BONUS: How Small Businesses Endure for Generations

Summary

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The Unshakeables – BONUS: How Small Businesses Endure for Generations

Host: Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business
Guest Host/Interviewer: Maya Shankar
Date: May 7, 2026
Podcast Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This special episode of The Unshakeables, released during Small Business Week, explores how small businesses can survive—and even thrive—across generations. Host Ben Walter sits down with Maya Shankar to reflect on his podcast interview with the family behind Borgatti’s Ravioli and Egg Noodle—an iconic, family-run pasta shop that’s been anchoring New York’s Bronx for nearly a century. Ben and Maya discuss what makes businesses like Borgatti's endure: the traditions, values, adaptability, and the community bonds that turn local businesses into lasting institutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Emotional Significance of Multigenerational Businesses

• Stability in Uncertain Times:
  • Ben Walter notes the unique role longstanding businesses play, citing families who have bought holiday pasta from Borgatti’s for over five decades. These places become “constants in a sea of change,” offering comfort and nostalgia.
    • Quote:

      “There are families who've been getting their holiday meal from Borgatti's for, you know, over 50 years…in a world that feels topsy turvy…that brings a source of comfort.”
      (Ben Walter, 03:41)

• Connection to Community Identity:
  • Maya Shankar emphasizes that these physical places ground people emotionally and culturally, especially when everything else is changing.
    • Quote:

      “Familiar environments contribute to our sense of stability. They remind us who we are and where we come from.”
      (Maya Shankar, 04:19)

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2. Ingredients for Endurance

• Commitment to Tradition & Quality:

  • Borgatti’s maintains original recipes and processes, resisting the urge to "cut corners" despite market pressures.
    • Quote:

      “They don't cheap out on the ingredients. They don't short circuit the process. They make them the way that they were always made, with a focus on really quality product to the customer.”
      (Ben Walter, 04:49)

• Adaptation & Grit:

  • Businesses survive by adapting—be it moving sales online as neighborhoods change or responding nimbly to emergencies (like Borgatti’s key machine breakdown).
    • Quote:

      “The number one [trait] is adaptability…Second is the absolute unrelenting grit and dedication of the owners…these are businesses that have made it through Covid, through the Great Recession, through all of these things, through the Great Depression in this case.”
      (Ben Walter, 07:35)

• Purpose Beyond Profit:

  • Longevity is tethered to a sense of mission—impacting the community, not just making money.
    • Quote:

      “None of them would talk about their financials. They would all talk about the product or service that they provide. The impact that has on the lives of their customers and their communities…They're running something that has a higher purpose.”
      (Ben Walter, 08:32)

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3. Threats Facing Multigenerational Small Businesses

• Succession Challenges:
  • A major hurdle is lack of generational interest—often, no one in the family wants to continue the business.
• Neighborhood Changes & Gentrification:
  • Demographic shifts mean original customer bases may move away; businesses must find ways (e.g., online sales) to adapt.
• Technological Competition:
  • Mass-produced, higher-quality foods are challenging artisanal shops, though craft quality and authenticity still stand out.

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4. How Small Businesses Shape Neighborhoods

• Creating a Sense of Place:

  • Iconic local businesses anchor neighborhoods, offering familiarity and encouraging further investment.

• Philanthropy & Local Investment:

  • Small business owners commonly support local causes, teams, and events, hiring and investing directly in their communities.
    • Quote:

      “Small business owners are some of the most philanthropic people in their local communities…They don’t just sell locally, they hire locally.”
      (Ben Walter, 09:52)

• Building Relationships & Social Fabric:

  • The true value of small businesses lies in daily, meaningful interactions—baristas, shop owners, customer rituals—which boost well-being and reinforce belonging.
    • Quote:

      “Restaurants like Borgatti’s help create a feeling that a place is not simply where you live, but where you belong.”
      (Maya Shankar, 10:48)

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5. The Risk of Losing Small Businesses

• Loss of Character & Permanence:

  • Neighborhoods lose their distinctness and sense of stability when small businesses close down.
    • Quote:

      “When neighborhoods lose their small businesses, they lose their character. It's that simple…you don’t just lose the character, you lose the permanence.”
      (Ben Walter, 11:23)

• Fighting Back with Community Support:

  • Maya and Ben describe how communities often rally to save imperiled businesses, through petitions or patronage—even if it occasionally means paying a premium.

