By Nancy Dahlberg / ndahlberg@miamiherald.com / @ndahlberg
Roger Duarte and Sam Gorenstein believe ceviche will be the new sushi. Endeavor Miami is betting that Duarte and Gorenstein are the pair of founders to make it so.
Duarte and Gorenstein teamed up to bootstrap and open the first My Ceviche restaurant in South Beach in 2012, offering a fresh take on fast-casual dining. The restaurant business, which offers a variety of affordable, made-to-order ceviches, salads, tacos and burritos, has quickly expanded to a second location in the Brickell area, 1250 S. Miami Ave., and now employs 36 people.
Two more locations are on the runway for this year — one in South Miami set to open this spring and another one at Miami International Airport in the summer. “It’s in the D Terminal which we are extremely excited about; we have 50,000 passengers passing there a day,” said Duarte. “As for a cash flow and branding perspective, it’s a home run.”
Duarte, 30, who left the world of high finance in 2008 to open George Stone Crab before My Ceviche, and Gorenstein, 29, who was an award-winning chef at BLT Steak, Michael’s Genuine and other restaurants, want to scale their business nationally. That’s where Endeavor, a global nonprofit that supports high-growth entrepreneurship, can help. Endeavor, which opened its first U.S. office in Miami last year, chose My Ceviche’s founders as one of its first “Endeavor Entrepreneurs” from South Florida.