Port Times Record – December 28, 2011
supermarket gives
shoppers more than just
food
By Susan Risoli
Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is a
Business of the Year
Imagine a place where people travel
from far and wide to hear lilting music,
eat tantalizing food made fresh every
day and enjoy each other’s company.
This happy destination, believe it or
not, is a supermarket in Port Jefferson
Station: Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace
in the Port Plaza Shopping Center on
Route 112. Shoppers and civic leaders
say the store has turned an aging,
run-of-the-mill shopping center into a
thriving neighborhood center for food
and local pride.
For these reasons, Uncle Giuseppe’s
is a Port Times Record Business of the
Year.
A tub of ricotta waits for the chance
to pair up with stamped-out pasta
rounds. During the holidays this
mechanized macaroni process runs late
into the night.
The Port Jeff Station store is part of
a family-owned Long Island chain,
owned by brothers Philip, Carl and
Dr. Joseph DelPrete and their business
partner, Tommy Barresi. It was started
in 1998 and named after the DelPretes’
uncle. The supermarket “draws people”
to a site Lou Antoniello, treasurer and
past president of the Port Jefferson
Station/Terryville Civic Association,
said “was decaying for years. ... It was
just an old, tired shopping center like
many others on Long Island.” Since
Uncle Giuseppe’s opened there in June
2010, Antoniello said, the area is a
“hot spot.”
Uncle Giuseppe’s prides itself on
food prepared fresh at the store, often
in full view of the customers “so
people know where their food came
from,” store manager Marty Maguire
said. Shoppers can watch steaks being
grilled, milk becoming mozzarella, and
sheets of macaroni rolling off the pasta
machine to get filled with stuffing
by the ravioli team. Children like to
gaze at Uncle Giuseppe’s chocolate
fountains. It’s more than food, it’s
theater that fascinates customers, said
cheese manager Steven Damiani, a
former actor who presides over the
store’s 400 varieties of cheese. Uncle
Giuseppe’s offers tasting samples and
live music on the weekends, and has
a cafe that Maguire said is frequently
packed with people from all over Long
Island who come to Uncle Giuseppe’s
for the ambiance as well as the quality.
On a recent preholiday morning,
Peter Campisi said he has been a
regular shopper at Uncle Giuseppe’s
since it opened. He doesn’t mind
driving there from his home in Middle
Island because there’s “nothing like”
Uncle Giuseppe’s anywhere else. “You
don’t get stuff like this at a [usual]

supermarket,” he said. “Everything is
done right.”
Maguire said Uncle Giuseppe’s also
attracts transplanted New Yorkers,
who enjoy the store’s old-school New
York flavor when they’re back in this
area visiting relatives. When those
folks return to their homes “in Florida,
in North Carolina, I get emails from
them saying, ‘When are you opening a
store here?’” he said.
Time to make the ravioli; pasta and
mozzarella supervisor Dondi Peterson
checks ravioli for consistency of shape
and size.
When the store gives shoppers
the feeling they’re back in their
grandmother’s neighborhood, it’s not
accidental, Philip DelPrete said. The
store has captured the experience of
“the old-time butcher and fish market
and deli and bakery that you would go
to years ago, and we put them under
one roof,” he said. The formula seems
to be working. Corporate spokesperson
Arielle Brechisci said the Port Jefferson
Station store, the largest of the five
Uncle Giuseppe’s supermarkets, serves
almost 14,000 customers a week.
Comsewogue High School principal
Joe Coniglione called the store “one
of the best things that’s happened to
this community in a while.” Some
of the market’s 170 employees are
Comsewogue students, he said, and
Uncle Giuseppe’s donates foods to
school district events. Coniglione said
when the school held a fundraiser, “me
being Italian, and the superintendent’s
Italian, we decided to do sausage and
peppers” for the event’s menu. Uncle
Giuseppe’s “donated 100 links of large
sausages, and all the rolls and all the
peppers.” For a community concert —
which was postponed due to rain —
Uncle Giuseppe’s said it would donate
all the food, Coniglione said. “They’ve
been so supportive of this community,
it’s unbelievable,” said Coniglione, who
added, “I’m heading over there right
now to pick up some dinner.”
Sam Judd is vice president of
investment for EDENS, the shopping
center development company that
owns the Port Plaza Shopping Center
and is the supermarket’s landlord.
He called their relationship “a real
partnership” that started with “a leap of
faith” on both sides. EDENS had never
worked with Uncle Giuseppe’s before
and it was not a national company
like some of the other tenants. Before
moving in, Uncle Giuseppe’s asked
EDENS to spruce up what Judd said
was a “very run-down shopping center;
they had to trust that we would make
improvements.” The chance paid off.
Judd said EDENS wanted “a tenant
that connects with the community”
and called Uncle Giuseppe’s “a perfect
example of that.” Asked what he
thinks of the store, Judd said, “I love
it,” and confessed that besides the
mouthwatering tastes and sights of
fresh food, the store “smells good.”