Jimmy’s Italian Specialties – metro30 podcast. Frank Occhibove discusses the history and evolution of the family business and the origins of his father’s signature bread. Mark C. Peyko hosts. Release date: April 25, 2020.
metro30 podcast 019 – “Breaking Bread With Jimmy’s Italian Specialties.”
Key moments: European roots, coming to America, origins of the business, starting a family, the importance of bread, tough decisions, growing and evolving, listening to the customer. Bonus: secret menu.
Welcome to the metro30 podcast, Metro Monthly’s ongoing conversation with the community. Join us as we deep dive into local history and community culture with an ever-changing roster of special guests. The metro30 podcast is produced in collaboration with the Youngstown Radio Reading Service and is available where most podcasts are heard.
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Podcast transcript
metro30 podcast 019 – “Breaking Bread With Jimmy’s Italian Specialties.” Host: Mark C. Peyko. Release date: April 25, 2020. The following transcript was generated by Apple Podcasts and was edited for clarity and readability.
Key moments: European roots, coming to America, origins of the business, starting a family, the importance of bread, tough decisions, growing and evolving, listening to the customer. Bonus: secret menu.
METRO MONTHLY: Hello and welcome to metro30. I’m your host, Mark Peyko. Today we have Frank Occhibove in the studio. Frank’s family owns Jimmy’s Italian Specialties on Belmont Avenue in Liberty. Frank is going to talk about the history of the store and how it developed. Welcome to the show, Frank.
FRANK OCCHIBOVE: Thank you.
METRO: Tell us a little bit about your background. How many children are in your family?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, there’s four of us. I have an older sister, Mary Lou, and I have an older brother, which is our baker. I take care of the store and my younger brother, Jimmy, takes care of the finances of our store.
METRO: I don’t know if people know too much about your family. Your father, is he originally from Italy?
OCCHIBOVE: Yes. Both of my parents actually were born in Italy and they both came in the early seventies to the states.
METRO: And what’s the story on that? Which region of Italy are they from and what brought them to the United States?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, what happened was that they’re from Caserta, which is near the Naples area. And my father came first. He actually went to Montreal first, which they always say Canada is like the gateway to America. But he went to Montreal. That’s actually where he learned his craft of baking, doing pastries and such like that. And my mother came over in ’71, and she came over because of my grandfather needed work. And they came over just like everyone else for the steel mills.
METRO: Did your mom and dad know each other before they came to the United States? Did they come separately or were they married at that point?
OCCHIBOVE: No, they came separately. When they were here, they came separately. They met here actually in Schenectady, New York. They were family friends, knew each other, and they were introduced to each other in Schenectady. So they actually never met each other, even though they lived about 15 minutes apart from each other in Italy. They met here in the states.
METRO: As far as your father goes, was he a baker first or did he work in the steel industry?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, like I said, he went to Montreal first, and that’s where he learned to bake. So he learned breads and pastries and then when my parents met, that’s when he moved to the states in ’71, ’72. And he had no choice at that time but to work at the steel mills. He actually was a chipper at Valley Mould in Hubbard, and that was his job for I think about a year, year and a half, before he kind of realized that he needed to go on his own and create his own craft that he loved to do.
METRO: What year is that when he decided to create, what was maybe not called Jimmy’s, but the company? Was the company named Jimmy’s or was it named something else?”
OCCHIBOVE: It was named something else. They actually opened up their business in 1974, and it was called the Italian Gift Shop. It was actually not even food-related at first, but my dad was bringing in Italian magazines, soap operas, weekly periodicals, music, 8-tracks at the time, and records, stuff like that, that people couldn’t find anywhere else. He also brought in Capodimonte, which is an Italian ceramic, and he would be sell, he would sell all that. He brought in bowls, Italian bowls, and that’s how he started as a gift shop. Then he was baking one day for the family and a customer came up, smelled the bread, wanted to buy a loaf of bread. So he sold a loaf and said, “you know what, maybe I should start making a couple of loaves here and there.” So he did. And he started making more. And in 1983, they moved into our Belmont location in the Colonial Plaza next to Kravitz’s Deli. And from there, they added a full bakery, cookies, pastries. And then they went on to have deli [items]. And from there, the rest is history until we get to today. But yeah, the early days were rough. You know, it’s rough when you’re a small family business. And at the time, they had three small children. And so it was rough. My dad not only had his own business, he also had to do things on the side. So he was not only selling out of his own retail business from ’70 to ’83. During that time, he also was selling wholesale. So he would drive. He had a truck. He would drive to New Jersey, fill up his truck with merchandise, bowls, music, et cetera. And on his way back, drive through the state of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and he would sell to Italian specialty stores along the way on his way home until his truck was empty. So he was a very busy man to get to the point where he is today. And so while he was doing this, there were young children at home. He was doing this solo. He was making these trips.
