Where are they now?

Seventeen years after being honored among the 40 Under Forty, Bill Collins says he hasn’t lost any of the enjoyment he gets from seeing people enjoy good food — and each other.

When BusinessWest caught up with Bill Collins this month at his East Longmeadow restaurant, Center Square Grill, he was about to head over to the Big E. It’s a relationship that started in 2014 when the director of the fair’s agricultural programs asked him to stop by.

“She said, ‘hey, I’ve got a group of 4-Hers, and I’ve got some lamb. Any chance you’d come in and cook a recipe?’ So I did that. And 11 years later, I’ve surpassed 96,000 samples of recipes that I’ve cooked there and given away. Every day of the fair from 11 to 1:30-2, I go in, get on a microphone, and cook a dish, and all the dishes I prepare are from local farms around New England.

“It has become a little bit of a passion for me,” Collins went on. “It’s a cool experience to be able to take somebody who might not understand the economics of where the money goes in the community if you buy local, versus at the big box store, and the differences in the meat. To be able to talk about that stuff is pretty cool.”

The same year he started demonstrating recipes at the Big E, Collins opened Center Square Grill, which was a success out of the gate and has remained so, albeit not without some challenges, from the difficult pandemic years to the current inflationary landscape that has made everything more expensive, to a sprinkler system that malfunctioned last year and shut the place down for a few months — followed by a fight with the insurance company.

“We paid all of our front of the house and back of the house employees for eight weeks while we were shut. And I paid the employees in the front the average of their tips as well, because we felt there was some gray area in the way our policy was written, and we felt that we could get paid back for that,” Collins said.

“When I talked to my wife, I said, ‘listen, we’re going to do this, and I’m scared because it’s a lot of money.’ But if we didn’t, the employee market was so competitive at that point. And everybody was so well-trained that if we didn’t do that, you know, it wouldn’t have been two months we were closed — it would be more like six by the time we hired, retrained, and everything.”

So Collins cashed in a retirement policy to pay his staff in full, and when the insurance company initially refused to cover the tip pay, he stood firm and made it clear he’d fight that decision — and eventually was reimbursed for all of it.

“What was the alternative? Center Square Grill goes away for six months, right? Nobody wins there,” he recalled.

When Collins was named to BusinessWest’s second-ever 40 Under Forty class in 2008, he was 28 years old, working as director of Operations in the Spoleto Restaurant Group, overseeing six dining locations owned by noted restaurateur Claudio Guerra.

“You know, it’s funny — when I met Claudio, I was 19 years old, and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but I always envisioned being in business for myself. I was always a hustler,” Collins recalled.

“I don’t believe I actually deserved to win that award in 2008,” he added. “I think now I do; we’ve accomplished a lot. But I don’t know that I was fit to be in that group of people at that point, but I’m still appreciative — it was an awesome honor.

“But at that point, I was definitely thinking about being on my own. And when I did go on my own, I probably wasn’t economically in the right position to give it a shot, but when is the right time, you know? You eventually have to go for it. And it had been in the back of my head since I was a kid.”

The original vision for Center Square Grill was a creative American eatery with multiple culinary influences, where people would want to visit more than once a week.

“We didn’t want to be too specific. Everybody in town already had their favorite Italian place, they already had their favorite Chinese place. What I felt was lacking was a quality, slightly upscale version of a tavern — a place where you can get a burger and a beer or come in for a date night for steak and oysters.”

“We didn’t want to be too specific. Everybody in town already had their favorite Italian place, they already had their favorite Chinese place. What I felt was lacking was a quality, slightly upscale version of a tavern — a place where you can get a burger and a beer or come in for a date night for steak and oysters.”

These days, Collins employs around 90 people at his businesses, most of them at Center Square. He also owns a percentage of Barburrito in Ludlow, and is a partner in Hawks Landing, a farm in East Longmeadow that the owners plan to use for everything from pumpkins, apples, and a corn maze in the fall to an activity space for community events — while producing farm-fresh produce for their various other businesses, which include One Way Brewing in Longmeadow. He also recently launched a food, travel, and lifestyle TV show on WWLP called The Food Explorer.

Meanwhile, “my wife and I know that the restaurant business is tumultuous. So we decided to live on a fixed income from the restaurant, and anything extra that we earn, we’ve developed into a real estate company. We have about 20 doors in this area for rentals, and a lot of our employees actually live in them. And we continue to be on the hunt for quality properties to add in the portfolio. That, I think, might eventually be bigger than my other businesses.”

Bill Collins said Center Square Grill was an immediate success, but has had its share of challenges, from the pandemic to last year’s sprinkler malfunction.

Like he was mentored under Guerra and others in his younger years, he takes pride in seeing his own employees spread their wings, like Andrew Brow, who started working with Collins at age 16 and eventually struck out on his own with a series of area restaurants (and 40 Under Forty honors himself in 2023).

“It’s been a cool journey,” Collins said. “I always say it’s one part luck, it’s one part hard work and smarts, and it’s one part being in the right position and knowing the right people.”

As for what he enjoys most about coming to work each day, Collins may have put it best during a visit last year to the BusinessWest podcast, BusinessTalk.

“It’s the people,” he told us. “When I sit back in the corner of a restaurant that I’ve built and I see people enjoying themselves and having this little bit of escapism going on — whether they got a babysitter and they’re having a date night or they’re celebrating a birthday or an anniversary — and the whole vibe is good, the music’s spot on, the lights are right, the food is good, and I just see two people so happy together, enjoying their night … that’s what does it for me. I love giving people that small escape, even if it’s just for an hour.”