David Manero, the mastermind behind some of South Florida’s most successful restaurant concepts, started learning the restaurant business long before most of his peers were even pondering a career path. Whether it was by process of osmosis or through an active interest, the man who counts mega successful establishments like Vic & Angelo’s and The Office to his credit earned his chops in the kitchen by literally growing up in one.

“My play dates when I was 8-years-old were in these big professional kitchens,” Manero said. Manero’s parents were both restaurateurs in Connecticut and he inherited his passion for the business from them. Both parents were well ahead of their time and adopted a garden to plate, organic philosophy that helps explain why Manero’s establishments are strictly the highest quality. While other kids hung out and had family time in their homes on the weekends, he did the same—just in one of his parents’ restaurants’ kitchens.

“I spent my Saturdays hanging out, goofing around in kitchens around chefs, dishwashers and servers,” Manero said. “I can remember reaching into a mixing bowl of fresh meatballs when I was a kid in Connecticut and making it into a snowball and throwing it at a car. I got in trouble for that one. It’s unique, but that’s how I grew up. My parents weren’t lawyers or doctors or accountants. They were restaurant professionals and I didn’t know anything else.”

So his progression to the top of the restaurant business was also organic. Never straying from that path—no rebellious or exploratory phases to speak of—Manero made a steady climb up the restaurant-world chain. By virtue of Manero’s upbringing and family ties to the business, he has worked in virtually every position within his family’s restaurants. “You can’t tell someone how to do something correctly without having done it yourself,” Manero said.

And it keeps him grounded as well.

“If I’m walking through one of the restaurants, I would never walk by a piece of paper on the ground and not pick it up and put it in the trash. Never. And I would never tell somebody else, ‘Pick that up.’ I would never ask someone to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. No manager or CEO of a company is above doing things like that. You have to lead by example,” Manero said.

With 13 restaurants between three different brands–Vic & Angelo’s, The Office and BurgerFi–and with 60 managers and 900 employees working for him, it is refreshing to hear Manero’s take on hard work.

“If you ever forget that or if you get too big for your britches, you’re going to get knocked down really quickly because that is what the business is really about,” he said.

Manero’s strong sense of integrity has certainly served him well, as the growth of his restaurant business has rapidly accelerated with no stop in sight. His urban roadside burger joint, BurgerFi—which stands for “Burgerfication of the Nation”—might just be the next big thing in the burger world. This ‘50s and ‘60s burger joint revival has four ultra successful South Florida locations with 100 more sold as franchises to open nationwide in two and a half years and a five-year plan that will result in 1000 locations. But don’t think for a second that this meticulous man has gone rogue; BurgerFi is anything but your average burger joint.

“We developed these incredible BurgerFi stores which sell all natural Angus beef hamburgers— the highest level of flavor and quality along with many non-high fructose corn syrup drinks and homemade custard, fresh cut fries, and Snake River Kobe beef hot dogs,” Manero said. “There has been some flattering plagiarism from some of our competitors,” he said with a laugh. “But BurgerFi is entirely different.”

And it really is. BurgerFi has an urban interior design done by award-winning Lynn Interior Design and truly feels like stepping off the sidewalk, into a chic cityscape. It is also eco-conscious and focuses on sustainability with a low carbon footprint by design.  Much of the furniture is made from recycled milk cartons. The communal tables are made from structural recycled Parallam beams, while the silver wing-backed chairs are actually made out of recycled Coke bottles, but by appearance they’re a high-fashion Philippe Starck design. The interior is adorned with steel mesh and meat hook chandeliers with turn of the century light bulbs. There is ample outdoor seating, interjected with fire pits and droppable glass walls to create an inviting space.

They were the first set of burger stores to be awarded the high-tech Coca-Cola Freestyle machines that let customers mix more than 100 combinations of soda. Their many ordering systems are digital blackboards and each location boasts 70-inch LED screens that have animation and actually show the source farms and the Angus cows grazing. The digital menus will feature farmers’ names and photographs; the bakery and produce items will be locally sourced. Now that’s farm to table. Or farm to steel tray, as Manero points out.

“We wanted to take that whole farm to table movement and bring it to the public at a lower price and that is what BugerFi is all about,” he said.

Atop the thriving burger brand, Manero also recently opened his grand coal oven enoteca concept Vic & Angelo’s in Miami Beach. During Art Basel Miami Beach, the timeframe for some of the city’s hottest parties of the year, Vic & Angelo’s was the choice for the most exclusive party of all, mega music producer Rico Love’s 29th birthday party.  Manero co-hosted with music royalty Mary J. Blige and Usher.

When it came to pulling out extra stops to make it an unforgettable event, Manero really went above and beyond. He thought of far more than strictly closing to the public and hiring security, curating fabulous decorations and an even more divine custom menu.

Manero went the extra mile, incorporating “little things that make it really special to me– Rico Love’s parents were in and I personally went over and greeted them and assigned a server specifically to them. I set up a VIP table, in the cocktail hour when no one has a VIP table; they got better service than Usher and Rico did. Those things are very important to me.” They must have been important to Rico Love and Usher as well, because they opted to hold a second private dinner at Vic & Angelo’s two days later.  Still, Manero keeps striving for excellence.

“I feel like my restaurants are not successful unless they are firing on all 12 cylinders, like a fine-tuned Lamborghini,” he said. “You have to have great food. You have to have great, great food. You have to have great service. You have to have wonderful hospitality. People have to feel like they’re coming into somebody’s home, even if you don’t know them, you want to know them; you want to get to know them. No matter how good your food is or how beautiful your restaurant is, if you don’t feel welcome and you don’t feel comfortable then you probably won’t rush to go back.” Perhaps it takes a man who grew up in one to know how to make a restaurant feel like a home.