DeLaurenti's stays, say suitors
 |
|
||||||||||
It is testimony to just how protective and fearful of change some Pike Place Market merchants can be that they are objecting to the proposed sale of the DeLaurenti Specialty Food Market to the new owners of Pagliacci pizza.
Since June, the pizza chain has been owned by three guys who couldn't be more Seattle if you dragged them out of Elliott Bay and iced them down at one of the Market's fish stands.
Matt Galvin and Pat McDonald are boyhood chums from Mercer Island. McDonald's grandfather was Henry Gai of Gai's Northwest Bakery, a company that his father, Larry McDonald, ran as president until 1992.
The closest thing to an outsider is Pat McCarthy, who hails from Northern California but is married to McDonald's sister, whom he met at the University of Santa Clara.
The three were investors in Torrefazione Italia, the coffee company founded and run by McDonald's father after he left Gai's in the early 1990s. When the coffee company eventually merged with Seattle's Best Coffee to form the Seattle Coffee Co., the partners took their holdings and went looking for several food businesses to own and run.
"A long time ago, when we decided to leave the coffee company, some of the first people we talked to were the DeLaurentis," said Galvin.
For these three, a long time ago is a few years. Galvin is 31; McDonald is 30; McCarthy is the elder in the group at 35.
Their original plan was to form a corporation that owned three food businesses - one for each of them.
DeLaurenti's, a wine and Italian specialty food store at 1435 First Ave., was to be the first acquisition. Those plans changed last spring when Dorene Centioli-McTigue decided it was time to sell Pagliacci, the Seattle-based pizza chain she founded.
Centioli-McTigue sold her chain to Galvin, McDonald and McCarthy in June. The month before, the three had formed Bafetto, naming their corporation after a pizzeria in Italy which had taken its name for the Italian word for mustache. Centioli-McTigue stayed on as a consultant, teaching the new owners the secrets of the trade, including how to toss pizza dough.
Plans to expand pizza business
In the nearly eight months they've owned Pagliacci, the partners have made few visible changes. Currently they are experimenting with dessert items, but most of the alterations have been aimed at more efficiently taking orders.
"We're not looking for companies that need help to be run properly," said McDonald. "We are interested in companies that need money to grow."
Centioli-McTigue sold Pagliacci to the three because she thought she had taken the chain as far as she could and needed someone capable of expanding it. The new owners say they expect to expand Pagliacci, but slowly, at a rate of one new store a year if they can find the right locations.
But it is their ownership of Pagliacci that has caused some Pike Place merchants to fret over the future of their neighborhood.
Fear of chain invasion
Among a few, there is fear the pizza chain will set up shop there, sullying the atmosphere and making the Market feel more like a food court.
Mark Monroe, manager of Lowell's Restaurant, worries that Louie DeLaurenti's departure from the Market will cost him not only a steady breakfast customer but also the perfect place to buy items you can't find in a regular grocery store.
"If they maintain the quality and authenticity, I'll be happy," he said. "The Market needs the authenticity of places like DeLaurenti's so it doesn't become another wharfside tourist attraction. If they changed that, I would absolutely object."
Pam Audette, executive director of the Pike Place Market Merchants Association, said what opposition there is to the proposed sale is based, in large part, on rumors and the lack of information about how the store would change.
The Market operates under some very strict guidelines that bar chain outlets. Starbucks is there because it got its start in the Market, but the company wouldn't be allowed in today. The kitchen store Sur La Table didn't become a chain store until it branched out from its original location on Pine Street.
"Obviously, from a historical-guideline standpoint, it's not acceptable to have chain stores and businesses coming into the Market," said Audette. "Having said that, my understanding is the intent is to not make it a Pagliacci. The PDA (Preservation and Development Authority) and the Historical Commission wouldn't allow them in. No Pagliacci product would be sold there. I personally don't have a huge problem as long as the lines are drawn. But if they're trying to turn it into a Pagliacci pizza place, then there would be tremendous opposition."
The PDA Council last night deferred until Feb. 27 action on a lease for a new tenant at DeLaurenti's, sending the matter back to its property management committee. The Market's Historical Commission is scheduled to meet today to consider a change-of-use application for the site.
The plan? Business as usual
McCarthy, the partner who will run DeLaurenti's, said the only change will be some remodeling. While McDonald and Galvin stay behind at Bafetto's corporate office on East Pike Street, running Pagliacci, McCarthy will open the doors at DeLaurenti's each morning just as DeLaurenti and his wife, Pat, have done since 1973.
"You need to separate Pagliacci from this deal," said Galvin, adding the company doesn't even plan to replace the store's current pizza slices with Pagliacci's.
The DeLaurentis are selling their store because they are ready to retire and their children have little interest in running it. They declined to disclose the sales price. Pat DeLaurenti said she and her husband wouldn't sell the store to someone who would undo a business they spent nearly 30 years building.
"These people have the same passion for Italy and food we have," she said. "We wouldn't sell to anyone who would change it."
Galvin, McCarthy and McDonald trace their passion for Italian cuisine to Italy itself, where two years ago they pressed olives into oil in groves owned by McDonald's father. That farm is also expected to begin producing wine in the next few years which the three hope to sell at DeLaurenti's.
McCarthy hopes to start opening the doors each morning at DeLaurenti's as soon as possible.
"DeLaurenti's offered the best food from around the world for a long, long time," he said. "That's what we want to continue. I've talked to tenants and told them that. We're good guys and our hearts are in the right place."
Seattle Times staff reporter Kathleen Triesch Saul contributed to this report.