C (3:22)

Their names were Lindell and Maria. And my grandparents came as teenagers from Emilia Romana, Italy.

A (3:31)

And you may be thinking Ellis island, since we're here in New York, but they actually landed in Boston, where they got married in 1907. Lindo's work with an Italian wholesaler took him to New York. They worked, raised their family, and settled in the Bronx. Then when Lindo and Maria were in their late 40s, they decided to open

C (3:50)

a shop because Grandma had the recipe. Something, I guess, growing up as an Italian little girl learning how to make pasta. And as she got older, this was like also a necessity in life, just to learn how to make food. So with the simple recipes she had,

B (4:08)

they decided to open up a shop to provide, I guess, a livelihood.

C (4:13)

They rented a store, which we still have.

A (4:17)

Same place on Arthur Avenue?

C (4:18)

Yes, same place.

A (4:25)

All of the Borgatti's were involved from the day the store opened, in varying degrees. The older sons were already in careers, but they would help out with repairs. Their son George even made the first wooden molds they used for the ravioli. But it was Christopher's father, Mario, who would eventually take over the shop.

C (4:43)

My dad was 18 when the store opened.

B (4:46)

And my father used to tell customers once in a while, I mean, this was a business that was started on a shoestring.

A (4:53)

On a shoestring. They still were able to make ravioli. Two types, one with the ricotta cheese filling, the other with a meat filling, all using Maria's recipes. They made fresh egg noodle dough and sold it to the neighborhood.

C (5:07)

And like 100 raviolis would set you back $1 when the store opened 90 years ago.

A (5:14)

Back then, this was a neighborhood in transition. The Irish and German immigrants moved out and the Italian Americans moved in.

B (5:22)

There was a lot of the Italians who were relocating from Lower Manhattan and they were settling down in this area because they were working at the botanical gardens, the zoo, maybe Fordham University, because they were helping to build, because they were skilled masons and stone cutters. And so this made being closer to work easier for them. They probably just Felt like, hey, Italians, what do we eat? We eat pasta.

A (5:53)

The neighborhood evolved into a true little Italy. And the cultures and customs of the old country came with them.

B (5:59)

You used to see Italians all the time shopping and attending church across the street, especially during the summers. They used to have two feasts, one in honor of St. Anthony, one in honor of lady of Mount Carmel, which is the parish. So the streets were just of the Italians being entertained by music, the food. And of course, the neighborhood did change, obviously

A (6:26)

over the next few decades, Borgatti's changed with the neighborhood. They got a new storefront in the 1950s when the family absorbed the hat shop next door. Some of the businesses owned by other families for generations got new owners and the Italian families started to move out.

B (6:41)

Not that there was anything wrong with the neighborhood, but maybe because apartments are small and they just needed to expand and have a little more room. And like all neighborhoods, as one ethnic group moves out, another will come and replace them and the journey just begins for them.

A (6:59)

During the 1970s, Christopher picked up work at the store. During the summers he started with easy jobs, cleaning, measuring out flour for different doughs. He would also put cornmeal on the ravioli boards.

B (7:11)

The way the ravioli machine operates is in the back part. There are these wooden boards that get dust with cornmeal, because as these boards are put on a conveyor belt, it's going to be fed into the ravioli machine. And then as the raviolis come off the machine on a belt, they get cut by the person operating the ravioli machine. So this way the person operating the ravioli machine doesn't have to go to the back, put the board into the machine. So it was almost like a meaningless job for someone just to stand in and put the cornmeal on it.

A (7:45)

But it kept him busy and out of trouble. At the end of that first day, full of flowering and cornmealing and sweeping, he got an envelope.

B (7:55)

I opened it up and there were two 50 cent Kennedy heads as my pay for that day. I didn't keep them. I wish I did. Maybe that'd be like a keepsake, you know, the first dollar I ever made at the store.

A (8:08)

A few years later, Christopher joined full time.