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6. Advice for Aspiring Enduring Entrepreneurs

• Start with Purpose:
  • Aspiring founders must deeply understand why they’re starting a business, know their mission, and have authentic passion—beyond monetary gain.
    • Quote:

      “Very rarely works if that passion is I want to make a buck and you need to have a really deep understanding of what the purpose of that business is…and if you have those two things and the grit to drive through…most places make it.”
      (Ben Walter, 13:41)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Value of Community Ritual:

  “I walk in [to my dry cleaner], I hand her my stuff. She knows that I don't like starch on my shirts, you know, and that's comforting.”
  (Ben Walter, 11:58)

• On the Importance of Small Interactions:

  “It is these small, daily interactions with people in our community, not even with our closest friends or our family, that really help boost our sense of belonging…”
  (Maya Shankar, 12:16)

• On the Core of Resilience:

  “That balance between continuity and change is often what resilience looks like.”
  (Maya Shankar, 06:58)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:41] – The emotional role of businesses like Borgatti’s in families and communities
• [04:49] – What has endured at Borgatti’s: recipes, quality, customer traditions
• [05:46] – Threats to longevity: succession, changing neighborhoods, technology
• [07:35] – The traits that drive endurance: adaptability and grit
• [08:32] – Purpose beyond profit as a key to multigenerational longevity
• [09:52] – How small businesses anchor and benefit neighborhoods
• [10:48] – The unique role of small businesses in building social cohesion
• [11:23] – What’s lost when local businesses disappear
• [13:41] – Ben Walter’s advice for founders who want to build lasting businesses

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Conclusion

This inspiring conversation illuminates the soul of enduring small businesses—their commitment to tradition, community, adaptability, and purpose. As neighborhoods shift and challenges mount, the stories and resilience of places like Borgatti’s prove that local businesses are much more than retail—they are pillars of memory, belonging, and identity.

For more:
Check out Ben Walter's full episode with the Borgatti family on The Unshakeables for deeper stories and lessons from inside one of New York’s most storied small businesses.

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Transcript

[Ben Walter]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Maya Shankar]

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[Ben Ham]

Small businesses are the pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities and drive growth. Chase for Business helps business owners like you with personalised guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn [e-mail] business chase for business make more of what's yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JP Morgan Chase Company One thing

[Maya Shankar]

we know from behavioral science is that opportunity shapes outcomes. That's why I'm so happy to tell you about Girls Inc. They're the leading experts on girls and they're dedicated to helping them develop their inherent strengths and abilities, uncover new ones, and tell the world about potential. Girls Inc. Creates enriching experiences that build real confidence and skills, the kind that helps girls navigate change and step boldly into their futures. Girls are full of potential and Girls Inc. Gives them the opportunities to unlock it. To learn more, visit girlsinc.org. Pushkin. Hey everyone. In honor of Small Business Week, I sat down with Ben Walter, the CEO of Chase for Business. He's also the host of the Unshakables podcast, where small business owners share the defining moments that tested them and how they found a way through At a moment when so much can feel uncertain. We talked about those comforting places that hold steady in a sea of change. Maybe it's a neighborhood market or a family run restaurant. Somewhere that feels familiar and keeps you coming back year after year. I find it fascinating how local spots like these seem to carry the history of a neighborhood with them, even as the neighborhood itself changes. Recently, Ben sat down with the family behind Borgatti's Ravioli and Egg Noodle for his podcast. It's a family run pasta shop that's been on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx for nearly a century. Arthur Avenue, known as the borough's Little Italy, has long been a Hub for Italian American businesses and culture. But like many neighborhoods in New York and beyond, it's constantly evolving as longtime residents move out and new communities move in. I wanted to talk to Ben about how a place like Borgati's doesn't just survive, but stays true to itself, how it maintains its character over time, what it holds onto and where and when it's willing to adapt. I hope this conversation gets you thinking about the special places in your community, the change they've outlasted and the stories they carry. Okay, here's my conversation with Ben.

[Ben Walter]

When you meet a business like Borgatti's, you really get a sense of a business that has this larger purpose, both in terms of the role that it has played in the family and the role that it's played in its community. I think it represents sort of a constant in a sea of change. You know, there are families who've been getting their holiday meal from Borgatis for, you know, over 50 years. You have people who remember eating that at, you know, at Christmas, at their grandmother's 50 years ago, who are still serving the same meal today. And in a world that feels topsy turvy and, you know, changing faster than ever, I think that brings a source of comfort to many.

