Illardi says that when it comes to approaching the change, prioritizing traditional techniques in the technique is key. “There are machines for everything now,” he states. But with bread, particularly real artisan breads it will be difficult to change. It is not necessary to be a member of the? It’s better to do it by hand. It must be done by hand, from beginning to end. Every old-school store is trying to balance the need to keep their core while adapting to a Brooklyn which looks nothing like where they grew up.
Walk into Caputo’s Fine Foods, just a few blocks away—opened in 1973 by Sicilian immigrant Giuseppe Caputo and his wife Flora—and you’ll see this play out. After learning from their still-active father, Franco and Joseph Caputo now run the company. They left law school, business internships, and returned to the store in 2021.
“It was nostalgia. It made me want to move back in, work at the shop and take over.” [Joseph] Caputo. “But our number one question was: How can we modernize the store, bring in new customers, and keep it clean—without ever really losing that ‘it’s been here for 50 years feel’?”
Caputo’s has undergone a subtle renovation and restoration with a balanced approach. The brick was first exposed, and then the old wire racks were lowered to reveal the brick. A felt-board pin-sign was used for the menu. Recently, they replaced the pendant lighting with a replica of what it used to be: an aluminum green lighting fixture Joseph discovered in a vintage store.
We remember what we used to buy in the store when we were children. Caputo says, “We’re slowly trying to bring back the old store.” “You really wouldn’t notice the difference—but it’s all how all of these details add up.” What about the actual goods? Caputo’s offers mouth-watering arancini and mortadella as well fresher-thanfresh mozzarella. The Caputo brothers, who are now in their twenties, learned how to make some of the finest mozzarella in the city from generations of mozzarella-makers. “As a young child, I was taught how to make mozzarella. It is not necessary to be able to understand Caputo. “We know what we’re looking for now, because it’s true to our nature—and somehow it ends up on all of these lists for the best mozzarella in the city.”
Caputo believes that the key to thriving as an entrepreneur in Brooklyn’s tough-as-nails community is to want to be a member of it. “You gotta understand—the community wants you there and they don’t want you to change much; so in order to change—you still need to fit in. All of the old-school Italians that come in—we want to make sure they don’t feel alienated; and that everyone in the neighborhood is happy to chat with us or even try something new,” says Caputo. “I don’t see the generations that have been coming here stopping anytime soon—we’re still their neighborhood spot even if they moved out of Brooklyn years ago.”
You can’t automate mozzarella pulled by hand. You can’t automate the process of pulling mozzarella by hand. You can’t reproduce the feeling that your parents or grandparents ordered the sandwich you’re about eat. People notice and return. Illardi says that some customers return every holiday season, even after moving. “They want to taste the same as they did before.”
