We are
Name: Amzad Latiff
Title: General Manager
Organization: Dean & DeLuca
Month/Year of arrival on SoHo Broadway): April 2018
Address: 560 Broadway New York, NY 10012
What brought you to SoHo Broadway? What do you do here?
I am the General Manager for the Dean & DeLuca, SoHo. My 20 years of experience in the food retail industry bought me to Dean & DeLuca. I am a proven leader in the food industry with a focus on store operations, retail execution, and team building. I am responsible for the overall financial performance of the store.
Dean & DeLuca became an established company in 1977 and I have 20+ years in retail. In the past, I worked at Whole Foods for about 16 years. While working there we used to comp shop and learn from Dean & DeLuca, a well branded established market that carries goods such as carrying artesian olive oil, aged vinegar, etc. I was inspired by the brand and quality standards.
What does your organization do, what industry are you in?
We are purveyors of fine foods. We are in the food/retail industry!
At Dean & DeLuca SoHo, we are a gourmet food court and marketplace—that is our vision and goal. This location is a food venue, where you have a grocery experience and a food court. We fill customers pantries. Other locations have more of a café-like experience. In SoHo, we try for new concepts, work with new venues and host new foodies to our food court.
What do you like about SoHo Broadway?
I love the atmosphere. We are surrounded by unique individuals all day, such as tourists and millennials. I enjoy the environment outside the store on Broadway too. Love the infrastructure and artists that surround our community in SoHo! We have the support of the local precinct and groups like yourselves, the SoHo Broadway Initiative.
What is your favorite SoHo Broadway memory or experience?
My favorite experience is dealing with tourism in the store. We have so many ethnicities that enter our store throughout the year! There are so many different languages that enter here.
Today, you don’t have to know a language to communicate. You can Google it and talk to communicate. This happens to me on a daily basis—learning about different cultures, different dialects. Different people from different worlds come here. Also, vendors from other countries bring us food products for us to try and that’s awesome.
If you had 20 minutes, where would you go?
I would go to Chinatown or Little Italy!
What should we know about you outside of working/living here? What do you do for fun or are you looking forward to doing?
I’m married to my high school sweetheart, Janie. We’ve been together for 21 years and married for 12 years. We have two kids and am married for 16 years now. Joshua is 4 and Kayla Maya is 10— I look forward to spending time with them.
