Foodservice design-and-build firm Kamran & Company has appointed James Dinardi as Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Harlan as Chief Sales Officer, and promoted 14-year veteran Daniel Rios to Vice President of Project Operations — a trio of moves that materially reshapes the contractor's senior bench as it pursues large-scale hospitality, healthcare, education, and entertainment venue work.
The additions follow Welsh's own arrival as CEO in May and signal an appetite for structured growth. For operators and developers sourcing a single partner to carry a kitchen project from concept through commissioning, the buildout of Kamran's leadership layer matters: it determines whether a firm can sustain quality across a growing project portfolio without losing the institutional knowledge that wins repeat business.
The Appointees
Dinardi brings more than 20 years of financial and operational leadership drawn entirely from construction and specialty contracting. His resume includes CFO roles spanning specialty infrastructure, commercial building, and heavy civil construction, as well as direct kitchen construction experience. In one prior engagement, he supported a construction company that scaled from approximately $7 million to more than $100 million in revenue — a trajectory relevant to any contractor eyeing national contract growth.
Harlan's path to Chief Sales Officer is unusual and arguably well-suited to a foodservice equipment and fabrication firm. He trained at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and spent more than a decade as an Executive Chef before pivoting to business development at TriMark USA in 2018. He rose to Regional Vice President of Contract and Institutional Sales for the Southeast Region before joining Kamran. That culinary-to-commercial arc gives him credibility in conversations with chefs and food-and-beverage directors that a purely sales-track executive would struggle to replicate — a distinction that increasingly matters in competitive foodservice equipment and design procurement.
An Internal Promotion
Rios's elevation to VP of Project Operations may be the most telling signal in the announcement. He joined Kamran in 2012 as a sheet metal apprentice and advanced through every operational rung — journeyman, general superintendent, project manager, project executive, and General Manager of Kamran Metalworks — before reaching the VP level. His project credits include major casino developments in Las Vegas and a new professional football stadium, the kind of high-complexity, high-visibility venues where schedule risk and coordination demands are severe.
"Daniel's promotion also reflects something we care about deeply — the depth of expertise already inside this company and the people who have built their careers here," said Tim Welsh, CEO of Kamran & Company. In his new role, Rios will oversee the firm's full contract project portfolio and lead national project management, delivery, and execution.
What It Means for Operators
For hospitality developers, stadium operators, and multi-unit foodservice buyers evaluating construction partners, leadership continuity and financial discipline are as important as design capability. A CFO with a track record of scaling contractors, a CSO who has worked both sides of a commercial kitchen, and a VP of Operations who has run sheet metal crews on casino floors represent a purposeful coverage of the risk factors that derail foodservice construction projects: budget overruns, misread operational specs, and field execution gaps.
The moves align with broader momentum in hospitality foodservice construction and renovation, where post-pandemic venue pipelines — stadiums, resorts, healthcare campuses — are generating sustained demand for contractors that can manage both the fabrication and the full project lifecycle. Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked similar leadership investment across the foodservice supply chain as firms position for multi-year growth cycles.
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.
