Growing up, I refused to order off the kids’ menu,” says Matt Needle (BBA ’15). “I would order sushi. And everyone’s looking at me crazy.”
Needle’s culinary curiosity came naturally: his dad owned a restaurant, and cooking was a shared family passion.
He got his first restaurant job at 15, scrubbing dishes and busing tables at an Atlanta cafe. He quickly became hooked. “I loved it,” he says. “The owner was incredible and let me see everything.”
When it came time to consider a career, there was no question.
“I loved cooking,” he says. “I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. But my parents kind of pushed me and said, ‘Do what you love, but find a way to make money doing it.’”
Rather than attend culinary school, Needle enrolled at UGA, where he majored in finance.
“It’s the best decision I ever made,” he says, “learning the business side of it, because it applies to everything.”
While at Terry, he took a dishwasher job at Athens farm-to-table restaurant Heirloom Cafe, where he impressed the owners with his cooking ability and eagerness to learn.
“I worked hard to keep up with the dishes, because I knew if I was ahead on that, I could say, ‘Hey, can you teach me something? Do you need any prep? Do you need potatoes cut? I can use a knife, and I’m willing to learn.’”
By his senior year, he was the restaurant’s executive sous chef.
After graduation, Needle spent nine months with a burger chain, where he got a feel for managing operations across multiple locations. He then joined Atlanta Tex-Mex mainstay Superica, serving as sous chef for the restaurant’s location at The Battery.
His skills and work ethic propelled him forward. He became Superica’s executive chef, then culinary director, before assuming the same role at sister restaurant Little Rey. There, his Terry education took center stage.
“I was able to start laying a foundation: how do we expand this brand?” he says. “How do we build? How do we maintain consistency and profitability across multiple stores?”
At Little Rey, Needle wears many hats.
“I do a little bit of everything. I might put on my engineering cap one day. I might hop out on the floor and talk to guests. I might jump in the kitchen and cook. I might be behind the computer putting together systems.
“It’s why the restaurant industry works so well for me,” he continues, “because I don’t sit still. The typical finance job would have been a challenge. But applying it as a piece of the puzzle — how to take a restaurant, grow it, expand it, make it successful — that’s what I really love.”
Favorite taste
“Our pollo al carbón, which is a slow-smoked half chicken. We brine and marinate them, then cook them in a custom wood smoker until they get really tender, but crispy and smoky on the outside. That gets served with jalapeños, onions, rice, beans and tortillas. And we’ve got a salsa bar with salsas we make fresh every day.”