Ariane Daguin

D’Artagnan was a 17th century French Musketeer – not just a literary or movie character – who did “things for the right reasons with panache, and not only for himself,” says Ariane Daguin, owner of D’Artagnan. She hails from Gascony, the same region of southwestern France as the like-minded hero and named her food company after him. “From the beginning we did things the right way, organizing small farmers, caring about animal husbandry, never compromising,” Daguin, 60, says.
    
She is the seventh generation of a family in the food business. Her father, André Daguin, ran a Michelin-starred hotel restaurant in Auch, France. As a child, she learned to debone ducks, make terrines, and cook game birds. When Daguin realized her younger brother would be her father’s successor, not her, she decamped for New York to study political science and journalism at Barnard.

    
The cost of college proved daunting. Her part-time jobs didn’t cover expenses, so she couldn’t continue. The downtown charcuterie shop that employed her proposed she join them full-time, with a contract that included a green card. 
    
Five years later, in 1985, she founded D’Artagnan. It was very difficult at first, she says, but gradually she gained a reputation among restaurant chefs for offering high quality foie gras, smoked duck breast, and duck confit.

Daguin’s Union, N.J.-based business is now a multimillion-dollar operation, supplying Wagyu beef, Berkshire pork, and Salt Meadow lamb. Her portfolio also includes antibiotic- and hormone-free Green Circle chicken, heritage turkey, no-nitrate bacon, pâtés, sausages, fresh truffles, fresh ramps, and fiddlehead ferns. Professional chefs comprise 65 percent of her sales, the rest divided between retail outlets and online orders.
    
“It’s all about the raw materials,” she says. “We are growing nicely geographically and inching West, looking at California.” Denver is the most recent of the company’s five distribution centers.