B (8:12)

1976, 18 year old kid and a lot of energy. When I first came here, I didn't have the head for school. My education was being here, being with my father, my aunts and those who I worked with. It's like you think of back in the day with the apprentice, you know, learning a trade. You're like the blacksmith or the carpenter, you're learning about it hands on. You're not being taught about it in a book. So I think that was the best formula for me to learn. I had confidence in myself insofar as doing what I had to do here.

A (8:44)

In those early days, Christopher was focused on learning, not leading.

B (8:49)

I was there to, like, more or less support and help my father.

C (8:51)

At the time.

B (8:52)

I never really challenged him with any ideas on doing things different. I just wanted to be able to support and help him. And as he got older and he got to a point where his health was changing, I didn't just want to, like, take it away from him, but there was a time when he did slow down. That was time for me to step up and be more responsible.

A (9:19)

Time went on, and a few other things changed as Christopher worked at the store.

D (9:23)

He met my mom while he was working here. She was working at a pharmacy across the street. One thing led to another, and me and my sister come around.

A (9:30)

You know, that's Christopho Brigatti Jr. We have Christopher Sr. And Christopher Jr. So we're going to call the younger one Jr. Going forward, just to keep things easy. He was always at the store, probably

D (9:44)

since I was a baby. I don't remember that far back, but I do remember my dad would fill a ravioli box with cornmeal, and I'd be able to drive my Tonka truck around in it. Me and my sister both, we would hang out upstairs in one of the apartments, that TV at Disney Channel. So we'd be there, and we'd be intercoming downstairs to tell our parents, like, oh, we want Colorado, so we want this. Oh, we want that. Like, we're busy. I was growing up around the store, growing up around machines, growing up around my family. That would lead to me and my sister helping during holidays Christmas rushes. Everyone's like, what are you doing over Christmas break? Are you going here? Are you going there? Are you going on vacation? It's like, no, I'm working the ravioli counter.

A (10:15)

Christmas, of course, is the Holy Grail sales season for retailers, and Borgatti's is no exception.

C (10:22)

You always hear the customer coming in and saying, I've been coming to Borgati's for the last 20 Christmases and, like, bring my children. And you hear the stories about the children used to come, and now they're coming with their children. So it just became like a family tradition. This creates a nice flow of customers who come to shop in this area during the holiday seasons.

D (10:46)

We go into overdrive. Those Months. We're doing like three months worth of production in two weeks when it comes to ravioli. So it's like the machines don't stop. His pasta machine doesn't stop. It's a completely different beast. But you anticipate it every year, and you got to perform.

A (11:01)

What if something breaks? I mean, you fix it.

D (11:04)

It has happened.

A (11:09)

Now, I think we should talk a little bit about ravioli and noodle machines. These are large industrial kitchen appliances, not your tabletop mixer or pasta maker from Williams Sonoma. It's smaller than a car, but bigger than a pretty good sized photocopier.

D (11:24)

It's smaller than a small car. It's not wide, but it's long. It's like average dining room table size that could feed maybe six people.

A (11:30)

Okay, so it's still not. You don't just pick it up with one hand.

B (11:32)

No.

D (11:32)

You don't just pick it up and move it around? No.

C (11:34)

And in order to, like, transport it, you can't throw it in the back of a station wagon.

A (11:38)

Right. In the past, Christopher's uncle George could come by and do most of the repairs or Christopher would troubleshoot. But if it's a bigger issue, that means mechanic or worse. The machine has to be repaired by the manufacturer. And of course, the worst time for that to happen would be during the holiday rush.

C (11:57)

It was a machine that makes large ravioli was going into the holiday season, and there was a part on it that broke. And it was a situation where he needed to get it to the shop because they had to take the ravioli machine apart basically in order to correct something.

A (12:13)

And this is in the middle of the holiday rush where you need all hands on deck.

E (12:15)

Okay?

