Volume 16 Issue 1 » 39
CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Looking Ahead
RYAN MORENO
Words by Lauren Kramer
Photos by Todd Duncan
»
With his friendly grin, casual, easy going personality and
tattooed arms, it’s easy to mistake Ryan Moreno, 41, as the
manager of S+L Kitchen & Bar in Langley rather than the co-
owner of a 25-establishment empire that includes liquor stores,
nineteen eateries and Meal Ticket Brands, a newly launched
third-party food delivery company. Moreno is the face of the
Joseph Richard Group, a company he founded in 2009 with
André Bourque, his best friend since Grade 4.
A Langley native, Moreno pulls up to our
interview in a sports car, admitting shyly
that vehicles are one of his passions. The
serial entrepreneur has achieved astounding
success in the last eleven years, but the
journey to reach this point was by no
means easy.
A child of middle-class Filipino
immigrants who came to Canada in their
early 20s, Moreno was the oldest of five
kids and recalls coveting a BMX bike at
the age of eight. “I was stoked when I
came downstairs one Christmas and this
awesome bike was waiting for me,” he
recalls. “Then I learned that my parents had
taken an extra job delivering the newspaper
in the early mornings in order to afford
that bike. I felt so guilty that they’d had to
do that.”
Moreno began bussing tables at 14 at Red
Robin in Langley and, while he loved the
business, he left high school with no clear
career path. He and Bourque attended
a bartending course at 18, where their
entrepreneurial spirits took flight for the
first time. The pair, in full agreement that
the course was outdated and the drinks old
and boring, determined they could create
a bartending school that was cooler, more
relevant and incorporated bottle flipping.
“I had no idea how to start a business, but
within a year we wrote a program, created
a logo and advertised our first classes,” he
says. “We had thirty people show up for
Barmasters and a waiting list of others
willing to pay $375 each. At that moment
I realized, ‘Wow! We created a business out
of nothing and we had a stack of cash as a
result!’ ”
At a conference, a successful restaurant
owner offered Moreno advice. “If you
want a good life, open a small restaurant,”
he said. “If you want a great life, open a
big one.” Taking those words to heart,
Moreno purchased a 300-seat supper club
called Rain Lounge and Grill in Burnaby,
learning quickly that there was a lot he
didn’t know. It’s where he met his wife,
Cindy, and some of his closest friends,
who were team members at the restaurant.
But the learning curve was steep and it
ended up costing him. “I had to bus and
serve tables in those days to make $20 to
take Cindy on a date and put $5 in the gas
tank,” he recalls. The business closed, but
the hospitality industry had Moreno firmly
in its grip.
He turned to nightclubs, borrowing
money to buy into The Standard in New
Westminster, where he got back on his
feet. He and Bourque bought into the
Ozone, a legendary Surrey nightclub,
and opened the Vanilla Room, a Langley
nightclub, in 2006, which, he says, “shot off
like a rocket.” By 2009 they owned Joseph
Richard, a nightclub on Granville street
a block from The Roxy. “It felt like we’d
reached the top of the mountain,” he says.