“How you doin”™, big man?”
At Restaurant Depot in Mount Vernon, warehouse workers know Mario Cermele. Arriving in his Cermele Caterers Corp. van, he”™s a regular there when doors open at 6 a.m.
“What”™s up, handsome?” Cermele replies.
He pushes a flatbed cart that will be piled high with produce boxes when Cermele reaches the check-out counter half an hour later, greeting and bantering en route.
He carries a handwritten shopping list that he frequently consults, checking off items as he goes.
“Veggies, we pick up on Monday,” he says. He moves and lifts quickly and efficiently, like a Westchester business owner with 10 office-park cafes to stock and run, five office-building owners and their tenants to please in the week ahead. “Fresh,” he says.
Portabella mushrooms top his list. Squash, peppers, romaine hearts, broccoli, onions. Paper tablecloths. Mozzarella, tubs of feta and tricolor tortellini too on a second cart wheeled by a Cermele employee.
“No plum tomatoes,” Cermele says, surveying shelves. He hustles into a frigid back room off the busy loading docks.
“Not yet?” he asks a warehouseman, who shakes his head in sympathy. “No plums, nothin”™?”
”˜It”™s personal”™
Cermele shops for best prices among about half a dozen wholesale suppliers. “This week, asparagus is extra, extra high,” he says on the move. “I”™m hoping by the middle of the week, the prices will break. That”™s when the market either goes up or down.”
At Restaurant Depot, the regular gets an extra discount on his bulk produce purchases. “If we pay our bills, they want to keep us here,” he says. “They want to keep us alive.”
His purchase volume has dropped 20 to 25 percent since the economy tanked and the layoffs and office vacancies mounted in the buildings served by Cermele Caterers. “It picked up a little bit this year,” Cermele says, “but last year was a disaster. Last year was a nightmare. As the Christmas season came around, there was a massive exodus” from the office buildings along I-287.
“You feel for the business,” says Cermele, “but you also feel for the people, because it”™s personal” in his family-run operation. “They get sent home by the hundreds.”
The recession”™s impact on the food service industry haunts the quiet early-morning aisles at Restaurant Depot. “That”™s the shame of it all,” says Cermele. “People you see here and have known for a long time, they”™re gone out of business. Especially specialty shops and the mom-and-pop stores have gone.”
”˜Hopefully things will turn”™
A native of Campobasso, Italy, Cermele first ventured into the food business in 1975, when he and his older brother Michael opened Cermele”™s Supermarket in New Rochelle. He closed the grocery in 1991 after his brother”™s death and opened Buon Amici Delights, an Italian delicatessen in Yonkers. From his Yonkers store he also ran VIP Corporate Caterers, an office- and events-catering business whose satisfied customers opened doors for Cermele at office parks of what was then Rexcorp Realty Corp. on Route 119 in the town of Greenburgh.
“The first time I delivered food to Tarrytown, I saw these buildings,” he says. “I never knew anything about them. They were so beautiful.”
“It”™s cyclical,” Cermele says of the business slump that has left dark, empty spaces in some buildings whose tenants he feeds. “Hopefully things will turn. Sooner or later, things have got to change ”“ hopefully.”
His shopping helper, Luis Morales, loads one van and leaves to distribute its load among the company”™s 10 cafes in Harrison, White Plains and Greenburgh, where 40 to 45 workers, including Cermele”™s three daughters, are employed.
“Now we”™re going to get tomatoes,” Cermele says. He heads to the Bronx and the Hunts Point market.
”˜You get scouted”™
“The bottom line is, like Mario says, this is not rocket science. It”™s lettuce and tomatoes.”
Pamela Danza, co-owner of Cermele Caterers Corp., is at her desk in the small office she shares with her partner off the entrance lobby at 108 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison. Cermele called her “the brains behind the whole operation.”
Around the lobby corner is Café 108, one of six Cermele-run cafeterias at The Exchange, the portfolio of Platinum Mile office parks owned by New Jersey-based Normandy Real Estate Partners. A lender that took over the portfolio from RXR Realty Corp. in 2009, Normandy retained its cafeteria operator. Cermele said new owners more often bring in their own favored and familiar contractor.
“You get scouted” by building owners “and you don”™t even know who they are,” says Danza. “It”™s just like word of mouth gets out. We”™ve never knocked on any door. We”™ve always been approached. We”™re not in the habit of undermining other people”™s businesses.”
Approached by Rexcorp, now RXR Realty, Cermele Caterers in 2006 took over its first corporate caf̩ at 120 White Plains Road in Greenburgh. That same year they added Caf̩ 520 at 520 White Plains Road, another RXR property, where CermeleӪs commissary is located.
Their 10th café opened about 18 months ago at 303 S. Broadway, a 200,000-square-foot building at Hudson Point in Tarrytown. The owner, Manhattan-based Amtrust Realty Corp., is the fifth landlord currently to retain what Danza calls “just a little, simple mom-and-pop operation.”
“That”™s Mario”™s genius” ”“ not leaving their business dependent on the fortunes and choices of just one landlord in the poor economy, says Danza. “In the last year, quite a few people in our position have lost their business.”
”˜We”™re a community”™
In the last two years, Danza often has used their office as her private crying room through layoffs and office closings. Like Cermele, she can reel off a list of Westchester office-park addresses where companies have severely downsized or vacated their leased space.
Next door at 106 Corporate Park Drive, “When we first came it was all mortgage companies,” she says. “There we go.”
At 104 Corporate Park Drive, a 118,000-square-foot building owned by AVR Realty Co. L.L.C., the parking lots are empty and a “for sale or lease” sign is posted curbside since Malcolm Pirnie Inc. earlier this year relocated its headquarters and about 325 employees to downtown White Plains. “I got 75 percent of them here” at Café 108, says Danza.
Upstairs at 108 Corporate Park Drive, Alden Staffing has downsized and W.J. Deutsch & Sons Ltd., a marketer of international wines, this year relocated across the interstate to another Normandy office park. “There was an investment company here (Tullett Prebon Financial Services), they had 75 or 80 people,” says Danza. “They were down to six; now they”™re gone,” having closed their office in August. In December, “The Census Bureau is out of here” after a one-year tenancy, she says.
Across the interstate at 777 Westchester Ave., the catererӪs business at Caf̩ 777 and its office-event catering staggered after Malibu-Kahlua International, a division of Pernod Ricard USA, vacated two floors of its headquarters space in the five-story building.
Since last Labor Day, the company”™s catered events in corporate offices have been down “immensely,” says Danza. “This last holiday season was almost catastrophic, nonexistent.” Cost-conscious companies also have downsized their orders with the caterer for office breakfast and luncheon meetings.
In the cafes, office employees buy lunch less frequently and spend less when they do. “I said to Mario, I”™ve seen more Tupperware and brown bags in here than I would like to see,” says Danza. “You can”™t fault them, because the money only goes so far.
“Some of these people that lost their jobs, they”™ll never work again,” she says. At Café 108, she recently consoled a pregnant customer surprised and devastated by the bad news she”™d just received from her company. It”™s enough to send Danza weeping to her office.
In the office parks, “We”™re a community,” she says. “We”™re like our own little neighborhood, really.”
For a catering business that depends on its hard-pressed neighbors, “You can only hang on so long,” says Danza. Despite the exodus from the neighborhood, “You still have to make a beautiful presentation.
“Like Mario says, you”™re only as good as your last meatball.”
