Grocery Headquarters – December 2005
La Bella Roma
by David Litwak
When it comes to projecting the
ultimate image of fresh foods, nothing
compares to a carefully selected array
of the bounties of Italy. There’s a powerful statement in the fresh imported
cheeses, quality meats, Tuscan produce,
prepared foods, and seafood pulled
from the Mediterranean or the Adriatic. Don’t even mention the crusty
breads, rich pastries or creamy gelato.
It seems that almost everyone loves
Italian foods, and certainly there’s no
place more associated with these fresh
delicacies than the Eternal City, Rome.
Most American consumers have to
hop on an airplane to get more than
a minimal taste of Rome, but lucky
shoppers in the New York area can
reach it without buying a ticket on
Alitalia. Roma has come to the heart of
Long Island in the form of Uncle Giuseppe’s, a market that not only brings
the products of Italy to this side of the
Atlantic but brings some of Rome itself
as well.
The recently opened supermarket in
Smithtown is the creation of partners
Philip Delprette and Tommy Barrissi, who are in the wholesale fresh
produce business in the area. The
35,000-square-foot Uncle Giuseppe’s
is the duo’s second foray into the
retail food business; they have a
5,000-square-foot fresh food market in
nearby East Meadow.
“We designed the store to be a large,
upscale Italian market with a full line
of grocery, dairy and frozen foods so a
customer can do their whole shopping
and get the experience of a huge meat
department, huge deli section with
fresh made value-added foods and a
huge produce section, all with an
Italian flavor,” says Delprette. “When
you think of Italy you think of great
food, and when you think of Uncle
Giuseppe’s you think of Italy and great
food.”
The location that Delprette and Barrissi chose to bring their dream store to
life was a former Waldbaum’s unit that
had been shuttered for a number of
years. The idea was to reinforce the image of Italy and Italian food by creating
a little bit of the sights and sounds of
the country inside the store. Uncle Gi-
useppe’s faces stiff competition from
Stop & Shop, King Kullen and other
stores operating close by, so it had to
be unique in both offering and design
to catch consumers’ attention.
BRINGING OUT THE FLAVOR
“Uncle Giuseppe’s is the name of the
store, and we’re bringing the Italian flavor out in the store layout,” Delprette
says. “We have Italian music playing
all day long, and the decor features the
product names written in Italian. The
decor enhances the whole shopping
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experience. People tell us that they’ve
never seen anything else like this and
that the store is a great shopping experience.”
In order to turn the old conventional supermarket into an Italian
fresh market, the operators enlisted
the assistance of College Point, N.Y.based Lind Design. The idea was to
give the store a real feeling of Italy to
enhance the shopping experience. The
design team decided that one of the
things it would try to do was to physically transform the interior of the store
into Rome, with a heavy emphasis on
Imperial Rome, at least the parts that
can still be seen today.
“The owners wanted the most incredible Italian food store in the world,”
says Gary Lind, president of the design
firm. “The store is the Cesar’s Palace of
food stores; it’s outrageous. I’ve been
to Italy 10 times and I have portfolios
of pictures of design ideas, colors and
architecture, which we went through
to get ideas. The store is designed
based on Roman architecture. It has
columns and real stucco arches. We
have a hand-painted Tintorretto-type
ceiling over the produce department.
It’s the only store in the world that has
a 45-foot mural of St. Peter’s over the
meat department. There’s also a 36foot mural depicting Venice over the
seafood department.”
When customers walk into Uncle
Giuseppe’s they enter through a barrel vaulted ceiling that’s painted to
represent the sky; the entrance opens
up onto a wide view of the store. The
open floor plan makes it easy for the
shopper to take in the Roman scene
as well as to decide which part of the
store to shop first. The overall decor
depicts ancient Roman buildings
around many of the departments.
In many areas a frieze that looks like
ancient marble has the names of the
section and products carved in Italian
using old Roman lettering. English
translations are placed under the Italian.
HELP FROM TECHNOLOGY
Uncle Giuseppe’s did not use real imported marble to construct its version
of ancient Rome. As a matter of fact,
it was modern design technology that
helped to create the appearance.
“This store looks like it cost five
times what it actually did to construct,” says Lind. “We figured out
ways to bring it in within the owner’s
budget. The decor, which looks like
carved stone, is really built from foam.
