Shawn Rusich knows what happens before the party

Before the guest list, there was a mini-golf course. Shawn Rusich’s first job lasted a few weeks before he moved to McDonald’s, where he learned something he would later single out: the usefulness of organization and procedure. It is an unusually practical beginning for a career whose public photographs include Martha Stewart, restaurant openings and glasses raised in company. The food changed. The need to get the work done in the right order remained.

Rusich founded the agency now called SUGO Communications in 2011. Its history includes cookware, food halls, hotels and an expansion into Los Angeles. It also includes the less photogenic responsibilities of ownership. Ask what happens during his working day and the answer moves between campaign ideas and the mechanics of keeping a company open.

“My days are consistently inconsistent.”

Shawn Rusich

That is a good line for someone in public relations. It is also a fairly efficient job description. A launch can have a beautiful invitation; somebody still has to pay the people who made it. Rusich’s story becomes more interesting when those two activities occupy the same frame.

A Paris address, a Toronto decision

A Windsor, Ontario native, Rusich studied fashion design at Collège LaSalle in Montreal, briefly attended McGill and worked in marketing and sales at Chloé in Paris. He eventually moved to Toronto to establish his own business. Fashion supplied one professional setting; food and hospitality would supply another. The career took a turn without requiring him to abandon the work of presenting a brand to other people.

There is a temptation to tidy a founder’s past into a sequence of inevitable steps. Rusich’s route is more appealing with its changes of direction intact. Montreal, Paris and Toronto each belong in it. An employer’s marketing department and an agency of one’s own ask different things of the person holding the brief.

The second arrangement carries a particular complication: creative judgment comes attached to responsibility for the company itself. An owner can enjoy the campaign and still be the person dealing with the accounting. The independence is real, and so is the paperwork. Romance has a habit of leaving that last part out.

What a saucepan can tell you

By September 2013, Butter Public Relations had become All-Clad’s Canadian PR agency of record. The assignment covered media relations, strategy, partnerships and events. The agency’s previous food-industry work helped it win the account. Rusich pointed to a roster that included Pusateri’s, Just-Eat.ca and the Delicious Food Show.

Cookware is a useful place to watch the mechanics of communications. A saucepan has a purpose before anyone writes a pitch about it. An agency must find a reason for somebody else to spend time considering that purpose: a history, a demonstration, a person who can explain it, an occasion that makes the object relevant.

The All-Clad appointment gives Rusich’s early business a concrete outline. Food was more than a decorative theme for the company name. It was a field in which one piece of experience could support the next assignment. Groceries, delivery, public events and kitchen equipment offered different briefs within a recognizable territory.

That continuity matters in a business selling judgment. A client is buying a proposal, but also trusting the people behind it to understand the setting. The previous job becomes evidence that the next promise has some weight. For a young agency, that is a useful kind of introduction.

An admirer gets the account

The recognizable names accumulated. Rusich helped promote Martha Stewart’s 80th cookbook. Eataly became an account he remembered with particular excitement, having admired the business with his team. There is an agreeable lack of professional cool in that reaction. Sometimes the client you hope to win is a place you already want to visit.

The attraction also raises a practical question. How much does it help to like what you are promoting? Rusich has encouraged working with brands one believes in, while acknowledging that a growing company cannot always arrange its client list entirely around preference. Enthusiasm has value. A business has obligations, too.

His own food interests appear away from the pitch. There is a photograph of him eating cacio e pepe in Rome, and another with Massimo Bottura in Modena. These are small details, but they give the culinary client list a personal dimension. An appetite is a pleasingly literal qualification to bring to the conversation.

The move came before the name

Los Angeles entered the agency’s public expansion story before the SUGO identity did. In February 2022, BPR was reported to have opened offices in Los Angeles and Vancouver. Rusich described Los Angeles as a step he had long wanted to take, made possible with support from Canadian and California-based clients.

