Working with Dad
Every day is Father’s Day at these businesses
Children love their dads every day of the year, but the bond between fathers and sons and daughters feels especially strong on Father’s Day.
Celebrated since the 1960s on the third Sunday in June, it’s the one day each year when kids pause and say “Thanks!” for all the advice, knowledge and guidance dear old Dad has passed on over the years.
When your father is also your business partner, the ties can be even stronger — provided, of course, that both generations are able to successfully navigate the differing assumptions, goals and expectations of running a family business.
As we get ready to celebrate on Sunday, we profile four food- and drink-related businesses where every day could be considered Father’s Day. Some, like Sobel’s Obscure Brewing in Jeannette, are still relatively new, while others are more like Cox Market, a fourth- generation grocery in Carroll, Washington County, that has been happily humming along for decades.
What they have in common is they get the job done well — and have a lot of fun doing it. They also dish up a few Dadapproved recipes you’ll want to try on Father’s Day or later this summer.
Kait Roth & Steve Cox Cox Market
Kait Roth practically grew up in Cox Market, the Mon Valley specialty grocery store her paternal great-grandparents, Rose and Walter Cox, started in 1949.
The youngest of three, she went from playing behind the counter and hopscotching down the aisles as a toddler to waiting on customers at age 14. By the time she graduated from high school, she was also cutting meat alongside her father, Steve Cox, who grew up exactly the same way, between the same
four walls.
One of her earliest memories is of helping her mom fill holiday orders after baking all night. “She would make me a bed on the bottom of one of the empty shelves,” she said.
She wasn’t a guaranteed legacy: For a while after college, Ms. Roth worked in daycare. But by 2013, the mother of two found herself in “a very fortunate situation” of again working with her dad. Today, the 33-year-old is general manager.
“I wanted my kids to be raised how I was raised,” she said on a recent Monday, as her 2-year-old son, Kase, climbed on and off a Big Wheel near the meat counter.
Cox Market started as a food and dairy bar but over the last 25 years has grown into a specialty market known for its many local products. Mr. Cox’s wife, Peggy — whom he met at the store while they were in high school — still works there, and four of their grandchildren do, too. So did Ms. Roth’s two older brothers before they moved on to different careers.
All still live within five miles of the store’s location on Route 481 in Carroll Township, and spend countless hours at the Cox’s 80-acre farm whenever they’re not at work. “The store is the center of everyone’s world,” said Mr. Cox.
Most kids can’t wait to fly the coop after college, especially today, when multigenerational businesses are seen as an oddity, said Ms. Roth. But it would “feel weird” not to be at the store every day because it’s such a big part of her family. The fact their customers are so loyal and tolerant only sweetens the deal.
Just the other day, Mr. Cox said, a customer found Kase hiding between some bottles of laundry detergent in the cleaning aisle during a game of hide and seek. “And he thought it was the cutest thing ever,” he said, laughing.
As in most family businesses, there’s a definite hierarchy for decision making, but Mr. Cox says he always asks for, and respects, his daughter’s opinion, even if it results in heated discussions.
But never arguments, said Ms. Roth, who doesn’t know if she’s in it for the long haul but feels no pressure from her dad to make the decision anytime soon.
“Our family is so close, it never gets old.”
Martina & Sam DiBattista Vivo Kitchen
Like a lot of kids with parents in the restaurant business, Martina DiBattista got an early introduction to the nuts and bolts of the hospitality business. At age 12, she washed dishes at Vivo, the upscale Italian restaurant her father, Sam DiBattista, opened on Bellevue’s main drag in 2000.
“And it’s still one of my favorite jobs,” she insisted with a grin. “Instant gratification!”
When her dad decided to move Vivo to Sewickley in 2010, and reopened the restaurant as Bite Bistro at the same location on Lincoln Avenue, she worked there, too, as a manager with her older sister, Danina. Then it was off to find her own fortunes and a different perspective at Lawrenceville’s Cure, where she worked her way up from head server to general manager.
“She learned a lot,” said Mr. DiBattista.
She boomeranged back in 2019 to become Vivo Kitchen’s general manager, “mostly so I could boss my parents around,” she wisecracked. To which her father responded, only half-kiddingly, “I was always jealous when you worked for someone else.”
He always knew his daughter’s abilities were great, he said; the pandemic proved it.
She was the one who got the Beaver Street eatery through COVID-19 pretty much unscathed, he said. In addition to being ahead of the curve on takeout, she kept customers tempted and updated with a gorgeous feed on Instagram.
“We don’t want to do it again, but we all stuck together and never got behind,” said Mr. DiBattista. “We cheat with really great people.”
What makes the partnership work, besides love of family, is her yin to her father’s yang. They balance each other.
He is more of a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ person, “while I’m really organized,” Ms. DiBattista, 33, said with a laugh.
Granted, there have been some “growing pains” over the past couple of years. For instance, her parents are so comfortable with staff that Ms. DiBattista sometimes has to rein them in. “Then I remind myself they’ve been doing this for a very long time,” and quite successfully.