We have new ways of carving it and
creating an ancient stone look. From
10 feet away it looks like an old Roman building, but it’s all stage set. Instead of hand painting murals, we used
colored digital graphics, which saved a
great deal of the budget.”
If the design and decor attract customers to Uncle Giuseppe’s, it’s the
fresh foods that keep bringing them
back. The store specializes in highquality fresh produce and wonderful
prepared foods, as well as specialty
products imported from Italy and
other areas of the world. The large deli
department has 90 feet of cases that
include hot prepared foods and a chef ’s
station that is used to demonstrate
products and give cooking lessons.
The store has a large rotisserie program
anchored by two Rotisol units whose
open flames add to the ambience of the
section.
columns and carved friezes that may
transport shoppers back to the Rome
of 2,000 years ago.
One problem for the design team
was how to put the trappings and
equipment of a modern supermarket
within this setting without making them appear totally out of place.
According to Lind, this was accomplished by using neutral finishes on the
equipment and modern materials that
mimicked the natural materials used in
Roman times.
“For the cases we chose a neutral sage
green color, which blended in with
the surroundings,” he says. “We used
Parterre flooring of terra-cotta-style
tiles so it looks like a Roman street. All
of the colors are in the Tuscan style,
with semolina yellows on many of the
background walls. The stucco work in
the arches is all hand painted, marbleized to make it look 2,000 years old.
We used large photos that we digitally
painted so the murals looked like real
paintings. However, we did use real
tumbled stone for the ceramic work
behind the service cases.”
FOOD TRUMPS DECOR
The decor sets the stage, but as with
any good design the decor quickly
fades into the background and the
food takes over the shopper’s attention.
The food in Uncle Giuseppe’s quickly
reinforces not only the fresh quality
image but also the feeling of being in
Italy. The huge cheese displays feature
RECALLING SALUMERIAS
many Italian varieties, as do the selec“It’s a food show,” Lind says. “There’s tions in the deli and prepared foods
a service sushi section, a gigantic cheese cases. The products in the bakery are
island and a run of prepared soups in
highly reminiscent of a trip to the
a multi-deck case, as well as a cafe. We bread and pastry shops of Rome.
designed some very nice hanging deli
The center of the store contains three
bars where they can hang salamis and
double-wide aisles loaded with specialcheeses just like the old fashioned
ty products from Italy. These include
salumerias.”
not only a large selection of grocerThe store’s 5,000-square-foot proies, such as pastas, sauces, oils, candy,
duce section was designed as a colonand canned products, but also a large
nade, with ancient stone and marble
array of Italian housewares, including
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espresso makers, utensils and serving
platters.
“The huge displays in the produce
department and the fresh meats and
cheeses and deli cases--that’s what hits
your eye,” says Delprette. “The decor is
in the background of everything that’s
going on around it. It just enhances
the food. The food and the decor fit
like a baseball and a glove.”
“There’s an extensive lighting design,” says Lind. “We have fluorescents
down the aisles, and a combination of
track and metal halides in the produce department. There are also some
uplights around the produce section
to highlight the painted sky above it.
There are also CFL cans and up-down
lights that light up the murals and
light down the top of the service cases.
We gave the store the proper lighting
without wasting light. So the product is well-lit, but the store has a nice
ambiance.”
A PREMIUM ON SPACE
Even at 35,000 square feet, size is
an issue in this store. With so much
emphasis on fresh prepared foods and
produce, it needs as much cooking,
prep and fresh storage area as possible.
It also needs as much selling space as
possible. The result is that there’s very
little back room area. The kitchen is,
therefore, small, although state-of-theart. The culinary-trained executive chef
and his staff have enough room to create the wonderful dishes the store sells
but little extra room for fluff, making
operational efficiency an important
issue for the kitchen staff.
The same is true for the bakery and
for the refrigerated storage areas. Uncle
Giuseppe’s does not have a lot of room
to store excess inventory and must rely
on its distributors to make deliveries
when product is needed.
The existence of ancient Rome in
Smithtown is a well-hidden secret
from the town fathers. Because of local zoning ordinances, the exterior of
the store had to stay rather plain with
none of the imperial trappings. Lind
created a brick arch that leads into the
store which helps somewhat to give the
outside a Roman theme and eases the
transition from Long Island to Rome.
The operators are currently developing their third store. The new unit
will be much smaller, around 10,000
square feet, but will carry the Roman
theme. Plans are to remodel the original East Meadow store into the Uncle
Giuseppe’s format in the near future.
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