‘Am I mommy or boss?': Families in business together make it work

PITTSBURGH - Of all the foundational relationships in life, perhaps none is more special - and complex - than the one between mother and child.

In addition to teaching life lessons about kindness and self-reliance, a mother's love shapes a son or daughter into compassionate, empathetic individuals who know right from wrong, good from bad. There will be tears, of course (especially in the teenage years, if you've got girls), but it's a relationship that remains central to everyone's life.

When mom is also your business partner, the ties can be even stronger, provided, of course, that both generations agree on the goals and expectations of running an intergenerational business.

We profile three family-run businesses where every day could be considered Mother's Day. While they differ in what they provide - one's a food truck, another is a grocery store flower purveyor and the third is a family-owned diner - what they share is that they get the job done while (mostly) having a heck of a lot of fun.

Diner duo

Cheryl Parsons can't remember a time she didn't have a hand in some aspect of the food industry. The Arlington native learned to cook on the line at the old B&G Restaurant in the Grant Building, Downtown, worked at a hoagie shop and ran an Isaly's store on the South Side. It wasn't until 1996, as a single mother in her early 30s, that she decided to make the leap from employee to employer.

Noticing a "For Rent" sign in the window of O'Leary's Restaurant, an unpretentious but popular breakfast and lunch spot on East Carson Street, she figured she could showcase her culinary skills while also keeping open a beloved local institution.

For better or worse, "I went in full fledged," the South Side resident remembers with a chuckle.

As in many family-run businesses, she relied on her kids over the years to keep the diner's doors open and build community. Her oldest daughter, Shelly Augustine, was tasked as a teenager with washing dishes after school and on weekends. By the time she graduated from Brashear High School in 1999, she also was waiting tables and cooking some of the restaurant's classic breakfast foods and hot lunches. (Its specialities include omelets, breakfast sandwiches, burgers and homemade soups.)

In the early years, "I'd be in there at 5 or 6 a.m., making stuffed cabbage," Augustine recalls. "I did it all."

Savanna Johnson, her younger sister, followed suit at age 14, going from waiting tables every Saturday to working several days a week before become the diner's full-time cook in 2019.

Fifteen years later, she's still working alongside her mom four days a week, not just as a cook but also diner manager. "And I still like my job," says Johnson, a self-described multitasker.

She's also bringing along the next generation: her 6-year-old daughter, Gianna, and Sienna, 5, answer phones on weekends and chat with customers.

The youngsters also make a weekly pilgrimage from their home in Carrick to O'Leary's every Friday at 6:30 a.m. before daycare opens. While they're not always happy to get up early, "they love being there," Johnson says. "They take orders and boss everyone around!"

There was never any question that Parsons' daughters would work at O'Leary's, in large part because like their mom, they love interacting with customers, some of who come in so often that they're considered family, too.

Augustine loves the diner business so much that, in 2016, following nighttime gigs at Mario's on the South Side and Tom's Diner, she opened her own go-to breakfast and lunch spot, Breakfast at Shelly's, in the former home of Michelle's Diner in Allentown.

"I learned so much from her about what to do," as well as what not to do, Augustine says.

All three women agree that while they run successful diners, they don't always see eye to eye when it comes to the nuts and bolts of running a family business.

Parsons was, and still is, so generous with customers, her daughters say, that they wonder if she at times isn't being taken advantage of; she's fed so many homeless people for free over the years that they joke there must be a sign somewhere that says "Go to O'Leary's."

This was especially true before the restaurant "really took off" about six years ago, says Augustine. "I used to do her books for her, and I knew at the time she didn't have the money."

Another minus: Because they're so close, they're not always as nice to each other as they should be.

"Me and Savanna still fight," Parsons ruefully admits. "And I'm ruder because I'm more comfortable."

Johnson agrees it can be difficult to separate business from personal issues - "I sometimes call my sister to vent," she says - but any irritation or anger dissolves as soon as the "Closed" sign goes up.

