#2 Fastest: Goodwin Family Management

Three-Year Average Annual Growth: 94%
Rank on Private 100: 48 
Headquarters: 4 Center St., Exeter
Product/Service: Staffing (Goodwin Recruiting), restaurants (The Friendly Toast, Donut Love), and real estate
Founder and CEO: Eric Goodwin
Founded: 1999
Total Number of Employees: 605

The pandemic hit restaurants particularly hard as people were not able to eat out for months, employees had to be laid off and many left the industry.

So how did Goodwin Family Management, which runs a hospitality staffing firm as well eateries The Friendly Toast and Donut Love, not only survive but thrive?

“For us, we doubled down on a philosophy we had for a long time—taking care of our people,” says Founder and CEO Eric Goodwin. “Everyone was worried. It was high stress. We offered guidance and emotional andfinancial support.”

Goodwin told his team they would not only make it through the pandemic, but the business would grow.

He used the downtime to scout locations to open new locations for the Friendly Toast and teed them up so the company would be poised for growth when the economy reopened.

It paid off as the Friendly Toast expanded from six restaurants to 11 since the pandemic, with locations in NH, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont.

On the staffing side, Goodwin recruited those leaving the industry to work for him so when restaurants began hiring again, they could work with people experienced in the industry.

“That allowed us to grow 40% in 2022,” he says. During the pandemic, the staffing firm also pivoted to other areas that were still hiring, including accounting, manufacturing and tech.

Goodwin sees plenty of growth ahead. He says he is fielding many requests to include a Friendly Toast in “lifestyle centers.” In the first quarter of 2024, Goodwin plans to open a Friendly Toast at Tuscan Village in Salem as well as locations in Concord and Nashua.

And in August 2022 he bought Donut Love, a craft donut cafe with locations in Exeter and North Hampton, from the original owners and refurbished them. He is now looking for new locations. “I thought it would be cool to grow that,” he says. “We always want to be growing. I believe stagnation hurts organizations. … We always want to be moving forward and challenging ourselves.”