How Dan Simons of the Washington, D.C., institution Founding Farmers built a business on people-first philosophy
From Early Failures to Building a Restaurant Philosophy
Dan Simons is the co-founder and co-owner of Farmers Restaurant Group, the hospitality company behind the farmer-owned Founding Farmers restaurants, as well as Founding Spirits and the group’s catering and events division. Based in the Washington, D.C., region, the company has grown to eight restaurants across D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, while building a reputation for scratch cooking, sustainability, employee wellness and support for independent family farms.
Simons first got into the hospitality industry while working in restaurants during college at George Washington University. He later worked in leadership roles at TGI Fridays and the Cheesecake Factory during pivotal growth periods for both brands. At Cheesecake Factory, he worked closely with mentor and future business partner Michael Vucurevich (“Mike V.”). In 2004, Simons and Vucurevich launched their own consulting firm, Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group (VSAG), with dreams of eventually opening restaurants themselves. Their first independent concept was a small Southern-inspired restaurant in Garland, Texas, called “Koopies” – named after Simons’ oldest son, Cooper. The restaurant focused on elevated comfort food and higher-quality ingredients, but ultimately failed.
“Our first restaurant failed,” Simons says. “We weren’t capitalized enough. We didn’t understand the depth of capital needed to get through the hard times. We just thought, ‘Oh, we can do it with better chicken. We can do the iced tea with better tea. We can do fresh green beans instead of out of a can.’ We thought we knew more awesome. And the customer was basically saying, ‘No, you don’t.’ The biggest lesson there was to remember that other opinions exist aside from just our entrepreneurial enthusiasm.”
Simons says the restaurant failed so miserably that he was forced to live out of his mother-in-law’s basement for three years, and it took 10 years to pay back all of his debt. “The best lesson was that you can’t try to give the customer something they don’t want, even if you’re certain you know better what’s best for them,” he says.
The Origin of Founding Farmers
That failure ultimately led to the opportunity that changed the course of his career. Simons and Vucurevich began consulting for the North Dakota Farmers Union, which had unsuccessfully invested in another Washington, D.C., restaurant concept called Agraria. The relationship evolved into a partnership, and together they launched the first Founding Farmers in 2008 near the White House. The mission was larger than simply opening a restaurant: The group aimed to create a hospitality company that supported family farmers, prioritized scratch-made food, operated sustainably and built a strong people-first culture.
“The North Dakota Farmers Union had a very clear mission of wanting to spread the message to Americans about the difference between a family farmer and a corporate farming producer,” Simons says. “They wanted to increase the amount of family-farmed product purchased. They wanted to influence the restaurant industry through role modeling. They wanted consumers to walk into a grocery store and ask the question: ‘Who grew this?’ We buy from family farmers and not big corporate ag. More than 50% of what we do comes from a supply chain that lines up with our ethos.”
Building a Farmer-Owned Restaurant Group
Founding Farmers was never meant to be just another restaurant chain, Simons says. Since opening its first location in Washington, D.C., in 2008, the farmer-owned restaurant group has built its identity around a deeper mission: creating thoughtful, scratch-made food while supporting family farmers and building a culture rooted in human connection, hospitality and long-term values. Today, the group includes multiple Founding Farmers locations throughout the D.C. region and beyond, along with Founding Farmers Fishers & Bakers in Georgetown, Founding Farmers & Distillers, catering operations, a commissary bakery and production facility, and an in-house distillery. Together, the restaurants employ roughly 1,600 people and serve millions of guests annually.
None of the restaurant locations are cookie-cutter, however. “While we use the same brand name or derivations around Founding Farmers, each restaurant is designed totally unique,” Simons says. “We change the menu in every restaurant. We think of the restaurants as siblings, as opposed to twins.”
Culture, Values, and the Founding Farmers Constitution
Internally, the company operates under an eight-page “Constitution” that outlines its values, leadership philosophy and expectations around accountability, respect and hospitality.
That philosophy extends beyond the dining room. Founding Farmers has long emphasized environmental initiatives, direct sourcing relationships and support for independent agriculture, years before many of those conversations became mainstream in hospitality.
“For me, hospitality means to give love and to receive love, and to do both of those things functionally with the team,” Simons says. “That’s what builds the team, and then the guests feel that. You have to see more in people than they see in themselves, and teach them how to see that aptitude in the mirror. Every human likes to be seen. Every human likes to have their effort validated.”
“Our company is built not around quarterly returns,” Simons adds. “It’s built in long-term value creation. For us, we’re really measuring culture as part of that value creation. The challenge is knowing that actually things can always be better. Change for change’s sake – if the outcome is just going to be different but not necessarily better, why should we change?”
The mission is reinforced in hiring and training. “We teach our Constitution classes ourselves to every salaried person that we hire,” Simons says. “It’s in our hourly orientation, too. And when Mike or I fall short, someone holds us accountable.”
Leadership, Purpose, and Life Beyond Restaurants
Today, Simons serves not only as a restaurateur, but also as a speaker, educator and advocate. He teaches leadership and productivity principles, serves on advisory boards tied to conscious capitalism initiatives, and founded the nonprofit Our Last Straw, focused on reducing single-use plastics in hospitality.
“There’s 168 hours in a week. Ideally I sleep for 56 of them. That gives me 112 hours,” he says. “And if used intentionally, week after week after week, 112 hours is a tremendous amount of time with which to create value and create a life with no regrets, and to do things that really line up with what matters to me. Human connection.”
Read More & Podcast Embed
These quotes were pulled from Simons’ conversation with Eric Cacciatore, host of the Restaurant Unstoppable podcast. To learn more about Simons and Founding Farmers, and to listen to the full conversation, click the play button below.
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