At Ammirati Inc. in Pelham, it”™s all about family ”“ and growing the family business from one generation to the next. This Italian-American family works together and plays ball together and even vacations together. And together they have profited from America”™s Seattle-launched craze for espresso and cappuccino and exotic coffee roasts.
At Ammirati, an importer and distributor primarily of specialty coffees and commercial espresso machines from Italy, a quartet of young managers leads the company into the 21st century ”“ the brothers Ammirati, Dominic, Michael and Joseph, and their cousin, T.J. Tarateta. Balancing Old World traditions with the New World”™s celebrity culture when doing business, their youth serves them well on both fronts. The generations-old family-owned companies in Italy, La Cimbali and Lavazza, whose products Ammirati sells in metropolitan New York and the Northeast, are assured of longevity in their business associates here. The celebrity chefs at client hotels and restaurants can relate to their taste-savvy, brand-conscious youth.
With the boom in chef-focused food channels, “The restaurant business is part of the entertainment business,” said Tarateta, the 34-year-old general manager of a company with about 35 employees, 800 active customers and more than $6.5 million in annual sales. “In order to be effective with this clientele, the celebrity chef, your product has to be exciting, it has to be sophisticated.” For the product, “You have to create this aura of celebrity to keep up the aura of celebrity that surrounds their business,” he said. “We try to appeal to that aesthetic as best we can.”
“The food service industry takes their coffee very seriously. Doing a tasting before a chef or a restaurateur is a solemn procession,” said Tarateta, who often presides as high priest of profit at those business rites. “Tasting coffee is like a two- or three-hour process. The old cup of joe, he”™s dying a long, slow death.”
The business has evolved since Tarateta”™s grandfather, Dominic Ammirati, started it in his East Harlem neighborhood more than 50 years ago. Returned home from service as a bomber pilot in World War II, the son of Italian immigrants ran an Italian housewares store on First Avenue and 168th St. Durable goods were his stock in trade; coffee and other commodities he left to neighboring merchants.
Italian-Americans visiting their ancestral land after the war found espresso and its barista rituals had become popular there. The leading maker of commercial espresso machines, the Milanese firm La Cimbali, had started in 1912 as a plumbing supply company. “That left them sort of strategically positioned to get into espresso” when it took off in the ”™20s, said Tarateta, an amateur historian of his industry. In 1955, Tarateta”™s grandfather first brought back Cimbali espresso machines from Italy for distribution here.
“I thought he was nuts,” recalled Thomas Ammirati, the founder”™s son and company president, described by his nephew as “the mediator and moderator” in the family operation. “The machines back then looked like Coca-Cola machines.”
But the Harlem merchant soon found customers for his Cimbali machines in the restaurants of Manhattan”™s Little Italy. In 1963, the growing family business incorporated.
Three decades later, Tarateta, then a Fordham College student with vaguely formed career aspirations outside the family business, was recruited into full-time work by his grandfather. He made Ammirati the first company to introduce on the American market the push-button, user-friendly automatic espresso machines that have become fixtures in establishments such as Starbucks and Dunkin”™ Donuts. Tarateta also saw that the company, in an increasingly competitive market begat by the Starbucks phenomenon sweeping Middle America, needed a name-brand coffee to expand its equipment business. His grandfather, though, initially was reluctant to deal in commodities.
During a National Restaurant Association trade show in 1997, Tarateta and an Italian friend at a champagne bar spotted business opportunity in the figure of the president of Lavazza U.S.A. “Use your credit card,” Tarateta”™s paisan advised. “Buy a bottle of Dom Perignon.”
Two bottles and one tapped-out credit card later, the Lavazza chief was in a generously confiding state. He told the young New Yorker his company wanted to “democratize Lavazza in New York ”“ get out of the Italian-American market, get out to everybody,” Tarateta recalled. Not long after that serendipitous meeting, Lavazza handed over its metropolitan distribution to the 23-year-old manager at Ammirati.
