A restaurant operator and a growth builder, at the same table.
Clear the Plate is Tom Tarantino and Ezra Gonzalez. We help independent food businesses in San Diego sell more of what they’re already good at, with the operations and systems to back it up.
From Little Italy to Scripps Ranch.
Tom grew up in San Diego’s Little Italy. His family came from Porticello, Sicily, and both of his grandfathers fished out of San Diego in the early 1900s. He has spent more than 30 years in food, in restaurants and in the grocery business.
In 2016 he co-founded RoVino, an Italian restaurant and wine bar on Kettner Boulevard. Within three years it was recognized as one of San Diego’s best Italian restaurants.
From 2019 to 2023 the team also ran Rovino The Foodery, an Italian deli and market in East Village. When dining rooms closed in 2020, the market stayed open and its take-home meals for two took off.
In February 2026 Tom opened Buon Cibo, his own Sicilian deli, market, and wine boutique in Scripps Ranch, where he has lived for more than 40 years.
Ezra started working with Tom a year before the doors opened, building the concept from scratch. The marketing started months ahead: by opening day, 1,500 people had joined the email list, about 3,000 were following along, and the neighborhood was already talking about the store.
After opening, the website became a second storefront: preorder dinners, ticketed events, and catering. One or two emails a week kept the list growing and opening at 60% or better.
Early on, every customer who bought something got an email asking what they thought. That feedback shaped the food and the service, turned buyers into regulars, and caught unhappy experiences early enough to fix them before they became bad reviews. The data from every order showed what to keep, what to change, and where to spend on promotion.
Clear the Plate is the two of us doing the same work for other independent owners: Tom on the kitchen side, Ezra on the selling side.
Neither side is support for the other.
Tom decides whether something can be produced, priced, and served well. Ezra decides how it gets found, bought, and bought again. We agree on what’s worth building before anyone builds it.
Co-founder of the award-winning RoVino, owner of Buon Cibo, and more than 30 years in San Diego food.
- Menu consultation
- Pricing
- Private events
- Catering and catering menus
- Online catering
- Space usage
- Design and merchandising
- Staff workflow and guest experience
Built Buon Cibo’s concept, marketing, ordering, and reporting, starting a year before it opened.
- Offer development
- Shopify and commerce websites
- Ordering and checkout
- Meta and Google advertising
- Email and text marketing
- Search and AI discoverability
- Automation and CRM
- Dashboards and reporting
What we believe
- 01
Start with what you have
Your kitchen, menu, customers, and reputation are the raw material. Most growth starts there.
- 02
Revenue isn’t the finish line
If fulfillment costs and complexity eat the benefit, it didn’t work. Margin and routine matter.
- 03
You own it
Your website, customer list, ad accounts, and reports stay in your name.
- 04
Say it plainly
A written scope, a written price, and no promises we can’t keep.
We test it at Buon Cibo first.
Tom’s deli, market, wine boutique, and eatery in Scripps Ranch is where our preorder dinners, events, and reporting run every week. We know the pickup sheet as well as the ad dashboard: what the guest ordered, whether the kitchen can make it right, whether pickup works, and whether they come back.
Read the Buon Cibo storyView sources and how we counted
- $24k+ a month is preorder dinners, event tickets and meal plans bought on Buon Cibo’s website, across its old and new stores, in September 2026, with October on pace to pass it. It isn’t total store revenue or profit, and it leaves out catering.
- $1 → $10.46 is the purchase value Meta Ads Manager reports for every $1 spent in Buon Cibo’s best full week of October 2026, Monday to Sunday. Meta’s count isn’t the same as the store’s own, and sales from ads aren’t profit.
- $6,000+ in 30 days is sales from Buon Cibo’s seven emails sent September 28 to October 19, 2026, counted to October 21, as Shopify reports them, rounded down; $1,500+ is a single email, for a seated event night. 1,500 is the list on opening day, and the average open rate across those emails is 62%.
- About 3,000 followed Buon Cibo on social media before opening day; 1,500 had joined the email list.
- RoVino’s awards are as reported by SDVoyager and OpenTable.
Online prepaid sales only, not total store revenue. Buon Cibo is our founding example, not a client portfolio, and we don’t promise the same results or timeline.