C (12:16)

Yeah, absolutely.

A (12:17)

All machines on deck, Especially with the large ravioli.

D (12:19)

They're the headliners.

A (12:22)

This machine in particular was a backup machine they were using for the season. Their original was with the manufacturer in Pennsylvania getting rebuilt.

C (12:31)

So as I'm working with this machine, I heard something happening. You know, I heard a noise. It was making a squelching sound. And next thing I know, you gotta imagine, like, there's two steel rollers that are parallel to each other that, you

A (12:46)

know, that run the dough through.

B (12:47)

Yeah, Yep.

C (12:48)

And all of a sudden, the roller drop, meaning, like, you don't see it, but it's inside the machine. The sides of the roller, the shaft of it, there's bushings that it sits in.

A (12:59)

I did Google bushing tldr. It's a small piece of rubber that helps reduce noise and friction in metal machines and helps the Parts move. Think of the suspension on your car. It's like that. But this one was in a ravioli machine.

C (13:13)

So what happened was this part of the machine wasn't getting the grease because there's grease caps. Sure. And it heated up and it was disintegrating, the bushing, and that's what made the roller drop. Now the rollers aren't aligned, and here I am trying to make dough straight. And I was beside myself. It seemed to be I was throwing out more wasted pasta in order to make pasta. I was. It was a nightmare.

A (13:44)

Ravioli production was at a standstill. The line was out the door. And when you're a store called Borgatti's Ravioli, you have to have ravioli. Like every good neighborhood shop, they got by with a little help from their friends.

C (13:58)

My wife reached out to her brother who's got an auto body business, and believe it or not, then he sent over a flatbed to tow truck for this machine. Was funny to see a ravioli machine on top of a flatbed. And it was trucked down to New Jersey. We got it back in a couple of days, but it was needed to go to the shop in order to fix this.

A (14:21)

Do you remember this?

D (14:22)

Partially. I was a little young, but my mom said people were coming up to the counter, like, oh, I need 10 pounds of lasagna. And she would just, like, look at the machine and look at them. She's like, I don't know what to

A (14:29)

do for you, but, you know, one machine down for not that long can cost you a lot of money.

D (14:33)

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

C (14:34)

Yes. Especially that week, we told the customers what happened. Most of them understood. Others say, you know what? Let me take the small ravioli. Or they said, I'll come back later in the week to get the large ravioli.

D (14:48)

Yeah, our customers are, like, really dedicated to us. And especially when something like that happens, they'll come back. They'll come wait online at 3am before the store even opens, because they're like, I gotta get these things. I don't want you to run out. I think that's part of what being a small business is. You get to know all your customers really well. So when you go through something like this, it's not so much, you know, losing out. It's going to be tough. It's going to affect those things. But your customers have your back. In a sense, they'll be back the next day if you run out or if you have to close or something happens to a machine.

E (15:23)

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A (16:23)

Lender Kathleen let's pause here because there's already so much to talk about and I think we should stop and note. You know, it's the 250th anniversary of the country and we keep thinking about the idea of these national treasures. You know, these businesses that have been here for decades, some of them over a century, and this is one of them. I mean, it is the fabric of an iconic American neighborhood to be in

F (16:45)

existence for a third of our country's history. Over a third, Yeah. I mean, you're the numbers guy. But doesn't that ability to survive for that long just feel statistically exceptional?

A (16:59)

I mean, first of all, they started in the Depression. They survived however many recessions. They survived nine, 11, they survived the housing meltdown, they survived Covid, they've survived all this stuff with a single store in the Bronx. That's remarkable.

F (17:13)

Single store and single product. I love the idea of this just being one single thing. I always say to people, kiss, keep it stupid simple. Just become radically good at one thing.

A (17:28)

You're nicer than I might say keep it simple, stupid.

