carry all of that with each other.”

The no cost-standing Tampa restaurant will seat much more than 130 indoors and outside, with a bar and patio that’ll host yoga classes and other overall health-targeted situations. It is hitting Tampa — and precisely a new and increasing section of Tampa — at specifically the ideal time, Barone claimed.

“You’ve acquired population development, you have a great deal of individuals going in, there is new employment remaining produced — for us, that’s a wonderful atmosphere to go into,” she explained. “Omicron certainly hit the cafe business yet again, but I do consider, from all that we’re viewing, that items must be pretty fantastic for at minimum the future three to 6 months. They’re saying we’ll be in a bit of a clear place. And I assume people are energized to get again out and see every other.”