- February 10, 2026
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Celebrated Southwest Florida chef, caterer and entrepreneur Brian Roland says he’s a “positive, glass half-full kind of person.”
That optimistic spirit has been put to the test the last four years.
It goes back to Dec. 4, 2021, when Roland was severely injured in what friends later called a “freakish” accident while working a high-end event. Roland, who co-owns Bonita Springs catering company Crave Culinaire with his wife, Nicole, was working at a Ferrari dealership on U.S. 41 in Naples that night, pushing a food cart. While on the car lift, he fell through a 22-inch gap between the end of the car lift platform and the wall. He landed on the ground, and, his attorneys alleged in a 2023 lawsuit, he “laid unconscious on the ground floor (as) the car lift descended and crushed him, pinning him between the car lift and the ground.”
The outlook was bleak: Brian Roland’s injuries ranged from bleeding in the brain to broken ribs, a broken femur and a broken patella. Most of the bones in his face were fractured. Nicole Roland, meanwhile, had the shock of the injury — "somebody came to hand me a bag of Brian's clothes covered in blood," she told Gulf Coast ABC7 News in a Sept. 15 interview, talking about arriving at the hospital that night in 2021 — to deal with, in addition to caring for the couple’s month-old baby girl, Remi.
Now, as the four-year mark of the accident approaches, Roland is taking his story of gratitude, resilience and survival public. He and Nicole will be the featured speakers at an Oct. 14 event, From Trauma to Triumph: A Luncheon Celebration of Resilience with Brian and Nicole Roland, at the David Lawrence Centers for Behavioral Health in Naples.
“The last four years have been challenging, life-changing and hard,” says Brian Roland, 45. “Up until this point, I had never experienced depression. … I never even believed in it. I was that kind of a guy. I was like, ‘you know, I can get myself out of any emotional feeling I'm having,’ but when you just physically can't do something, it is very hard. And it was hard to have this realization that my life was going to be so much different and I didn't think it was ever going to get back to where it is today.”
Roland spent the decade-plus before the accident building his career. A native of Princeton, New Jersey, Roland is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and trained under famed chef Daniel Boulud. He was the executive chef at Cru in Fort Myers and Chops City Grill in Bonita Springs, and won local acclaim as the chef of M Waterfront Grille in Naples. He founded Crave Culinaire in 2013. The company grew over the next eight years to several other divisions, including event staffing, and in the summer before the accident it had some 100 employees.
Crave Culinaire has roughly the same number of employees today, but, in some ways, says Roland, it is still catching up from missed years and opportunities. The company is moving into a new office and warehouse, and is growing its niche in running food and beverage for clubhouses in some of the high-end communities across Naples and Fort Myers. Roland says the plan is to also expand geographically to cater events north, in Sarasota and Siesta Key, and east, in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Crave Culinaire had $3 million in revenue in 2024 and expects to surpass $4 million this year.
In a recent interview with the Business Observer, the Rolands talked about the recovery, unexpected challenges and the role faith has played in helping them move forward. Edited excerpts:
Down, not out: Roland’s injuries touched every part of his body — mental and physical. He’s had five surgeries followed by years of speech and physical therapy, in addition to aerobic workouts and neuromuscular massages, muscle stimulation and acupuncture. He had to learn how to eat, walk and even go up stairs.
Visible worries: Another impact of the accident is Roland has suffered from mouth spasms — involuntary contractions in the face that cause twitching and tics, or says Roland, “where my brain is thinking faster than my mouth could speak. It was scary, it was depressing, it was creating insecurities in me. I was afraid people were going to recognize the issues I was having.”
Biblical values: Roland, who says he was born Jewish but grew up around Christianity and Catholicism from step-parents and others, says for many years religion “wasn't really something I followed or was super important to me” but he always had a spiritual side. His faith has grown significantly since the accident, he says, down to passages he reads from his Bible app every day for motivation. “We do Bible study on Wednesdays. We go to church every Sunday. Remi joins us at both. That part of our lives has really kept us together, and it's given us motivation and hope…religion is a huge part of what I believe is important in someone's life. It doesn't matter what religion it is. It's just having a belief in a higher power and a purpose.”
Round table: A big worry for Roland is having the confidence to embrace what he loved most about his work prior to the accident — namely the storytelling side of food. He says the “events, the connection between the guests, the experience that we get to build is what I find the most joy in. And I'm a big people person. I love speaking to people. I love motivating people. I love being able to tell the story of, let's say, our food and what's inspired us and how we created it.”
First steps: A desire to get back to that — in addition to his wife, daughter and family — is what motivated Roland to stick with the sometimes grueling recovery. And a few months ago he jumped at a chance to give a brief talk at a bourbon dinner his community in Naples, Stonecreek, hosted. “I told Nicole, ‘this is the first event I want to go to and to talk to people again,’” he says. “Because part of what caused me a lot of depression was that I felt like for three and a half years I was like a hermit crab and I couldn't connect with people.”
Trust the process: The event was a success. “Even though I had the nerves, and even though that mouth spasm thing happened a couple of times, it was a notch in my belt, and it got me back to the next stage of growth for me. I’m starting to trust myself again and building my confidence to where, hopefully, at some point, I will have the same confidence I did before the accident.”
Higher power: Nicole Roland, meanwhile, has fought through her own struggles, in raising their daughter, caring for her husband and making sure the business didn’t collapse. Like her husband, she relied on her faith — and perspective. “Resilience for me is literally just putting one foot in front of the other every single day. From the moment I found out about the news of the accident to essentially being a single parent at home for two months with a brand new baby, just visiting my husband the hospital to figuring out how to deal with all of our businesses,” Nicole Roland says. “And remembering all of this is a season and you go through so many seasons in your life, and when you're in the midst of it, it's so hard to realize this is not the end of your story. This is just a difficult season.”
