Kendall Square office buildings clear out by mid-afternoon most summer Fridays – if office workers show up at all. But around 2:30 p.m. on a recent gorgeous mid-July afternoon, Emmanuel “Manny” Mervil has one of his two phones glued to his ear, talking business. Or maybe charity, for one of his nonprofits. Serial entrepreneur is Mervil’s best crack at a self-description, but that might not encompass everything the 41-year-old’s involved with.
“Sometimes there are no days off, but I just take it one day at a time,” Mervil said. “Keep pushing, that’s all we can do, you know?”
A few minutes before he receives another business phone call, Mervil’s in the middle of describing all of the projects on his figurative — and literal — plate.
A non-exhaustive list on the business side: two brick-and-mortar locations of his Everybody Gotta Eat food business (both opened within the last 10 months), his longstanding catering operation, a new outpost of Chatty Patty, residential real estate portfolios in Virginia and Maryland.
There’s also all of the non-profit work Mervil does: community pop-up meals and cookouts, youth programs, and workshops on paying taxes, credit repair, real estate and more. And there’s planning for his biggest event of the year, the Everybody Gotta Eat BBQ scheduled for August 30 at Green-Rose Heritage Park. He’s also taking classes at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
And above all, he’s the proud father of seven-year-old Nikko.
Time for another call.
“We’re always doing something,” he said. Twice.
A few blocks from the Everybody Gotta Eat stall at Eastern Edge Food Hall lies Newtowne Court, where Mervil grew up. The son of Haitian immigrants, Mervil said his parents “brought their whole village” to their new home. They helped other Haitians settle into the area and get jobs.
But his father left the family when Mervil was just five. They haven’t heard from him since. His mother passed away in 2021.
Her first job was at Legal Sea Foods. Mervil’s was selling newspapers at MIT, but he grew up watching Food Network with dreams of opening a restaurant.
Selling food first came to mind when he was 13 or 14. After trying some of his aunt’s food, Mervil thought, yo, I could sell this!
A 2000 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, Mervil played varsity basketball alongside current varsity boys coach Geo Rodriguez. On-court lessons translate more than two decades later. “We come from a team atmosphere,” Mervil said.”I try to be a team player and find people’s strengths and weaknesses, try and build off of that.”
After graduating CRLS, Mervil enrolled at Fisher College to study computer technology. The turn of the century taught him computers were the way, but he didn’t finish his degree.
“I went through some trials and tribulations,” he said. “I don’t really tell people about it, but yeah, it’s a part of the story.”
Mervil was arrested a handful of times, spent more than a half-decade on the run, and did three years in federal prison. In 2015, after his release from prison, Mervil’s probation officer suggested he sign up for the 14-week New England Culinary Arts Training Mervil always liked cooking and needed a way to “stay busy and out of trouble.”
Kessen Green, a longtime close friend, grew up with Mervil in Newtowne Court and graduated with him at CRLS. He described Mervil, and their friend group at-large, as active and jokesters. His friend showed promise early, even if his path diverged later on.
“He was always a leader in the sense that he knew what he wanted to do and he did his own path,” said Green, now director of Outreach & Community Programs at the Cambridge Police Department. “He did it his way… but cultivated a community of folks around him at the same time.”
Mervil started a food blog soon after, getting ahead of the influencer curve. Mervil set the foundation for his now-exploding profile in 2019, first as an Instagram food blogger. His “Everybody Gotta Eat” account highlighted restaurants near and far, amassing tens of thousands of followers.
As a community leader, Mervil hosts community pop-up meals and cookouts, youth programs, and holds workshops on paying taxes, credit repair, real estate and more. Honored by the Cambridge Community Foundation for his work in 2023, this part of the Everybody Gotta Eat experience transitioned to a non-profit in December of 2024.
He’s both entrepreneur and humanitarian, said his first cousin and marketing manager, Manou Lord.
“Our family is very big on community, and I think that’s something he’s always had,” said Lord, who is also the marketing director for the Central Square Business Improvement District. “He’s made a huge effort, even before his brand got big, using his own money to advertise other people’s businesses who were there before him … He wants to make sure other people feel seen.”
Bobbi Martin, whose niece, Maiysha Jacob, is Mervil’s partner, has worked for Mervil for more than five years. She started with catering and is now full-time at Chatty Patty.
“I love working for him,” Martin, 72, said. “He looks mean, but he’ll give you the shirt off his back. He’s a very, very good person.”
Mervil took part in the initial cohort of the Boston Creator Accelerator program, supported by former Celtics star Jaylen Brown’s BostonXChange and former Celtics teammate Jrue Holiday and wife, Lauren, and their JLH fund.
Could an Everybody Gotta Eat location pop up in Brown’s new home, Philadelphia?
“You never know,” Mervil said.
He opened the first brick-and-mortar location of Everybody Gotta Eat at The Pop Up Kitchen in Hyde Park in November. The Cambridge location, plus Mervil-owned empanada stall Chatty Patty, opened a few stalls away in Eastern Edge in February.
Growing up, Green said, their friend group “talked about not belonging” in Kendall Square. Mervil’s rise also inspires the next generation, Green said, to work for and with people who look like them.
“Being able to navigate the landscape from the housing development and the life that he had growing up to working in a space of luxury and elegance, and being accepted,” Green said, “it brings us all into rooms and navigating spaces that we weren’t into before.”
By opening physical locations, Mervil expanded his efforts in helping support the livelihoods of his 10-ish employees. They prepare food at scale in Dorchester at the non-profit CommonWealth Kitchen.
“For me to pay people every week, it’s a blessing,” Mervil said. “For me, it’s bigger than the stores. It’s people feeding their families.
“That’s what keeps me going.”
Mervil takes little time off, usually working seven days a week. He lives in Cambridge and would love to invest in its residential real estate market, but it’s price prohibitive at the moment. Mervil says he takes things one day at a time, but also “dreams big.” In the past, he wrote down goals in a notebook or in the notes app on one of his phones. He’s achieved most, if not all of them. “I’ve definitely got to make some new ones,” he said.
On this summer Friday, a few young customers await their orders seated in barstools around Everybody Gotta Eat, chatting up the workers. The wide-ranging clientele include high school and college students, office workers, and neighborhood supporters whose relationship with Mervil far predates his business career.
“It’s like a dream come true,” Mervil said. “It’s kind of like a full-circle moment.”
A stronger
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