METRO: Was there another family member, like an uncle or anyone helping him, or was he doing this solo?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, my grandfather was helping him also, but most of the time he was doing it solo, but he definitely did have the help of my grandfather. I was born in 1982, so all of this, I wasn’t privy to. This was just what I’ve learned from what had happened. But once I was born, I don’t want to say that the store on Belmont started taking off, but they started doing better. They started bringing in more of a crowd. So what happened after that, once my sister started getting a little more involved in the business in the late eighties, early nineties when she was in high school, she started taking over the business more and more. And she brought it to a little bit of a different level to where we started making sandwiches. We had just a couple of sandwiches on our menu, not even a menu, just people knew that they could come in. It was a deli. “Do you want a sandwich? OK, we can make you a sandwich.”
METRO: You were like those fast food restaurants that had a secret menu that nobody knew about.
OCCHIBOVE: Yeah, actually, we still have a secret menu. Right now, we have an extensive menu, but we actually still have old sandwiches that people remember from years past that we’ve introduced, but then we take off the menu because there’s just so much you could put on the menu without it being too overwhelming. But yeah, that’s how it started off and now when I took over when I graduated high school in 2000, we took the business into a little different direction. We were still in the Colonial Plaza at the time, but I wanted to do a little bit more with the food. So we started making daily soups. We started making pizza by the slice. We added a little dining area. I don’t even want to say dining room. It was just a little area that we put tables and chairs in for a little while just to have a spot for people to sit. But then we started generating a really good lunch crowd. So I was taking my cues from that and said, OK, this is the direction we need to go. And then, weeding things out of the store that my parents were kind of hesitant to weed out because, oh, well, we need to have certain items in the store. So when we decided that there was no more growth where we were, that we couldn’t go in the direction we wanted to in the plaza, we decided it was time to go on our own and we bought our own building across the street. It’s the old Ponderosa building on Belmont Avenue. From there, we really made the dream that we all had come true. We made the store and the deli and the bakery stronger. We were able to make our lunch business what we knew it could be. But at first, it was very difficult in our new building because even just the transition, moving, it was difficult because you don’t know what your customers that have been supporting you for all these years, what are they going to think? Are they not going to like what we’ve done? So we had to not only introduce new things to our store, new aspects, but we also had to keep the old feel. I didn’t want our store to seem new when people walked in. We were able to move into our new building probably a month before we actually opened. But I made them move the bakery where they baked a month before. I wanted them to bake in our store for one month before we actually moved because I did not want people walking in and smelling fresh paint.
METRO: That was actually very smart to do that, because it provides a linkage between the new and the old. And also the sense of things baking is really evocative of what you’ve all been about. I also wanted to ask you about Jimmy, his bread and his rolls, because that’s what a lot of people are really familiar with and really love. When he learned to bake, was he learning the types of things that were baked in the part of Italy that he was from? Or were they things that he was taught as an apprentice? Like, what is the basis for the breads that he makes?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, it’s definitely regional from where we come from. If you go to the city where my dad was born, Alife, Italy, it’s a very small town. But if you eat the bread there, it’s very similar to what we call our old fashioned bread…There’s so many different types of regional bread from all over the world. But you don’t realize it until you’ve had it. So I definitely feel that he brought that craft with him, even though he learned his craft of baking in Montreal, which the part of Montreal he went, that part of the city was a large group of immigrants from his city, Alife, in Italy. So that’s probably why he brought that with him. And I’m very thankful every day that we have his bread here in the states.
METRO: Now, I’m not asking for the recipe, but could you explain for people that might not be familiar, what are the characteristics of the rustic breads that he makes and the rolls?
OCCHIBOVE: So our breads, they’re going to be a heartier bread. It has a nice crust, and inside it’s soft yet firm. It doesn’t have that squishiness to it, where it’s too spongy to where it’s going to break apart on you. It’s something that where you could actually just pull it apart and enjoy it. You could dip it in oil. I mean, that’s one of my favorite things, just a loaf of bread and just dip it in a nice beautiful extra virgin olive oil. But our bread is meant to be enjoyed. It’s not meant to be a side piece. It could be used as its own meal.
METRO: Now, you mentioned earlier that when your dad was first starting out, he had a wholesale business. Is that something that you still do, you still have wholesale customers for your breads in different restaurants or maybe some other stores? Is that accurate?
OCCHIBOVE: We still do wholesale, yes. It’s on a smaller scale, and that was another decision that I had made when I took over was to kind of slow the wholesale business down and concentrate on our own retail business to make us succeed more, to go more into the future, to have everybody’s minds in the same spot. So as we do have some restaurants that we still supply, it’s very limited, and it’s not anything that we go out and sell, but if anybody approaches us, we don’t turn anybody down. But yeah, it is something that we still do on a very small scale.
