June 13, 2022
A Day in the Life: Sam Diminich of Your Farms, Your Table
The in-demand chef has gone from Upstream to multiple revenue streams
Sam Diminich at the UPPY Awards. Daniel Coston/UP
In March 2020, Sam Diminich lost his job as executive chef at SouthPark restaurant Upstream. He stood in line for a job at an Amazon warehouse while his 13-year-old son waited in the car, but a chance call from a local farmer changed his trajectory. The farmer complained that with restaurants closed, he had nowhere to sell his produce. Within weeks, Diminich had launched Your Farms, Your Table, a gourmet meal delivery service that partners with local producers. Less than a year later, former Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey enlisted Diminich as his personal chef.
Now, Diminich is preparing to open Restaurant Constance in the former Counter- space in West Charlotte. Named for his daughter, the restaurant will serve farmers market finds and dishes inspired by the seasons. As he manages the buildout, he continues to prep meals for McCaffrey, a roster of high-profile clients, and, through YFYT, many more in Charlotte.
Here’s what a day in his life looks like.
5 a.m. Diminich wakes up with coffee and lets out his “beloved pit bull,” Sandy. Within half an hour, he’s out the door to his kitchen to start prep. When he founded YFYT, Diminich cooked out of his apartment. Since then, he’s moved to a space in The City Kitch on the west side. “We’ve expanded our space and expanded our opportunities to work with better equipment, more resources,” he says. “We’ve been able to do more things such as dumplings and empanadas, so we’ve been able to expand our palate.”
6:30 a.m. McCaffrey lives in Lake Norman, about an hour’s drive for Diminich, who makes the trip three times a day, first for breakfast at 7:30. For the chef, the passion of farmers for their work and food has provoked something like a spiritual awakening. He loves meeting farmers and learning about their farms, from backyard operations to acres of rolling fields. As a personal chef, Diminich can make connections between those farmers and people like McCaffrey, whose reputation and schedule make it hard to browse the farmers market on Saturday mornings. “If we have an opportunity to have a conversation,” he says, “he’s going to ask about what’s on his plate and where it came from.” And Diminich is always delighted to share the stories of the people who grew his food.
9:30 a.m. Back in Charlotte, Diminich sweats for an hour with Body by Ro, a personal trainer, before working with his team to plan the day’s delivery menu for Your Farms, Your Table. He coordinates with Jenessa Staruch, who will be chef de cuisine at Restaurant Constance, and Leland Brown, who will take over as chef at YFYT after the restaurant opens. Throughout the day, and especially on the one or two days a week that he doesn’t cook for McCaffrey, Diminich also manages every aspect of the restaurant’s launch, for example, coordinating with the interior designer. “I get into the building August 1,” he says. “So we hope to be open around October, but in order to do that, we have to be prepared.”
Soon after Diminich launched YFYT, he added events to his lineup and discovered how much he missed the energy of being in the same space with diners. Even before the pandemic, he noticed a social disconnect in society, spurred in part by divisive politics, and he believes in the power of sharing meals to create community. When he heard that chef Sam Hart of Counter- was moving to a bigger space, he “got the ball rolling and jumped on it.”
12:30 p.m. Back to Lake Norman for lunch. Since McCaffrey hired him, Diminich has expanded his clientele to include several NASCAR drivers, and his company also provides pregame meals for Charlotte Football Club. “You turn the lights on in the morning in places like Upstream, and you have to staff everyone — that’s $2,000. And then you hope to get 250 people in the door, seven days a week. So that’s your revenue stream, and there’s opportunities to diversify there, but they’re limited,” Diminich says. “What I found, and what has been shown to me as we’ve moved through this thing, is how important it is to diversify our revenue streams.”
2 p.m. Diminich leads the kitchen as YFYT prepares for delivery. Like YFYT, Restaurant Constance will carry forward the company’s mission to tell the stories of local farmers and showcase the results of their labor. He says, “The number one question I get all the time is, ‘What’s the concept for Restaurant Constance?’ If I had to answer that question, it would be ‘listening.’ Listening to the seasons.”
5 p.m. As delivery begins, Diminich returns to McCaffrey’s home to prep dinner to serve at about 7:30. On a typical day, he spends a lot of time in the car. When he’s not on the phone with his kids or for the business, he listens to podcasts. A favorite is The Rich Roll Podcast. Diminich says, “He was a collegiate swimmer. He was an academic. He was an attorney, and then he got sober, found his true path, which is service to others and self-care.” The wellness evangelist has been an inspiration for Diminich as he develops ideas and navigates his small business.
8 p.m. He heads south, back to the kitchen, where he’ll review the day with staff and begin prep for the next day. For Diminich, the pandemic, when so many hospitality workers were unceremoniously fired or furloughed, revealed how toxic the industry was. “Whether it be meal delivery or event stuff, our team grew,” he says, “and as our team grew, I leaned in on some of the mistakes that the industry has made, some of the mistakes that I made as a leader, and saw that as an opportunity to be better and cultivate new conversations and food and beverage leadership.” The chef wants to make his restaurant part of that conversation, too. He hopes it will be a model for an employee-centered approach that will foster a “positive, safe, and secure work environment for the people who we ask to give 110 percent.”
Part of that commitment includes a weekly wellness program, where Diminich encourages staff to have important conversations and ask difficult questions. He wants to emphasize that everyone on the team, including him, should look out for and invest in each other. “There’s no false pretense,” he says, “that this is the Sam show.”
11 p.m. Diminich also hosts a late meeting of Ben’s Friends, a support group for food and beverage professionals who struggle with addiction. Diminich’s own recovery had a profound impact, and serving others has been a driving force in his life and business, especially as substance abuse worsened during the isolation of the pandemic. “Ben’s Friends, the 12-step programs that help keep me alive and sober — that’s my life,” he says. “So I can’t really talk about the success of what we have going on without talking about them.”
12 a.m. “Before I hit the sack, I’ll do a pre-prep list for the next morning and then get rolling,” Diminich says. “I sleep about four or five hours a night, and then it’s back up and time to get going again.”