Augustine, whose 19-year-old son, Tyler Moeller, is now pulling shifts at Shelly's between computer science classes at CCAC, agrees that no matter what's been said - or shouldn't have been said - "we always know how to turn it off at the end of the day." No matter how often they butt heads, "we always end on a good note."

She adds she has a much better relationship with her mom now that they no longer work together.

"She was so personal with people it would drive me nuts," Augustine says, "while I was all business."

Then again, now that she's running her own breakfast joint on East Warrington Avenue and building a dedicated customer base, "I do some of the same stuff," she admits with a grin.

Family food truck

East Liberty native Tracy Hall jumped into a lifelong career in food right out of high school, working at high-end establishments like Morton's, Dowe's on 9th, Monterey Bay Fish Grotto and the iconic Tin Angel on Mount Washington.

Why did she do it?: "I heard you could make a lot of money in tips."

The mother of three lasted nearly 30 years in fine dining before deciding it was now or never if she was going to make good on her dream to run her own business. A talented home cook, "I always said I wanted to get into a brick-and-mortar," she says.

Hall opened Faith's Place in Homewood in 2014 while pregnant with her third child. It didn't quite work out as expected, but she had a back-up plan: a food truck offering the decadent foods she watched her mother and grandmother cook while she was growing up.

"It just seemed exciting to me," she says. "I could run my own hours, I didn't have to be stationary and I could go out of town. I thought it was very adventurous."

She opened in 2016 as Health-A-Licious, a food truck specializing in organic, wellness-focused meals, including salads, wraps, soups and sandwiches. What she soon learned was that people who came to weekend events didn't really want healthy food.

"Those are the days people cheat," she says. "So it just didn't go off too well. I really struggled."

When a friend suggested she change her menu to better align with what people were eating on weekends, one comfort food popped into her head: fries. To make people really want to indulge, she decided to top them with cheesy mac and cheese, lobster alfredo and butter garlic crab.

"I took really big pictures [of the dishes], had them printed out at FedEx and covered up the word ‘healthy' on the truck," she says. And the business - rechristened as Momma-Licious - took off.

Her daughter, Faith, and son, Jonathan, pitched in to help, allowing them to earn money for shopping sprees at Target and Walmart. With Jonathan now studying electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and Faith working in the medical field, Hall's 12-year-old son, Chandler, is helping out at events like the August Wilson Birthday Celebration block party held May 9 in the Hill District.

"I always started them at the register counting and doing customer service," jobs that boosted their math and social skills, Hall says.

As a result, "all my children speak very well and know how to budget."

Jonathan, in particular, really blossomed while working on the food truck. Afraid to talk to people when he first started, "he just grew and grew and became like a flower. He opened up and can now talk to every and anybody," she said. He'll be back on the truck this summer during his college break.

Hall admits she was probably harder on her kids then she should have been in the truck's early days - they would often complain about her to her husband, Duane - and she spent a lot of time apologizing at the end of their shifts. But as they grew up, "I had to change my ways, and how I talked to them."

The biggest challenge of working with your kids, she says, is deciding when to put on your mommy hat and when to lower the boom and be a boss.

"Am I mommy or boss or confidant or friend? It was hard to play each one of those roles."

But when you work hard, you can also play hard, Hall says. Usually after they're done working a big event, the family goes cart riding or out to eat.

"It's great to have time with my children," she says. "And it's wonderful when I hear them speak about what they've experienced, the pros and cons of doing this with me."

Flower girls

Margie Dagnal started in the corporate world but knew pretty much from the get-go that she wanted to quit the rat race by the time she was 40 and do "something different."

In 1999, after being awed by the beautiful leeks, rosemary and cilantro she saw at a farmers market in Boston, she made good on that self-promise and decided to try growing culinary herbs and salad greens in her Carnegie backyard to sell locally.

"I always wanted to play in the dirt," she says, "and my husband is a landscaper."

Margie's Garden, as she dubbed the nascent business, took off pretty quickly, with her fresh, leafy greens finding ready buyers at local farmers markets and to chefs at high-end restaurants in the Pittsburgh area.

