The restaurant specialists: National Restaurant
Exchange and New England Restaurant Brokers

Thirty-eight years ago I recognized that there was a hole in the commercial real estate industry...I looked and couldn’t find a broker who specialized in the sale of food and liquor businesses.  “Find a need and fill it!” was drilled into our heads in grad school.

It’s amazing how many food and beverage businesses dot the landscape. If it’s true that “small business drives our country”, then restaurants are the life-blood of our society. No matter where you go, look to your left, look to your right…convenience stores, liquor stores, fast food, slowfood, pubs, full-service, nightclubs, function facilities, ad nauseam. Then you can break them down into chains, into ethnic subsets…every downtown, every shopping center, most office complexes…“my God, they’re everywhere.”

My God, where did 38 years go?

With the thousands of restaurants in Massachusetts alone and with the hundreds of chains across the country, our twenty-odd brokers are busy day and night serving the needs of the masses of buyers and sellers. Driven by the demand for consulting services, we’ve added a new consulting division, Fly On The Wall Consulting, managed by its founder, Richard Marino.

The close brother to food preparation is entertainment...whether it’s the bartender entertaining his customers, the people in the audience at a comedy show, or a crowd dancing at a nightclub. Sooner or later you have the privilege of interacting with the Wahlbergs, the Boch family, governor Baker, comedians Steve Sweeney and Lenny Clarke, and, everybody’s friends, Bobby Wong, Joe Nocera, and Donato Fratoroli to just name a few. 

Need something done, ask a busy person to help you. I’m ‘also’ now producing movies, the first one will be premiered September 11 “Sweeney Killing Sweeney” ... a  romantic comedy. 

Someone asked me when I was going to retire. Retire? To do what? This is the best business in world.

As long as the New England Real Estate Journal lives and breathes, so will New England Restaurant Brokers.

Happy 55th anniversary! 

Dennis Serpone is the president of New England Restaurant Brokers and National Restaurant Exchange, Wakefield, Mass.