New position: President, Theodore Barber & Co., Largo. Previous position: Vice president of procurement, Ameristar Casinos, Las Vegas
By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published April 26, 2004
When Ted Barber isn't helping to create menus, he's collecting them.
As a consultant in the hospitality industry, Barber helps design restaurants, from kitchen to ketchup. He also works with businesses from hotels to casinos, from hospitals to prisons, from cruise ships to schools.
"I provide advisory services, design services, concept planning and guidance for any type of operation with food service or commercial laundry services," said Barber, who on March 1 reopened a consulting company he initially started in 1990 in Largo. He also has an office in Las Vegas and an affiliate in Old Lyme, Conn.
Food and all that goes into the conception and production of food, is important to him, Barber said.
"Part of our job is trying to help people develop their business, help them become more successful," Barber said. "It's a very volatile business. A thousand restaurants close every day in the United States."
Also important, he said, is a collection of more than 4,000 menus that he has amassed over the years. One dates back to 1752 from a state dinner held by the king of Spain.
Barber, 51, was born in New York City and moved with his family to Clearwater in 1970, later graduating from Clearwater High School. He began working for his family's business, Pinellas Restaurant Supplies. He eventually bought the business from his father, renamed it PRS and operated it until 1989, when he sold it.
Also during the 1980s, Barber and friends started Fraternity House Restaurants, growing the chain to seven restaurants before selling it in 1990. Barber then started his consultancy and went to Europe as kitchen project manager for Euro Disney theme park in Paris from 1990-92. After the theme park opened, he continued to do design management work for Disney, first in California, then in Florida.
He also started consulting with other businesses, including the Bertucci's Restaurant chain in Boston, and eventually was named the company's chief operating officer. While at Bertucci's, Barber said he helped double the chain's outlets, to 90 restaurants in 12 states, with approximately 4,800 employees.
He left Bertucci's in 1998 to become chief executive of Semolina Restaurants in Meterie, La., where he stayed for three years. He left to join Ameristar Casinos, responsible for overseeing procurement of six casinos in four states. He helped design Ameristar's $400-million casino in St. Charles, Mo., the 10th largest in the nation, Barber said.
Barber left Ameristar in 2003, taking several months sabbatical "to determine where I wanted to relocate" and re-establish his consultancy, which had been dormant for nearly a decade. He reopened his company first in Las Vegas, then Largo, and has four employees between the two locations.
His workweek can vary greatly, Barber said. Some weeks, he's in his Largo office. But on another week, he might spend a couple of days with Passariello's Restaurant in Voorhees, N.J., then in Santa Barbara, Calif., helping to plan a new five-star hotel being built by actor Fess Parker, then to a job at the Fantasy Springs Casino in Palm Springs, Calif., then back to his Las Vegas office.
"Food, of course, is a celebration to me," he said. "People ultimately get to create the food on your design. You help create the menus. You get to see people enjoy the food. There's a success formula there.
"I have a strong culinary background," he said. "I understand the chef's vocabulary. I learned . . . from being associated with some great chefs. I understand what they struggle against, with their needs."
The menus he has collected sit in boxes in his bedroom, he said. He plans to frame some and put them in his office. "My goal is to build a museum and also a test kitchen," he said.
The collection, which spans 250 years, started innocently enough more than 30 years ago. "I started collecting them for the art work," he said. "Then I decided there was a lot more to this.
"I have menus that came across on the early immigrations into the U.S. when there was no refrigeration and things were pickled, things were salted, things were cured. You see the transitions in food tastes, when mutton came off menus and Jell-O went on."
Collecting has become serious enough that Barber now advertises for menus in some collectors' magazines. "I buy a lot on eBay and some other auctions. But people send me menus, too," he said.
He has menus with autographs, including those of Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Lana Turner and Dean Martin.