[Maya Shankar]

There's a reason places like Borgati's can feel so emotionally grounding. Familiar environments contribute to our sense of stability. They remind us who we are and where we come from. That can be especially powerful during moments of uncertainty, when our brain is looking for cues that the world is still somewhat predictable. A beloved community business can become one of those stabilizing cues. What elements have endured at Borgatti's over time? So whether it's recipes or processes or

[Ben Walter]

rituals with customers, it's absolutely still the original recipes from, I guess, the fourth generation's great great grandmother. They still serve many of the original families as customers that they did all those years ago. And they've maintained their absolute commitment to quality. They don't cheap out on the ingredients. They don' short circuit the process. They make them the way that they were always made, with a focus on really quality product to the customer.

[Maya Shankar]

It takes a lot of effort to sustain, like you said, the quality of a business over time to make sure you're not skimping when it comes to high quality ingredients, that you are allowing certain tried and tested processes to remain in place. So a lot of investment involved in keeping an establishment like Borgatti's the same over time. What do you think are some of the biggest threats to businesses Like Borgatti's right now.

[Ben Walter]

Funny enough, the number one threat they as a business haven't faced, but I see clients face it all the time, is the threat that no one in the business wants to keep going. Very often it was immigrant families who started the business. And by the third generation, they're just interested in a different life. So they are fortunate to have a really tight knit family that has resisted that. Number two is neighborhoods do shift. While they have been able to compensate for it through their online sales, that has been an issue. So the, you know, many of the original Italian American families have moved out of Little Italy in the Bronx, so that the character of the neighborhood has changed. And then finally there's technology. You can get now decent quality ravioli that is high mass manufactured that probably wasn't available when they started their shop, you know, back in 1935. Now I still think they serve a superior product. And I've had it. It's delicious and it's handmade and it's artisanal and there is a desire for that. So they've been able to lean into that angle of it. But like any business, you know, they're facing whether it's a changing character of the neighborhood, a changing character of the technological background, a changing narrative of customer taste, you know, the world changes.

[Maya Shankar]

One of the hardest parts of adapting to change is knowing what to keep as is and what to improve. Flexibility means staying aligned to your deeper values while updating your strategy as circumstances shift. For a small business owner, that might mean holding on to the quality, care or purpose that drew customers in in the first place, while also being open to new tools, new customers, and new ways of reaching them. That balance between continuity and change is often what resilience looks like. What do you think are some of the magic ingredients that help a business like this stick around for so long?

[Ben Walter]

The number one is adaptability. It's a willingness to change. The ones who adapt are the ones who thrive, I would say. Second is the absolute unrelenting grit and dedication of the owners. Yeah, it's force of will. I mean, these are businesses that have made it through Covid, through the Great Recession, through all of these things, through the Great Depression in this case. That's frankly been probably the most common trait of the people we've had on our show. And Borgatti's itself is a great example. Their key machine broke down at the most important time of year and they had to figure out what to do. And that's what small business owners do every day. Is they just find a way through.

[Maya Shankar]

How did they solve for this problem of the machine breaking down?

[Ben Walter]

They managed to get it fixed in time, but in the meantime, they were doing an awful lot of stuff by hand. You'll have to listen to the episode to get the full details.

[Maya Shankar]

Okay, so we talked about adaptability, we talked about grit. Any other traits that you see across companies that somehow find ways to endure.

[Ben Walter]

The common thing is a commitment to something larger than just this year's profit. If you were to talk to any of the small businesses we have met that have lasted for years, and you ask them what the purpose of their business is, none of them would talk about to make money. None of them would talk about their financials. They would all talk about the product or service that they provide. The impact that has on the lives of their customers and their communities. All of them and their brands are all anchored in that you cannot make a business work without the dollars and cents, but it will not last on dollars and cents only. So whether it's mission driven, you know, we have businesses who are trying to solve an environmental problem or an energy problem or a health problem, or businesses like this that are trying to sort of be part of the fabric of the community. The ones who last are very rarely focused on this quarter or year beyond sort of the near term need to run the business. They're running something that has a higher purpose. And that higher purpose is very personal. So in the case of Borgatti's, it's being part of the neighborhood.

[Maya Shankar]

Yeah. I want to talk a bit about how a business like Borgati's can contribute to the identity of a community. How do businesses like this one contribute to positive change or growth?

[Ben Walter]

I think they do it in a few ways. One is they give the neighborhood a sense of place. If you think about that neighborhood you grew up in, where there's that place that you always used to go to and it's still there all those years later, that gives the place an anchoring and it gives people confidence to invest in that area. So that's number one. Number two, I would say they support more than just their business. So if you look across the country and survey after survey reveals this, small business owners are some of the most philanthropic people in their local communities. You know, who sponsors your local. Your local softball team? It's the local business in the local community who wants to have both a business and a philanthropic impact at home. And they tend to reinvest directly in their community. So small businesses, they don't just sell locally they hire locally.

