How Dom DiBartolomeo acquired The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills from his long-time mentor Ep. 109

<p><strong>Dom</strong> is an entrepreneur, food personality, owner of the historic <strong>Cheese Store of Beverly Hills </strong>and the leading importer of premium Italian foods and specialty products in Los Angeles.&nbsp;</p><p>Dom is a native New Yorker with a big personality and an even bigger appreciation for great Italian food passed down through generations of family recipes. It’s this same love of food that he shares daily with the Los Angeles community - both with his customers at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills and his vast network of top LA chefs that come to Dom for his pastas, sauces, tapenades, stuffed peppers, pestos and more, all sold under his Domenico’s Foods brand (named after his grandfather).&nbsp;</p><p>But his pathway to his current day success wasn’t a totally smooth one. After graduating from USC in the late 90s, Dom took a job as an assistant with a big LA public relations agency (a job he admittedly was not cut out for) while also working in the butcher department of Bristol Farms on weekends for minimum wage. After departing the agency, Dom eventually landed his first real food industry job at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, one of the first bona fide cheese stores in the country, where he traveled to and from by bus (lacking the money for a car). Over the next 20 years working at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills (which he now owns after purchasing it in 2022 from his mentor and the Store's previous owner of 44 years), Dom not only became one of the city’s foremost authorities on cheese; it’s also where he met and proposed to his wife and launched his successful Domenico’s Foods brand, which started with the sale of his sun-dried tomatoes, based on a family recipe handed down for generations, at the Cheese Store.&nbsp;</p><p>Dom is also the leading importer of Italian gourmet products in Los Angeles (he personally visits Italy to curate food products from small producers who make exceptional products not widely available in the United States). He consults and maintains relation