Jason Berry, 51, and his husband, Michael Reginbogin, 45, live in McLean, Virginia, and are the founders of KNEAD Hospitality + Design, a Washington, D.C. -based restaurant group.
Berry, who was raised in Los Angeles, has long held a passion for cooking, dining and food. After three decades in the restaurant business, he and his partner formed KNEAD in 2014.
The KNEAD restaurants offer cuisines spanning Mexican, Southern, French, American and Steak, as well as fast-casual bakeries, burgers, taco and pizza concepts.
While Berry has spent a long time in the restaurant industry, his life changed in a big way two years ago when his first child, London (2) was born. Now, the couple has a second child, Roman (4 months).
Here’s what Berry has to share about life as a new dad, his experience in the hospitality industry and how his roles overlap.
What do you love about working in the hospitality industry? Do you think this kind of role
influences how you interact with people or your approach to parenting?
Opening right from my childhood, food is about joy and family and togetherness and celebration. It’s sort of a natural extension for me where I get to continue to help people fulfill those goals—not just sustenance and the act of eating to stay alive, but the job of bringing people together.
How has becoming a parent influenced you?
It’s given me an opportunity to really focus. It’s helped me become patient. Patience has been an enormous thing for me. Also, just looking at the things my parents did well and didn’t do well with me—you want to be better than them as a parent.
I think every parent should want to be better than the parents that raised them, and every child should want to be a better parent when they grow up than their parents were. No parent is perfect.
Watching [London] evolve has been amazing, and I think Michael and I feel really good that we’ve been a part of creating this little human and trying to set her up for the world.
When you’re a gay father and you’re married to another man, and you don’t have the correct equipment to bring a child into this world, it’s an incredibly intentional act when you’re going out and spending a fortune— at least the way we did it—spending a lot of money to have children. You gotta really want kids to go through that.
How do you balance work and family life, and what makes it easier?
We have a nanny; we have a lot of child care help. We just had a night nurse for almost
three months. The baby is still not sleeping all night, but he wakes up once now, so
we can manage that.
Having help really helps—we’re very fortunate to have everything we have.
What has been challenging or surprising about your parenting journey so far?
Everybody tells you, ‘Oh, the first kid is easy, but the second kid is tough,’ and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re just doubling—we’re not having 10.’ But people tell me two is like 10, and I wouldn’t say two is like 10, but two is definitely a lot more than two.
What do you hope your kids learn from you?
Just to be a good person. There’s a term—I’m Jewish—there’s a term called “being a mensch.” You know, do right by people, treat others as you want to be treated, be honest, be direct, be kind, be reliable. I think if you start off on those sorts of values, I think you
can have a lot less opportunity to screw up your life.