[Maya Shankar]

Yeah.

[Ben Walter]

And that's a self feeding, positive loop that helps neighborhoods thrive economically.

[Maya Shankar]

What Ben is describing goes beyond economics. Relationships are what transform a collection of streets and buildings into a neighborhood. And small businesses are where these relationships flourish, where people go to gather and to build trusted friendships. Restaurants like Borgatti's help create a feeling that a place is not simply where you live, but where you belong. What do you think communities lose when these kinds of small businesses disappear? And what role do you think customers, community members, can play in helping them survive?

[Ben Walter]

When neighborhoods lose their small businesses, they lose their character. It's that simple. And that doesn't just mean retail stores, by the way. It can be the local lawn care shop, it can be the local doctor. Those businesses know their local communities in a way that others can't. They're able to respond to those communities in, in ways that others can't. And when you lose that, you don't just lose the character, you lose the permanence. There's so much transience in the world today. A little bit of permanence is a healthy counterbalance.

[Maya Shankar]

Couldn't agree more. It's definitely a stabilizing force. And it's a long term relationship builder, you know, it is.

[Ben Walter]

I mean, I live in a small town outside New York City. I know the dry cleaner personally. I walk in, I hand her my stuff. She knows that I don't like starch on my shirts, you know, and that's comforting. And these local communities drive social connection in a way that goes beyond just friends and family.

[Maya Shankar]

Yeah. We had the former US Surgeon General on a slight change of plans who talked about the loneliness epidemic that we're all living through. And there's some really compelling research from the happiness literature showing that it is these small, daily interactions with people in our community, not even with our closest friends or our family, that really help boost our sense of belonging. So the conversation with the barista, the small interaction you might have at the laundromat, like you were describing, Ben, these are part of the fabric of our everyday lives. And they really do have a profound impact on our, our sense of well being and social lives.

[Ben Walter]

They do. And you also asked, what can customers do? Customers can support their local small businesses.

[Maya Shankar]

Yeah. You know, one of the little local supermarkets was at risk of shutting down. And you do see communities rally, whether it's to keep a local movie theater alive, to keep a small grocery store alive. It's actually a very uplifting thing when you see people say, you know what, we are not willing to let this particular establishment go. We'll do what it takes. And it's petitions, it's making sure that they're prioritizing, getting their groceries from the small grocer. You know.

[Ben Walter]

And you know, sometimes, sometimes that does come at a bit of a price premium, but you get what you pay for.

[Maya Shankar]

If someone's thinking, you know, I want to start something from scratch and I want it to endure for decades to come, what advice would you give to them?

[Ben Walter]

I would say, first of all, really do your research on what you're going to do and why, know why you'll be good at it, know why it's important and why you have that passion for very rarely works if that passion is I want to make a buck and you need to have a really deep understanding of what the purpose of that business is and why you think you can achieve that purpose. And if you have those two things and the grit to drive through my experience is most places make it.

[Maya Shankar]

Hey, thanks for listening to my conversation with Ben Walter, the CEO of Chase for Business and host of the Unshakables podcast. You can check out Ben's episode of the Unshakables featuring Borgattis and an episode we recorded last year for A Slight Change of Plans when I talked to Ben about staying resilient in the workplace. We'll link to both episodes in the show notes and we'll be back next week with another episode of A Slight Change of Plans. I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner, Alexandra Garriton, our editor Daphne Chen, our lead producer, Megan Lubin, our associate producer, Sonja Gerwitt, and our sound engineer, Erica Huang. Luis Guerra wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there, and of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee Sam. One thing we know from behavioral science is that opportunity shapes outcomes. That's why I'm so happy to tell you about Girls, Inc. They're the leading experts on girls, and they're dedicated to helping them develop their inherent strengths and abilities, uncover new ones, and tell the world about their potential. Girls, Inc. Creates enriching experiences that build real confidence and skills, the kind that helps girls navigate change and step boldly into their futures. Girls are full of potential, and Girls, Inc. Gives them the opportunities to unlock it. To learn more, visit girlsinc.org Liberty Mutual

[Ben Ham]

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[Maya Shankar]

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[Ben Ham]

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[Ben Walter]

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[Maya Shankar]

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