F (17:32)

But it's so true. I mean, there's so much diversification and then you can't tell what's working. Is it this, is it that. And you know, I think a lot about Japan and I love the art of the craft there too. They're really exporting perfectionism, whether it's knives or sake. And I think here in this country too, we have such powerful stories of that. Or someone just really doubles down and perfects a craft. And this felt like that to me. It filled me with an immense sense of pride.

A (18:03)

Yeah, I think it's important that I describe this neighborhood to you. Have you been, Kathleen, to Arthur Avenue?

F (18:09)

No. You know, it's funny growing up. Cause I grew up north of New York City and I had some Italian friends where it was the tradition to go. And I always hoped I'd be invited, but I never was. So you walk me through it as

A (18:20)

if I'm going, you'll have to come next time you're here. Cause it's really amazing. It's a couple of blocks and there's a ton of Italian restaurants and there's a really well known butcher. There's a terrific cheese shop. They make the mozzarella from scratch. Every day you watch them pulling it. There's a bakery that does really traditional Italian baked goods. There's a couple of legit Italian delis. The kind of place you walk in and they're like, you want the mozzarella? It's some of the best traditional Italian food in the city. My wife and I will go have dinner there with friends. It's really fun to go there.

F (18:51)

When you do your family trip, I want to tag along the strange family plus one.

A (18:56)

Well, you're always welcome to join us, Kathleen. Now let's get back to the story and to Chris, but not Chris Sr. Chris Jr. Who we'll continue to call Junior, followed the same path of his father and grandfather and took up the apron full time at the shop when he was 18. He'd already grown up in the shop, so it was really just a matter of formalizing things.

D (19:17)

About my sophomore year of college. That's when I was trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do. And I was going for business school and I was trying accounting, I was trying different entrepreneurial programs, but nothing really made me happy. Deep down. But being at the store had always made me happy. So I was helping out there weekends and stuff. And slowly it was just like, you know what? If I'm going to do it, I'm going to go full bore into it. I still wanted to get my education, so I started to do night school and I would help out at the store more, especially helping my mom grow our online shipping.

A (19:49)

Joan had started Borgatti's online shipping business two years prior. Each year it grew. Even still, Chris Sr. Wasn't sure about it.

B (19:58)

In the beginning, someone used to say to Me, how come you don't chip your raviolis? And I was old school. So I used to say, well, if I start shipping my raviolis and they come to your doorstep, I'm not gonna get to see you anymore. I felt like when you come to the neighborhood, you help sustain the neighborhood. Shopping here and shopping at the other businesses. So if people aren't showing up anymore to the neighborhood, what happens to the neighborhood? I'm old school, okay? And I do what I have to do here.

A (20:28)

But Joan was a computer teacher. She understood the power of the Internet, and she insisted that borgattis had to be online if it wanted to survive another 90 years.

B (20:38)

It was a learning process.

D (20:40)

And, you know, starting with that, it was always extremely expensive because there's so much weight. With the raviolis and ice, it would be like if you bought $40 a ravioli, you're spending $80 to ship. So what I helped figure out, especially with the shippers we were using at the time, is they have like, these flat rate boxes. So if it fits in the box, it ships for a flat rate.

A (20:59)

The shipping now sorted, they fully built out their website to add an online store.

D (21:06)

And that's when Liz came on.

A (21:07)

Liz is Christopher's daughter, junior, sister, AKA fourth generation Borgatti.

D (21:13)

She's like, let's grow our social media. That's very important. When TikTok first came out, she's like, I gotta get us on TikTok. She has her ear to the ground on all that stuff. When there's a trend that comes out, she'll be like, all right, who's gonna be in this video? It's usually my dad. He gets a lot more views than anybody. There's a good one where he's yelling about, you know, they said snow in the forecast. Gotta get your ravs and calves. The ravioli and the cavatelli, that's always a hit when it snows.

A (21:36)

And when customers figured out they could order online, the borgattis were really cooking with gas. And they did order a lot. Whether that was to avoid snow or a few years ago, avoid other people.

