About Tasty Enterprises, Inc. Founder Richard Daggett

I grew up with good parents in a blue collar neighborhood of Harrison, New Jersey, just outside Newark. My dad worked construction and my mom was a part-time secretary. We lived in an apartment above my grandmother. My brother became a police officer and is now a lieutenant with the Harrison police force.

I worked my way through college at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, as a basic, entry-level manager with a food services company at a psychiatric hospital. I was in the honor fraternity and with a professor’s encouragement, I applied for and was accepted into a history graduate program at Yale. Unfortunately, attending grad school didn’t seem feasible at the time and so after graduation I went to work full-time at the food services company.

Within a year of graduation, I was promoted to account manager of the Bronx region and two years later to the company’s highest managerial position. Wanting to take my business skills to the next level, I started an MBA program at Farleigh Dickinson University. Unfortunately, two years into the program, my tuition reimbursement was cut.

I had always wanted culinary degree and this was the fateful push. Still working at the food services company and bartending on the side, I graduated from the French Culinary Institute of Manhattan. I formed the company that would become Tasty Enterprises in December, 1995.