METRO: I wanted to go back to the growth of the store. I see that Jimmy’s is always improving or expanding what it has, and the store has been diversified, but it’s always within the framework of Italian specialties. When you decided to grow the other parts of the store, like the deli and the other sections that people are familiar with, how did you decide how it would grow as far as what you were offering? Is it reflecting the entire scope of what people are familiar with as far as Italian foods go, or are you featuring specific regions when you decided to expand it?
OCCHIBOVE: So when we expand our store, now that we’re talking expansion, it’s more of products and services that we’re offering. I definitely go 100% on what feedback I get from our customers. And not only verbal feedback like, “Hey, Frankie, I’m looking for this, or I have a good idea for you to do this.” I take everything people tell me, and I keep that in the back of my mind, and I revisit everything people tell me. But not only that, I also take what they are not doing. So if we are offering a product or a service and people are not utilizing it, it’s obviously not needed, so we have to get rid of it. So I quickly, I have like a three, I have a three to six month rule. For instance, if product A is sitting on the shelf, and I don’t sell half of what I ordered within three months, I take it off the shelf. It’s gone. I need something else there that’s going to sell. If I have a new service, I give it at least six months. So for instance, we have a Create Your Own Salad Bar. That took off very well for us. We tried doing a Create Your Own Pasta Bar at one point, and within six months, it kind of did OK. We had ups and downs, but not enough for me to keep it. So we got rid of it. It is something that we’re probably going to be reintroducing into the store. But those are two aspects, you know, like physical products and services that we’re offering people. I go 100% off of customer feedback, whether they realize it or not, whether they’re telling me or whether they’re not taking advantage of what we’re giving them.
METRO: So what you’re saying is that if I really like something, I should come there all the time and buy it, to help it stay there?
OCCHIBOVE: I’m glad you brought that up. Let’s say I have product A sitting on the shelf, and you’re the only one buying it. And so I get this all the time. I have a product, I bring it in, and to me I say, oh, it died, so I have to take it off the shelf. Well, I might have one or two people buying it on a regular basis, maybe once a month, maybe once every two months, they’ll come and buy one or two product A. And so it’s hard to get rid of that product and that’s the issue my parents had because you don’t want to see somebody disappointed. So they kept the products on the shelves just to make that one or two people happy. And I know you have to make everybody happy, but at the same time, everybody has to understand that… it comes down to being profitable. So unfortunately, yeah. So unless you come, not only do you have to come and buy that product, you also have to tell all your friends to come and buy that product for me to keep it on the shelf.
METRO: It seems like you’re doing a tightrope walk too because you’re keeping a constant eye on all these products, but you also don’t want to lose what the store is either. So you have to balance new things with the character of the store too. Is that always something that’s in the back of your mind?
OCCHIBOVE: A hundred percent all the time. So I’m always, always, always, and I hear this every single day at my store. People walk in and they say, “Oh, Frankie, where’s this? Where did you put this product? You know, I buy it all the time.” I say, “Oh, it’s right over here now.” So I’m constantly moving things. I’m constantly changing the appearance of the store. And that’s one of the old grocer tricks also, you know, like make them look for it because they’ll see something else along the way, right? So I do that, but I do it also in the mindset of introducing new products, not only new to the customer because it was sitting in aisle one before and now it’s in aisle two, but also bringing in new products that maybe they’ve never seen before. I have suppliers that come to me all the time and they love me. I’m probably one of their favorite customers because if they have a new product, I always say, yes, I’ll try it because I don’t know if it’s going to sell or not. So I put it on the shelf and I give it that three months and I’ll see if it sells or not. But it’s always a battle of, you know, what if. So I kind of try to not make it a battle. I kind of make it a little game like, “OK, let’s put it out.” If not, you know, like we’re fortunate we sell gift baskets. So if a product doesn’t sell on our shelves, we could throw it in a gift basket and it’s sold.
METRO: I want to move on to some of the things you have in your deli. Let’s look at the meats, the cheeses, and the specialty items like the olives and maybe some of the cured products. Let’s start with the olives. There are a number of olives. I’m not Italian, and I don’t really know the differences. So could you go a little bit through some of them? Maybe not exhaustively, but just give us a little bit of a taste of what you have there in the olives.