D (21:48)

I'm going back to a specific time with COVID And the front of the store at this point was limiting how many people we could bring in. That was when online shopping, I think, jumped for everybody.

A (21:58)

Yep.

D (21:59)

And I tell my mom all the time, you were ahead on this. Because we had been shipping that point four years, I think, so we knew what we were doing. We had the system set up so we were able to keep up with, like, this Huge boom of orders.

A (22:11)

How much pasta do you sell in a week?

D (22:13)

Well, it depends on the week.

C (22:15)

With many of the restaurants like 20, 30 pounds of tagliatelle noodle. For them raviolis, they may be getting 5 to 10 boxes and that's 5

A (22:27)

to 10 boxes of 100 ravioli per box. You can do that math.

C (22:32)

And these are standard orders every week.

D (22:35)

I would still say we're like 60 to 70% retail. But a good portion now has gone to our online shipping especially. A lot of our older and former customers have moved away. They're living in Florida now, the Carolinas, California. So we ship to all of them. And now we have customers who've never even been to New York, but they order us every month.

A (22:55)

So this thing that Christopher was worried about shipping has not only not ruined the neighborhood, it's expanded the neighborhood. Everyone from the Bronx to LA to Miami is now part of the larger Arthur Avenue crowd.

D (23:08)

Now I think the next thing we're breaking into is our wholesaling and that's where we're trying to grow next. We realize people love to shop locally and there's a lot of really good supermarkets, delis and other places that they shop. And these are the kind of places we want to be in. I want to be in everyone's neighborhood shop, not just in my own neighborhood neighborhood shop.

F (23:31)

Ben, you know, this is my jam, so I'm going to take this one from here. I think you'll be okay with me unpacking this one.

A (23:38)

You're a marketing expert. I am not. They're marketing sort of an, a very old school business. Both old school in what they do and old school in how long they've been around on all these like very modern marketing platforms like TikTok. How do we think about that?

F (23:54)

So when you look at what customers know and love, 8 out of 10 customers actually prefer brands that have the sense of heritage and nostalgia and are older. There's so much that can be done when you are in that position. Instead of trying to be what you're not, doubling down on what you are, which is what they're using in social media. And interestingly, which most people would not expect, it's our Gen Z and our younger folks who, who love this the most. So we heard Chris Senior talking about he's doing the best on the TikToks. He's who's resonating with that audience. That platform's a predominantly younger, skewing audience and everyone's trying to keep up with the times and have relevant Memes. But I would say forget all that. Don't try to post bad bunny from the Super Bowl. If you are in the fortunate position of being one of these older businesses that double down on that, great, thanks. And now I have a question for you, too. It's about the price of food. It's all over the news. How are you handling that?

C (25:00)

Just to give you an idea, the cost for the six tubs of eggs was $112 when the bird flu occurred and the price of eggs went through the roof. One 30 pound container of egg cost me $120.

A (25:17)

How do you deal with the price fluctuations? And what do you do?

D (25:20)

We ate it.

C (25:20)

We ate it. And you know what? We didn't cut down on the amount of egg we used saying, oh, okay, let's drop the eggs a pound a batch, because then we'll be saving. No, that's not what Borgatti says.

A (25:36)

And how about real estate? Do you own the building?

C (25:38)

Actually, we do. I think it was in the early 1980s. My father and the gentleman with the other business, which is in the building as well, bought it. And the property was being sold by a couple of guys who drove taxicabs who owned it. And it was not to invest in property. He just bought it in order to protect the business.

A (26:02)

He controlled his destiny.

C (26:03)

Yeah, absolutely.

D (26:05)

Was it one of the original owners of the building? Wasn't there? Name Ravioli.

C (26:08)

Okay, that would be Mary Ravioli.