Little could she have imagine that her 14-year-old daughter Kate's passion for wild flowers, which the teen expertly grew on the edge of the property and arranged into bouquets, would take the business in a completely different direction.

Growing up at farmers markets, Kate could see how people shopped for produce. Food was a necessity grudgingly paid for whereas cut flowers were something people were willing to spend a few extra bucks on as "food for the soul." Why not assemble and sell her vibrant blooms as well?

Before long, Kate was bringing in almost as much money with her bouquets as her parents were with their produce. Flowers "brought joy to people."

Sensing an opportunity, the family reorganized as Goose Creek Gardens in 2003 and bought a 2½-acre farm in Oakdale to expand their greens and flower business. After Kate earned a degree in entrepreneurship and small business from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2008 ("I knew how to grow flowers, but had to learn how to do a business") and got married three years later, mother and daughter set their sights on growing their business to even greater heights.

Flowers turned out to be so much more profitable than salad greens and herbs, Margie says, that in 2014, after having a "big discussion," they decided to switch to growing flowers exclusively to sell wholesale.

"People are always getting married and having babies," Kate says, "and men are always screwing up. How do you soften the water? With flowers."

Business was such that in 2016, desiring more land, Kate - pregnant with her fourth daughter - and her husband, Fred, bought an old rest home nestled on 12 acres 70 miles north of Pittsburgh in Cowansville, Armstrong County.

The new property allowed them to expand their already extensive flower fields to grow more than 200 varieties year-round on 5 acres, with a harvest window of April through November. They cut daffodils, anemones and ranunculus in the spring, followed by sunflowers, zinnias, lisianthus, dahlias and heirloom chrysanthemums in the summer and fall.

For the next few years, they sold almost everything they grew wholesale to florists and event designers via "bucket runs." An unsolicited DM from a lead buyer at Giant Eagle in fall 2019 changed the business again, asking if they sold wholesale and whether they'd be interested in providing the grocery store chain with flowers.

Once they realized it wasn't a joke, Kate told Margie, "We're gonna do this, Mom."

In March 2020, two weeks before the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, they became a preferred vendor. Their success, says Kate, was a matter of timing.

"Florists all went away in one night, but we were already planted," Kate says. And because grocery stores were still open - and many considered cut flowers a form of therapeutic self-care - they were able to hit the ground running.

Today, 90% of Goose Creek's market-fresh blooms are mixed and bundled in brown paper for delivery two or three times a week to 14 Giant Eagle and Market District locations in the Pittsburgh region. During peak season, the women and their five employees cut and assemble as many as 450 mixed bouquets a week. They also provide a few florists and designers with flowers, and operate a self-serve, roadside "flower shack" stocked with bouquets and dried flowers plus herbs and tomato plants.

In addition, the women sell rooted heirloom chrysanthemum cuttings and dahlia tubers to gardeners across the country.

While she still loves to play in the dirt, Margie mostly does office work these days, while Kate does "everything else," from planting in their heated greenhouse, high tunnels and fields to running meetings and social media.

"I've become the kid who is told what to do," Margie says cheerfully. "The joke is I'm the gofer now! But I'm old enough to say I'm retired."

Margie admits it's still sometimes tough to work together when trying to be a family. Because she hated having corporate bosses, she does the "soft part" while Kate does the "hard part."

"I'm the one who says I don't care if you're late," she says, while her daughter is more business-minded. "I had to learn not to say anything to the employees."

"We've definitely gone through some growing pains, and have had to set rules with lines we don't cross," Kate agrees. "But growing up in the business, you see who has what strength and which avenue to build."

Complicating matters is the fact the women don't just work together in a stressful industry. They also live together with Kate's father, husband and four daughters, in 9,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house that was once a rest home.

And if they occasionally come to loggerheads? "We look beyond to tomorrow, and start clean," says Kate. "That's all it is."

Growing a product that feeds someone's soul and brings beauty to the world, she says, is a pretty joyful way to make a living, even if people just look at their bouquets and don't buy them."

"We joke people come here to heal," Margie says.

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This story was originally published June 1, 2026 at 3:32 AM.