Times may have changed but thanks to Joe Virgilio his Virgilio’s St. Joseph’s rolls have not. They continue to be one o the many breads made by his bakery that help drive their reputation, says the Gloucester Times.
In recent years, the Virgilio brand has expanded beyond breads to pasta and pizza sauces, infused dipping oil and tapas, all of which are selling successfully at venues such as DeMoulas’ Market Basket in Gloucester and Danvers, Bruni Farm Market in Ipswich, the IGA in Rockport, and McKinnons Meat Market in Danvers.
The Italian bakery also has steadily increased profits without substantially increasing overhead, and, interestingly, without the aid of a business model.
Joe Virgilio, a man who calls himself “an accidental entrepreneur,” had none of the “business tools” considered essential to successful brand expansion today. What he had was an unpretentious passion for the art of baking that unwittingly put him in the local front lines of a culinary trend for something he’d never even heard of, “artisinal breads.”
Like lots of terms spawned by the marketing machine that’s driving the multi-billion dollar culinary industry, “artisinal bread” is simpler than it sounds.
Basically, it suggests bread that is made by a skilled craftsman – which Joe Virgilio is, and why he was increasingly asked to create breads for some of Cape Ann’s leading restaurants.
His bakery’s reputation grew with its presence in those restaurants, and when one, Main Street’s Franklin Cafe, started serving his custom ciabatta, it created an unexpected retail demand in the store.
“The Franklin ciabatta was so popular, their customers came across Main Street asking for it,” said Virgilio. “The Franklin served it with a dipping oil, and we didn’t have a dipping oil, so my Aunt Rosemary came up with a batch and it’s a big seller.”
Photo by Elin B