NEWPORT, R.I. — The company behind some of Newport’s best-known dining rooms, from The Mooring on the harbor to Castle Hill Inn, has no outside shareholders at all. Newport Restaurant Group is owned entirely by the people who cook, pour and serve for it, and this fall it is marking three decades of that arrangement.
The business started out in 1925 as Newport Oil Corporation, which supplied fuel for the city’s buses. It later sold off its other holdings and set up an employee stock ownership plan in 1995, eventually reaching 100% employee ownership. Under the plan, a trust holds company shares on behalf of the workers, and when someone leaves, the company buys back their stake.
To take part, an employee has to log 800 hours a year, which works out to roughly 15 hours a week, and full vesting comes after six years. The company says it has paid out about $33 million to its employee-owners over the life of the plan. Workers with more than 20 years on the job carry an average account balance near $606,000, according to the company.
The group counts roughly 1,100 year-round employee-owners and adds about 800 more in the busy season. Only about one in eight of its workers leaves in a typical year, a 12 to 14 percent rate, while the company estimates restaurant turnover nationally runs around 110 percent. Chief executive Mick Lamond, who came aboard as chief financial officer in 2005 and took the top job in 2025, has pitched the model as a way for founders to hand off a business without selling to private equity.
Around the island, the group also runs Smoke House, La Vecina, Bar ‘Cino and 22 Bowen’s in the city, plus J.T. Commons over the line in Middletown and the Tiverton Boat House. The anniversary falls during October, which is Employee Ownership Month nationally, and a new spot, Avvio Ristorante, is due to open late this fall in the Massachusetts town of Millbury.
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