The same announcement described account gains and personnel changes. ZWILLING, Fleischmann’s, Mazola, the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto, UFC Refresh Coconut Water and Kitchen Hub were among the named assignments. Vanessa Foy became account director, while other colleagues were promoted or hired. Expansion had people and client work attached to it.

In February 2023, BPR’s rebrand to SUGO Communications was announced alongside its American expansion. Sugo is Italian for sauce. After Butter, the kitchen had retained naming rights. The new identity accompanied a broader brief, with media relations, influencer work and corporate communications among the services described.

Keeping the two dates separate makes the story clearer. The company was moving before its new name was public. The rebrand gave that developing business an identity; the earlier announcement shows some of the work and staffing that preceded it. A logo can arrive in one moment. An agency changes through a succession of commitments.

Two cities, different conversations

Rusich has described splitting his time between Los Angeles and Toronto, with Vanessa Foy overseeing the Canadian headquarters as managing director alongside the senior account team. The arrangement requires more than an itinerary. It puts responsibility in more than one place and gives colleagues a central role in making the two-city business function.

He has also explained why communications strategy changes across the border: Canada has a smaller media landscape, with industry cutbacks making attention more competitive. Established relationships help an agency get useful information to the people considering it. A familiar brand name can travel more easily than the assumptions behind a pitch.

His restaurant preferences keep the geography pleasantly specific. In Toronto, he has named Enoteca Sociale, Trattoria Milano at Eataly and Pai; in Los Angeles, San Vicente Bungalows is a place to work or dine. The two-city life comes with more than two sets of meetings. It comes with places worth returning to.

When the border enters the conversation

By April 2025, the border had become a subject Rusich was discussing beyond agency strategy. Having lived in Los Angeles for four years and crossed between the countries hundreds of times, he spoke about a change in Canadian travel and spending attitudes amid trade tensions.

He described acquaintances choosing Europe over the United States for summer travel, and a greater inclination to spend within Canada. These were observations from someone whose work and personal geography placed him in both countries. The border was part of his routine; the mood around it had changed.

For a communications founder, such shifts make an audience less abstract. Travel plans and buying decisions are choices people make with their own money. A campaign meets those choices in the world as it is. The client’s ambitions may remain steady while the surrounding conversation moves.

Who keeps the promises?

There have been public markers of progress. SUGO celebrated inclusion in the 2024 Report on Business ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies. In March 2025, Canadians Abroad named Rusich its Canadian of the Month. Its account of his plans included further American expansion, with Las Vegas and New York among the markets mentioned.

A May 2025 announcement offered a more immediate picture of the work: new partnerships included Square, Paldo and the Thai Trade Centre. Square’s brief focused on restaurant communities through trade media, events and executive visibility. The business had reached restaurant technology while keeping a connection to the dining world that shaped its early roster.

The same announcement named Linda Schuck as an incoming account manager, Minh Hang Nguyen as senior account coordinator and Sydney Lahowin as social media coordinator. Ethan Depue joined in business development, while Christine Zoulianitis was promoted to senior account director. These are different jobs with different responsibilities, gathered around the same client promises.

The names provide a useful counterweight to a founder’s biography. Business development brings a prospective account into the conversation. Account teams and social specialists have to turn the agreement into work that reaches people. A senior promotion records another kind of progress inside the company. Seen together, these appointments make growth tangible: more colleagues, more responsibility, and more coordination between the people proposing the work and the people carrying it out.

Rusich has publicly emphasized enduring relationships and the team’s role in navigating setbacks. The point fits the shape of an agency: clients encounter a company through the people doing the work. The founder can open a conversation; colleagues help determine whether it becomes a relationship.

Return to the early job and the connection feels less surprising. Organization gives an idea a chance of arriving intact. Procedure keeps promises from depending entirely on somebody’s memory. Rusich’s career has room for a Paris fashion house, an Italian food hall and a stage shared with Martha Stewart. It also has room for an invoice. A good host knows how much has to happen before the guests arrive.