Greg is a specialty food & beverage content expert, marketing consultant, strategic advisor and business coach to entrepreneurs and organizations at every stage of their evolution. He also works with interactive creative agency Taste Network, LLC, as Specialty Marketing & Trade Process Director for the Ribera del Duero & Rueda wine regions of Spain on their multi-year US campaign—and is a mentor and coach at The Hatchery, a non-profit food and beverage incubator dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and start-ups in growth mode.

Prior to starting GRO(W) IDEAS, LLC, Greg and his husband, Ken Miller, founded and operated Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine—a national award-winning, multi-unit specialty food & beverage retailer / wine bar restaurant(s) with 125 employees. Pastoral operated for more than 15 years, also with a wholesale cheese business to 100+ chef-driven restaurants and hotels, plus an online store that shipped nationwide. Pastoral’s signature gift collections were featured on three separate occasions in Oprah’s Favorite Things, and for three holiday seasons with Williams-Sonoma. Pastoral was also named twice as Specialty Food Association’s national Outstanding Retailer of the Year, and showcased in a national commercial with American Airlines / Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select Card®.  Watch here.

During his tenure at Pastoral, Greg served for multiple years as board-elected president of the American Cheese Society—the leading cheese industry association in the Americas—and on the board of the globally renowned Specialty Food Association which hosts the annual Fancy Food Shows. Greg also was a founding member of the Good Food Merchants Collaborative—underwriter of the Good Food Awards as part of the Good Food Foundation—and later a co-founder of Victory Cheese which helped to save America’s specialty cheese industry in the face of a 30-80% market collapse stemming from the COVID-19 crisis.

Prior to life as an entrepreneur, Greg enjoyed a 20-year career as a global brand marketing executive for Macy’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Motorola, Polaroid and Verizon. He has been actively involved in civic, state and national initiatives for more than 40 years, and is dedicated to supporting his industry and community as a board member and volunteer.

Greg holds an MBA in Marketing from Duke University and bachelors degrees in English and Political Science from Rutgers University. Greg has resided in New York, Boston and overseas, and calls Chicago home with his life partner and husband of more than 30 years. Business, adventure and culinary travel fuel Greg’s work and life passions.