Roth Produce
Dario Guintini, Owner of Roth Produce
Roth Produce has been a part of Findlay Market for decades. It was originally founded by the Roth family in 1920. Its longest-running owner was George Roth, who started working at the stand at the ripe age of seven years old. After over 70 years of operating the stand, he looked to Mike Guintini to take it over, who had worked with George for years, developing a family-like relationship in the process. Mike turned down the opportunity. He had someone else in mind. Mike passed the offer down to his son, Dario, who became the primary owner of Roth Produce in 2019 at just 22 years old, 99 years after the produce stand first opened.
Dario and Mike work closely together to keep the space in tip top shape. Working with his dad is great, Dario says, although no father and son relationship is without its hiccups. “We do butt heads a lot, of course. But working together allows us to get more time off than most business owners,” he says. Dario mentions the reciprocal nature of their working relationship. “We don’t have to ask each other to do anything, we just do it,” he says.
Dario says the rest of the staff at Roth is like family too. His aunt, who is retired, pulls shifts here and there to keep herself busy. They have a small, dependable team stocking the stand at Roth, which is preferred, Dario says, to an abundance of unreliable employees. “Dakota’s a goofball, but he’s here every single day and he’s never late. John is like a brother to me, even though he’s old enough to be my dad. I would not be able to do this without them,” he says. “Otherwise, I’d lose my mind.”
Dario grew up in the country, a fact he shares with most of his staff. “We’ve had a lot of the same growing up experiences,” he says. “It helps us understand each other.” Though it’s a city, Cincinnati was a good place for Dario to plant roots. It’s a ‘big small town’ as many Cincinnatians say. It’s hard not to run into someone you know at the grocery store and word seems to spread like wildfire here. Dario appreciates the slower pace that Cincinnati offers in contrast to other cities. “I have a small business and I’m not getting pushed to the side,” he says.
If you’ve ever been to Roth, you know how easy it is to strike up a conversation with Dario. He’s an extrovert, which comes in handy when chatting with well over 300 people a day, customers, delivery drivers and co-workers alike. Dario mentions that, of all his many tasks in a day, talking to guests comes the most naturally.
“It’s a positive thing, but I [have] Tourette’s Syndrome,” he says. “Nobody knows unless I show it. But that makes it more of a task to learn new things and be able to handle stressful situations,” he says. He has found that managing his symptoms has gotten easier as he’s gotten older, and he feels that it has made it easier to have face-to-face interactions with his guests. “I don’t know why, but it just comes easy to me,” he says.
It takes a lot to run a business, especially one that hinges on positive customer interactions. And Dario has quickly become a reliable source of joy in his regular customers’ lives. “I’ve got customers that I’ve been waiting on for almost 10 years,” he says. A privilege of a long stint in the service industry is building relationships with folks you may have never connected with and witnessing their lives play out. “It’s those little moments that make it all worth it,” Dario says. “If we were doing this only for money, we wouldn’t still be here. It’s all those other great experiences that make us really enjoy being down here.”
Published August 2023