He and his cousins laugh at the memory of that first coffee shipment from Italy to the company”™s small quarters in Harlem. They unloaded the tractor-trailer by hand in a driving rain. Lacking warehouse space, “We put coffee everywhere,” Tarateta said. “It was on desks, it was under desks. My grandfather and uncle, as supportive as they were, were saying, ”˜You guys are crazy. You got too much.”™”
The family doubters soon were proven wrong. “Things moved rapidly,” Tarateta said. “Since then, we”™ve done probably 15 times the amount of business. Cimbali now sells more espresso machines than ever because of the Lavazza name. The two products complement each other ”“ they go hand in hand.” Ammirati offers “one-stop shopping” by leasing and servicing Cimbali machines for customers who agree to buy its coffee, he said.
A decade after their business union began, “We”™ve easily quintupled our business with Lavazza,” Tarateta said. “In five or six years they had not increased their business in New York prior to switching distributors. I think they”™re pleased, to say the least.”
Ammirati sells nearly 700,000 pounds of coffee a year, most of which is imported from Italy, said Tarateta. The company also distributes toll-roast coffees ”“ coffees beans imported from South America, Indonesia and Africa and specially roasted at a Staten Island shop and at others in the metropolitan area. “We are definitely the largest specialty-coffee distributor in the Northeast,” he said. “We”™re the largest non-factory-owned distributor of Cimbali and Lavazza in the U.S.”
The companyӪs customer list includes the Waldorf-Astoria and Four Seasons hotels in Manhattan and Hilton Hotels; the Olive Garden restaurant chain; Disney World; Compass Food Service, the worldӪs largest food-service company and owner of the Au Bon Pain chain of cafes; the Nobu Japanese restaurant group; Pr̻t-a-Manger, the natural-foods delicatessen chain and, among New YorkӪs white-cloth Italian eateries, the Sant Ambroeus group of Milanese restaurants, LӪImpero Restaurant and Bice Ristorante. Its sales force calls, too, on casual dining spots, catering halls and supermarkets.
The import company and its customers are feeling the effects of a volatile Wall Street and the weak U.S. dollar against the euro. For Ammirati, coffee prices in the last three years have risen 18 percent to 20 percent and the price of espresso machines roughly 25 percent with the dollar”™s slide. “With the situation in the financial markets, all the money is going into commodities,” said Tarateta. The increased market competition has raised prices for coffee and other commodities, forcing Ammirati last week to hike prices for customers for the second time in four months. “That isn”™t an easy pill to swallow for customers,” Tarateta said.
In 2002, Ammirati closed its cramped Manhattan office and moved into 5,600 square feet of leased space in Mount Vernon. Two years ago, the company bought its 20,000-square-foot office and warehouse building at 500 Fifth Ave. in Pelham. From there the youthful quintet continues aggressively to expand the family business.
From Italy the company, under 31-year-old Michael Ammirati”™s direction, has begun importing Fabbri syrups for its commercial customers. And 26-year-old Joseph Ammirati has directed the company”™s move into the specialty tea market as metropolitan distributor of Mighty Leafy Teas, a line of loose-leaf hand-crafted teas in hand-sewn silken pouches from a small family-owned company in Northern California.
“Our tea business is growing so fast,” Tarateta said. “The specialty tea market is going crazy. Tea right now is pretty much where espresso coffee was 15 years ago. The only difference is that tea doesn”™t have that one specialty chain that defines it, such as Starbucks.”
Some family-owned businesses falter or fail in the transition between generations, Tarateta noted. “In this business we haven”™t had that problem. We”™ve gone through three generations with incredible growth seamlessly.”
Up next for Ammirati? Gelato products from Italy seem likely. And then there”™s that “Italian Wine for Dummies” book the studious general manager keeps on a shelf behind his desk.
“Italian wine is practically an unpenetrated market here in the U.S.,” Tarateta said. For this Italian-American company, “All of these things, they all make sense for us.”
