Santa Barbara-based Kamran & Company has named James Dinardi as Chief Financial Officer and Matthew Harlan as Chief Sales Officer while promoting 12-year veteran Daniel Rios to Vice President of Project Operations — three moves the foodservice design-build firm says are intended to strengthen delivery from concept through commissioning.
The appointments follow CEO Tim Welsh's arrival in May and signal an acceleration in organizational build-out at a company that serves hospitality, healthcare, education, and large-scale venue operators. "Every foodservice project matters, whether it is a single operation opening its first location or a national venue on a tight timeline," Welsh said. "James, Matthew and Daniel each bring that experience in different parts of the business."
The New Executives
Dinardi brings more than 20 years of financial and operational leadership in construction and specialty contracting, including multiple CFO roles spanning specialty infrastructure, commercial building, and heavy civil construction. Notably, he supported one contractor's growth from roughly $7 million to more than $100 million in revenue — a scaling trajectory directly relevant to a firm managing complex, multi-trade kitchen buildouts. He also carries direct kitchen construction experience, which should translate well to Kamran's fabrication-and-installation model.
Harlan's background is unusual in the dealer-contractor channel: he trained at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and spent more than a decade as an executive chef before moving into commercial foodservice sales. He joined TriMark USA in 2018 and rose to Regional Vice President of Contract and Institutional Sales for the Southeast Region before joining Kamran. That operator-side fluency — understanding how a kitchen actually has to function before a single piece of cooking equipment lands on the floor — is an asset when selling integrated design-build projects to sophisticated buyers.
Rios Rises From the Floor
The promotion that may resonate most with the trades is Rios's. He joined Kamran in 2012 as a sheet metal apprentice and advanced through journeyman, general superintendent, project manager, project executive, and General Manager of Kamran Metalworks before reaching VP of Project Operations. His project portfolio includes multiple large Las Vegas casino foodservice builds and a new professional football stadium — the kind of high-complexity, high-stakes work that tests every aspect of prep-and-storage layout, ventilation coordination, and equipment sequencing. In his new role, Rios will oversee Kamran's full contract project portfolio and lead national project management and delivery.
For consultants and equipment specifiers working on large-venue or institutional projects, the depth now sitting across Kamran's executive table — a finance leader who understands construction cash flow, a sales leader who has run a commercial kitchen, and an operations chief who started as an apprentice — represents a more mature project-delivery partner than the firm could claim a year ago.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
