CAtering to the masses

Question: What do you feed 6,000 hungry Teamsters?

Answer: Anything they want.

Well, maybe not anything, but John DeCicco, CEO of the four-store DeCicco's C-Town Supermarkets, headquartered in Pelham, N.Y., would probably have a pretty good idea of what Teamsters like to eat. For the past seven years, his company's full-line catering subsidiary, DeCicco's Distinctive Catering, has quite literally fed the masses at the Teamsters annual Labor Day Parade in New York City.

Beyond the fact that cooking for 6,000 people is no small feat for even the largest operator, the niche DeCicco's has established with its top-notch catering division is a remarkable accomplishment for the family-run grocery operation.

John DeCicco, who runs the company with his brothers Frank and Joe, says the flourishing catering division came about quite by accident nearly 20 years ago. "Even back when I opened my first grocery store 25 years ago on Katonah Avenue in the Bronx," DeCicco recalls, "it seems we've always offered our customers some kind of homemade Italian foods in our deli. But we never imagined what an important part of our business it would become today.

"Customers told us they really liked the quality and convenience of getting a fresh, homemade meal in our deli, and we began selling more and more of it."

As customer demand continued, DeCicco says the timing was right to put together a small on-site catering team in the late 1970s to serve small community and church groups. "It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and as our store count grew, so did our catering operation," DeCicco says, noting that the true turning point in the company's history occurred in 1983. At the time, DeCicco was an active member of the New York National Guard, and had already begun catering jobs for the Guard several years earlier. But when the New York state legislature activated the National Guard to oversee the jails during a major prison strike, DeCicco's was called on to provide meals for 13,000 people for 27 consecutive days. "Obviously, this was one of the biggest, most difficult tasks we've ever performed, but it really helped us see the future."

DeCicco's catering operation, which also serves as the central kitchen for the cold salads and side dishes in its sister grocery stores' fresh meals program, is located in the 1,700-square-foot basement of the company's Pelham store.

With its catering division now representing about half of the company's overall business, DeCicco says things just keep getting better with time. Catering manager Pasquale Santelli leads the division, which employs a chef for the catering division and a designated head chef in each of the three other stores in Bronxville (8,000 square feet), Scarsdale (10,000), and New City, N.Y (25,000).

DeCicco says the catering division relies heavily on the grocery stores' fresh foods departments? particularly floral and produce?not only for the catering division but also for custom-designed gift baskets. By helping the company expand in new directions, the catering operation also helps DeCicco's stores offer a distinct point of difference among the large chain competitors.

"Many of our large supermarket competitors come in and get ideas by taking a look at our operation and our kitchen," DeCicco says, adding that he considers everyone?including local meat markets, florists, convenience stores, traditional supermarkets, and restaurants?to be competition. "Even though we're not a big-store operation, our small size actually works to our advantage by helping us stay focused on the specialties that make us unique."

DeCicco, who credits word of mouth as the most influential means of building business, does very little formal advertising to promote his company because of his fear of "being overwhelmed. I don't want to get into a situation where we could potentially let someone down by not having the proper resources and people to handle it. As a result, we are fairly selective in what we take on."