B (26:11)

So when the store was there in,

C (26:12)

like, the early parts, she was the owner of the building before these two gentlemen owned it, but her name was Mary Ravioli.

A (26:19)

That is awesome.

C (26:20)

That seconds too much.

A (26:23)

The circle of life. Or maybe the circle of ravioli. But as Christopher hinted at, the Borgattis don't see themselves as entrepreneurs or landlords. They see themselves as stewards of pasta with quality customer service and original recipes that haven't changed for 90 years as the world keeps turning around them.

C (26:41)

I think of myself as a guardian of this business that my grandparents started and that my father worked many years doing. Like a continuation of this story. Yeah. I'm a pasta maker who loves what I do. I love the fact that I got to work with aunts and uncles and especially my father. And now I have this dream of working with my wife and children. And I think of my grandparents, husband and wife working together, my wife Joan and I working together now, children involved. And it's like, does it get any better than that? When you think of a story that Lindo and Maria started 90 years ago, it's Amazing.

A (27:21)

That is amazing.

B (27:22)

I gotta remind myself every now and then. It's like, you know, we have pictures of them in the store and they look at them and say, I hope you're doing a good job.

A (27:36)

Okay, Kathleen, let's bring you in one more time.

F (27:39)

This story is just so rich, and it's full of everything we like to talk about. On the Unshakables, they both talked about

A (27:46)

themselves as guardian of something bigger than themselves. I'm sure they do fine. I'm sure they make a living, but that's only part of what it is for them.

F (27:53)

I think that permeates all aspects of the business, wanting to make sure, even with the cost of goods going up and inflation, these very nominal price increases, the essence of that is about being a guardian of your customer and your customer's pocketbook too, and taking that responsibility really seriously. Have you ever seen anything like that?

A (28:16)

I have, but it's not common. And when they said, yep, the price of our egg mixture went up six times and we just ate it, you weren't sitting here. But neither of them batted an eyelash. I mean, they were just like, okay, yep, we just ate it because we were taking the long view. Now, they have some advantages. As he said, they own their building. That gives them some insulation and some other things, but still, they are in it for the long haul and they're committed. And I think the other thing is what they have and what that neighborhood has is they've built a business around community.

F (28:44)

And that's exactly why small businesses are so vital to cities across America. This story really is the all American story. Just loved it.

A (28:56)

Kathleen, thank you for joining us on this heartwarming episode.

F (28:59)

Yeah, the only thing that would have made it better would have been to have had a plate of pasta in front of both of us. Thanks for having me.

A (29:05)

A plate of pasta always makes it better. I want to close by asking you each to answer one question for me. If you had one piece of advice for current or aspiring small business owner, what would it be?

C (29:17)

I always think of commitment, being committed to the business. You have to be there and have a passion for it. Don't set up a business where you're not going to be there. You got to be involved, you got to be committed.

D (29:31)

Chris Jr learn from those who came before you. I learned a lot through my dad, and he learned a lot through his grandparents. And they have such wisdom to pass down to me, whether it's how to make a good pasta dough, how to fix a machine, how to keep your employees happy and well loved and them love you back. Those are things that you can't learn in a textbook. So learn from your elders. Learn from those who came before you. And the minute you think you know everything, forget it.

C (29:57)

Was that one word?

A (29:58)

Yeah.

C (30:00)

I love it.

A (30:01)

This was terrific, Chris. And Chris, it's been an honor to meet you. I can't wait to come by the shop.

D (30:05)

Oh, definitely.

A (30:06)

So thank you very much.

D (30:07)

Thank you, Ben.

C (30:08)

Thank you, Ben.

A (30:12)

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Unshakeables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it. Next time, we'll be speaking to another second generation business owner, but one who took the name of his father's horse racing company to make luxury apparel.

D (30:27)

He thinks it's all crazy. He was one of the first doubters of, like, who's gonna wear a Siegelman stable hat?

A (30:34)

I'm Ben Walter, and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you back here soon.