Mr. DiBattista credits their winning recipe to mutual respect and trust in one another when it comes to making decisions. His daughter agrees they work well as a team.
“He sets the bar really big for the way I expect people to treat me,” she said, wiping away unexpected tears.
Will she go the distance? She thinks so, because the two have a lot of fun together “and there’s still a lot of things we haven’t done that we’d like to try.”
Which is fine with Dad. “We goof around a lot, but when it’s time to go, we go,” he said.
Jackie & David Sobel Sobel’s Obscure Brewery
Jackie Sobel prefers whiskey to IPAs and pilsners. So you might wonder why she moved in 2016 from Tennessee, where she was studying psychology, back to her hometown of Jeannette to help her father, David, start a wholesale craft brewery.
The answer is simple: She knew they’d have a blast doing it.
The colorful gnomes that adorn their beer cans — each with his own quirky backstory — are just one indication of the sense of humor she shares with her father, David Sobel. The goofy commercials the pair produces to market Sobel’s Obscure Brewery beer in 34 counties across the state and post on Instagram is another, along with the bad beer jokes. (What is a composer’s favorite style of beer? Bock!)
“It’s her energy,” said Mr. Sobel, who got into the business after home brewing for almost a decade. They opened in June 2017, a year before they purchased their warehouse on South 4th Street. “She is nonstop, and very passionate.”
He shot his daughter a smile. “She makes me look good!”
Not that Dad’s a slacker. In addition to formulating SOB’s flagship, one-off and seasonal recipes (they’re up to 32) and selling beer at the Ligonier Country Market and other events, Mr. Sobel is overseeing construction of an 18,000square-foot brewery and tap room in the historic Gillespie department store just around the corner on Clay Street. (It’s on track to open this fall.) He also works full time at an insurance agency he manages in Harrison City.
His daughter, in turn, does all the brewing while operating SOB’s day-to-day business, including overseeing the pop-ups the duo hold on weekends in a fenced-in lot adjoining the warehouse. Both are industrious sorts who do what they need to do to get a job done, said Ms. Sobel. They’re also autonomous, which when you’re brewing, bottling and kegging beer commercially, is a definite plus. But they love to join forces, too.
The coronavirus forced them to be even more innovative. In addition to opening up their warehouse for to-go beer, for instance, they offered grown-up Easter and Christmas baskets (Jackie’s idea). They also collaborated with a local baker and coffee roaster on new brews to generate excitement.
“You stumble in the dark and stub your toes a lot, but we came through it,” she said.
Giving his daughter free rein, and having faith it will work out, plays to the brewery’s growing success, said Mr. Sobel.
His daughter is less philosophical.“It’s beer. Have some fun!”
Jim & Kevin Hough Liberty Pole Spirits
When Jim Hough started distilling craft whiskey in a 10gallon copper still in the early 2000s, he never imagined it would launch a family business. His adult sons, Rob and Kevin, had successful careers as engineers, and he still had 10 years to go until retirement from his job in finance.
Yet the Washington County native became so good at spirit making, that in 2015, he decided to make whiskey full time. Liberty Pole Spirits opened the next year in a former monument factory in the heart of Washington, Pa., and today features a line of six grain-to-glass craft whiskeys, including a historically accurate unaged white, a Colonial corn and a peated bourbon whiskey using malt imported from Scotland. All are handbottled.
They couldn’t have chosen a better location: Washington County was the cradle of the Whiskey Rebellion uprising of 1794, after all. Their whiskeys — named for the poles locals erected in protest against the federal government’s tax on distilled spirits — pay homage to that local history.
Small business owners often wear multiple hats and the Houghs are no different. But generally, Rob, 31, is head distiller while Kevin, 29, is head of operations, running both the front and back of the house. Dad serves as brand ambassador and their mom, Ellen, is the secret weapon who made the tasting room feel like you’ve stepped back into the 1790s. One quirky touch is the upside-down portrait of Alexander Hamilton hanging behind the bar. He came up with the whiskey tax.
“It’s really not a first- and second-generation business,” said Jim Hough. “We’re all in it together.”
To see their skills and how they’ve adapted them to grow the business, “I’m amazed every day,” he added.
Both sons played hockey growing up, so the family is used to being together. What keeps the peace and encourages collaboration is that Jim doesn’t consider himself the boss.
“Everyone is here to learn, and put traditional roles aside,” he said.
Kevin agrees they try to keep things light. “Humor is a way to keep things positive.”
At their current pace of about 4½ 53-gallon barrels a week, the family is making “a lot” of whiskey, said Jim Hough. So much, in fact, that the 300-gallon, Americanmade still they named Harold (after Jim’s father) and used for the first 2½ years of distilling is now in Chico, Calif. A 600-gallon version has taken its place.
The taproom will be closed on Father’s Day, but father and sons will spend the day like they do most every other day of the week. Together. Kevin says he’ll be cooking something meaty and delicious in the pellet smoker, no doubt with a glass of Liberty Pole rye whiskey in hand.
“Dad’s more like my buddy at this point,” he said.