Photo by Tommy Braucks
Audio By Carbonatix
Walk into the Daily Creative Food Co. on any given morning, and there’s a hum of activity vibrating behind the long counter. From the staff taking orders up front, to the people working the grills and stations in back, there’s a harmonious symphony of movements and sounds.
Regulars filter in, as they’ve been doing so for the past two decades, nodding at familiar faces on the team who know their orders by heart. A young professional picks up her to-go bag while an older couple settles into their usual table near the window. Owner Adam Meltzer, the conductor behind it all, is usually spotted darting around to support the team or tucked away in his back office, close at hand if needed.
Photo by Yuval Ofir
Seeing Potential in a Pre-Boom Edgewater
Back in 2006, Edgewater wasn’t yet the glossy corridor of glass towers it is today, and this stretch of Biscayne Boulevard was still rough around the edges. Meltzer remembers unlocking the doors before sunrise, when the neighborhood still bore the marks of neglect: empty storefronts, a few lingering characters from long nights out, streets that hadn’t yet been sterilized by development. But what he saw was potential: “There were good bones here,” he says. “It just needed people who believed in the area.”
Born and raised in New York, Meltzer had already spent years running a full-service restaurant in Manhattan before what he describes as a “partnership divorce” pushed him to start over. At the urging of his brother, a Miami transplant working in construction, he came south looking for a fresh start and a niche to fill. What he found was a gap between the high-end dining rooms of South Beach and the fast-food chains that dominated the city’s main corridors.
“In New York, you could get great food without the white tablecloths,” Meltzer says. “Here, you either had fine dining or drive-thru. There wasn’t much in between.” So he built that middle ground. The Daily was conceived as a hybrid: a blend of Starbucks, your neighborhood diner, and your favorite sandwich shop. The idea was simple, but novel for Miami: one-stop shopping for everyday food, served quickly, consistently, and with ample portions.
The Daily Creative Food Co. photo
Building the Middle Ground and a Culture That Lasts
The concept caught on with office workers and creatives long before the condo boom, and as Edgewater filled in around it, the Daily quietly became one of the neighborhood’s built-in staples. A place that felt familiar amid a rapidly changing landscape. “I used to call it an oasis among the fast food,” Meltzer says. What ultimately set the Daily apart wasn’t a clever hook or rapid growth; it was intention. In an industry obsessed with hype and rapid expansion, the Daily grew by refusing to chase either. Meltzer built his business on a simple philosophy: grow slowly, take care of people, and let the quality speak for itself.
The biggest challenge, he admits, wasn’t competition, but staffing. “In New York, your employees might be actors, writers, musicians,” he says. “They take pride in the job because it lets them chase their dream. In Miami, you don’t get as many of those people. You have to work harder to build a culture.” And work he did. The Daily’s team includes several employees who have been with the restaurant for over a decade; a rarity in any city, let alone one as transient as Miami. Meltzer credits that longevity to a simple philosophy: respect goes both ways. “It doesn’t matter if you’re washing dishes or making food,” he says. “Everybody’s got to be treated with respect. That comes from the top.”
Photo by Yuval Ofir
Knowing When to Pivot and Why Longevity Wins
That approach, combined with an already established takeout and delivery system, allowed him not only to survive the pandemic years but also to thrive. While others scrambled to figure out online ordering and packaging logistics, Meltzer’s team had been perfecting both for years to service offices downtown and the surrounding area. That infrastructure eventually grew into another pillar of the business: catering. “We’ve been doing catering forever,” Meltzer says, “but in the last three to five years it’s really taken a turn upwards. We’ve probably more than doubled our catering capacity over the past 3–5 years.”
Of course, not every experiment worked as successfully. In 2016, he opened a second location on South Beach, which closed three years later. “We picked a bad location off the beaten path, bad parking, lots of snowbirds,” Meltzer says. “We were doing over two million a year and couldn’t make a dime.” Instead of continuing to overextend himself, trying to keep it going, he regrouped, trimmed operations, and refocused on the original location.
He applied that same willingness to pivot with the dinner service he introduced years earlier. Hoping to maximize the space and meet demand as the neighborhood grew, Meltzer introduced an evening menu that was a bit more upscale and required a more skilled kitchen staff. The food landed well, but the math didn’t. The volume never justified the added labor, overhead, or management it required. “You have to ask yourself, at what cost?” he says. By the time the pandemic hit, the answer was clear: nights were essentially breaking even, and stretching the staff across an additional service wasn’t sustainable. So he made another decisive shift, cutting dinner entirely and adjusting the restaurant’s hours to 7 a.m.–4 p.m., a change that resulted in tighter operations, a sharper focus on what the Daily already did best, and a healthier rhythm for the team. A valuable reminder that longevity often comes from knowing what to let go of.
The Daily’s reputation has quietly spread far beyond its neighborhood. Celebrities like Jay Leno, Ben Stiller, Lil Wayne, and members of the Miami Heat have all stopped by, not for VIP treatment, but precisely because there isn’t any. “Nobody makes a big deal out of it here,” Meltzer says. “They order like everyone else, eat, and leave. I think they like that.”
The Daily Creative Food Co. photo
Longtime Customer Relationships Help Withstand All the Change
One of his favorite memories involves a surprise visit from the University of Kentucky football team. “Two buses pulled up at once: players, cheerleaders, the whole thing,” Meltzer recalls, laughing. “I downloaded their fight song, cranked it through the speakers, and the place went nuts.” Moments like that may seem spontaneous, but they reflect something essential about Meltzer: he knows how to make people feel seen, welcomed, and part of the place, even if they’re only there for a single meal.
Those are the things that have kept the Daily thriving in a city that often forgets yesterday’s favorites. Meltzer doesn’t discuss branding or social media strategy extensively. He talks about showing up, about consistency, about doing right by the people who walk through the door. Looking ahead, he isn’t ruling out expansion, but he refuses to let speed replace intention. “I’m not content with just one location,” he says. “But I’m not going to rush to open another, either. If we do it, it has to be right; the right place, the right people.”
As he approaches 57 and prepares to mark the Daily’s twentieth anniversary in January, Meltzer isn’t planning a flashy celebration, though his mother insists he should. Maybe he’ll offer a few giveaways or a thank-you to customers. Maybe he’ll come up with a souvenir people can add to their collections of Miami ephemera. Whatever it is, it will undoubtedly be a reflection of Meltzer’s deep-rooted sensibilities and a little bit of sass.
In a city that rewards constant reinvention, the Daily’s success story is almost radical: a reminder that the real magic isn’t in chasing the latest fad, it’s in doing things the right way, day after day, for 20 years straight.
The Daily Creative Food Co. 2001 Biscayne Blvd., Ste. 109, Miami; 305-573-4535; thedailyfood.co.
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