OCCHIBOVE: So we try to offer a nice range of olives from olives just in brine and olive salads. Olives just in brine are obviously that. They’re just in the brine that they’re cured in. And then there’s olive salads, which are mixed with olive oil and spices, depending on the type of olive they’re mixed differently. We have regional olives. Probably our most popular olive that we sell is from Sicily. They’re called Castelvetrano. They’re a very bright, vibrant green color. Everybody tends to like these olives because most people don’t like green olives. But the people that like the black olives that come pitted in the cans, people love those. They love these olives. They taste like those olives because they’re, like I said, they’re crisp and they’re fresh-tasting. Those will probably be one of the number one sellers in our store as far as olives. For an olive salad I love, there’s our Jimmy’s Mix. It has the green olives, the black Greek olives and the oil-cured olives. The oil-cured olives on their own are very popular. They’re like the real wrinkly olives. They’re black. People actually like to bake them. They’ll put them on a cookie sheet and bake them and they will plump up again. I’ve done it a couple of times and they do give it a nice different flavor. But, you know, olives are, they’re hit or miss, but I feel that you can’t have any event, that’s just me talking, you can’t have any gathering without cheese, some meat, and some olives. It’s a given.
METRO: Let’s move on to the meats and the cheeses, because you have some specialty cheeses and meats. What are either the most unusual or special meats and cheeses that you have?
OCCHIBOVE: So we try to bring in a different variety of meats and cheeses. Now, we obviously have our staples, like the Parma prosciutto, which is a dry cured ham. It’s probably our most popular meat that we sell. For two days, the day of Christmas Eve and the day before Christmas Eve, there’s a separate line in our deli just for people that want prosciutto di Parma, because we are one of the few places that actually brings in the true prosciutto di Parma, not a Parma brand or Parma-style prosciutto. So we actually have a separate line just for that meat because it’s so popular. We bring in the sharp provolone cheese from Italy, the auricchio. That’s the more unique sharp provolone experience. It’s sharp and [has a] nutty flavor, has a little sweetness to it. It’s very good.
METRO: When people are making dinner at home and they’re making a pasta, what do you have that could complement what they’re doing or at least be essential to what they’re doing?
OCCHIBOVE: We carry many products in our store to help anybody complete their meal from start to finish. We bring in authentic Italian spices, so you’ll be able to find the Italian oregano. You’ll be able to find, from starting your sauce, we have the true authentic DOP San Marzano tomatoes, and you can season it with the Italian oregano. You could make it an authentic dish from start to finish. You can make your pasta. We have pasta from Italy. We make our own homemade pasta in-house. And also, you could go all the way through dessert with your meal.
METRO: When you talked about the things you have at the store and where you move stuff around, so people will find other things, one thing that I haven’t seen change is that those beautiful cakes are always the first thing you see when you come in. Is that intentional?
OCCHIBOVE: Well, we kind of go for the wow factor. We do that not only with our pastries, but as soon as you walk into our store, boom, there’s a six-foot pastry case filled to the brim with cannoli and tiramisu and slices of cheesecake and cream puffs, all kinds of goodies because, yeah, we want you to go “wow” as soon as you walk in. And that journey continues as you walk through the store. But yeah, it’s intentional. That’s something, and you’re right, that’s never changed. That’s probably something that never will change. We’ll probably keep that right where it’s at.
METRO: Now, as far as looking to the future in the next year, are there things that you want to do that you might be planning right now that you could tell our listeners about?
OCCHIBOVE: We are always planning on what’s next. So yeah, right now we definitely have a new direction that we’re going to be gearing the store to. And I don’t want to give out too much. But yeah, within the next year, and I could say that every year, actually. I could always say within the next year, you’re going to see significant changes at Jimmy’s, because like I said, we’re always changing and updating. We’ve never stopped investing in ourselves. People could walk in and they’ll see new deli cases, new bakery cases. Almost every two to three years, we are updating and keeping things fresh.
METRO: It’s evident when you go into the store. Like you said earlier in the conversation, there are a lot of things that are familiar, but you also see new things. And I think that that addresses different types of customers. And it’s smart to do that, too, because if you’re familiar, you’re going to keep people. But if you’re introducing new things, people will want to see what you’re doing next. So that almost two-pronged approach is really pretty smart to do.
OCCHIBOVE: Yeah. And it’s difficult to do. It really is, because like I said, going back to my parents, if it were up to my parents, they’d probably still be in the garage on West Federal Street where they started. But I think with the push of us kids moving them and them realizing that we want to do this also, they realize, OK, let them do what they need to do, and we brought them into the future.
METRO: Well, it’s also interesting, too, that your parents were receptive to doing things differently. So you have to give them their props for that, because a lot of people just want to do the same thing, and they were willing to expand and to grow and to try new things. And that’s really a testament to who they are.
OCCHIBOVE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, without my parents behind us, or I should say without us behind my parents, because they’re still leading us. They’re definitely still very much part of the business, and they’re leading us through these next years coming up ahead, and we can’t wait to see where we go from here.
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