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Long Island Food Entrepreneurs Watch Their Businesses Grow -

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LONG ISLAND DINING | FOOD ENTREPRENEURS

Turning a Passion Into Big Business

By SUSAN M. NOVICK Published: March 4, 2011

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y.

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APPLE crumb pies and fudge brownies line the rustic counters of Tate's Bake Shop here. But the

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country-store atmosphere is

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somewhat misleading: Tate's

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produces 50 million chocolate-chip

cookies a year for national

distribution (retail, wholesale and

mail order) in its kitchen in

Southampton and at a larger bakery in East Moriches.

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EXPANDING Kathleen King owns Tate's Bake Shop, which makes 50 million chocolate-chip cookies a year.

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"We have a whole line, but I always laugh and just say I make my money on chocolate-chip cookies," said Kathleen King, 52, of Water Mill, the company's owner.

Ms. King's original chocolate-chip cookie, which she made at age 11 at her family's dairy and poultry farm in Southampton, inspired her baked-goods business. Selling the cookies at farm stands helped pay her way through college.

She opened Kathleen's Bake Shop in 1980; it was succeeded by Tate's Bake Shop (named after Ms. King's father) in 2000. "When I go to the cookie commissary, I am still amazed," she said of her still-expanding business.

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Chocolate-chip cookie bark with almonds.

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Ms. King is one of several Long Island food entrepreneurs whose businesses have grown beyond the mom-and-popstore stage.

They occupy a niche described as "small enough to care but big enough to matter" by Ernest Oliviero, 47, of Dix Hills, the owner of Deer Park Ravioli, which sells two million boxes of ravioli a year.

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FROM COLLEGE DAYS Jason Belkin worked at the Hampton Coffee

The shop, which dates to 1949, was bought in 1973 by Mr. Oliviero's father, John, who ran it until his death, in 1990.

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Long Island Food Entrepreneurs Watch Their Businesses Grow -

3/7/11 9:16 PM

worked at the Hampton Coffee Company while he was in school. Now, he and his wife, Theresa, own it.

The business passed to Ernest, who had trained behind the counter packing ravioli since the age of 9.

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Early neighborhood customers were Italian immigrants who relied on Deer Park Ravioli for Sunday family dinners, Mr. Oliviero said. The company expanded under

his father, selling ravioli to local supermarkets like King

Kullen. Another opportunity presented itself after the

younger Mr. Oliviero took over, when restaurant chefs

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Hampton Coffee Company has added a menu that includes muffins and scones.

came into the shop to request specialty ravioli.

"Dad used to make the regular cheese-and-meat ravioli, the traditional stuff," Mr. Oliviero said. "But we started

doing the specialties, and slowly it became a norm for the

restaurants."

Deer Park Ravioli now offers 60 types of ravioli, including Florentine (fresh saut?ed spinach and garlic) and lobster supreme (chunks of lobster and cream). All the ravioli is made with impastata ricotta, whipped for a delicate, creamy texture.

Fresh cheese ravioli, frozen specialty ravioli, pasta sauces, house-made mozzarella and filled-while-you-wait cannolis are available at the retail store.

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Linda Villano, 45, of Sea Cliff, the owner of SerendipiTea, took a circuitous route to Long Island. Ms. Villano established a wholesale loose-leaf tea business in 1995 with her husband, Tomislav Podreka, in their apartment in Manhattan. Later, they moved it to Connecticut, and eventually they got a warehouse in Long Island City, Queens.

They imported and blended premium teas from India, China, Sri Lanka, Japan and elsewhere. "We just started testing it, making tea for friends, bringing tea to the back door of restaurants, and it evolved," Ms. Villano recalled.

The couple divorced but kept working together; then Mr. Podreka died in 2004, and Ms. Villano kept going, settling into a retail tea store and production site in Manhasset four years ago.

The early years were hard, she said, but when consumer interest in loose-leaf tea grew, SerendipiTea was ready to take advantage of it. "Tea is not an afterthought anymore," Ms. Villano said. She, like the other company owners interviewed, would not disclose her sales, but the business has nine full-time employees, she said, and ships tea nationally and internationally.

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In the lower level of her Manhasset tea shop, Ms. Villano and her team prepare bins and barrels of more than 200 imported teas (the dried leaf of the camellia sinensis plant) and tisanes (herbal, fruit or spice infusions).

SerendipiTea delivers tea in bulk to Fairway Market, makes proprietary private-label blends for Dean & DeLuca and sells loose-leaf teas to restaurants and retail customers through its Web site and retail shop. But Ms. Villano still values the flexibility she has operating a small local business.

"We are a boutique operation," she said. "We custom-blend things all the time based on customer needs. And I like the freedom of working that way."

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Customer relationships are key to the success of the Hampton Coffee Company in Water Mill, said Jason Belkin, 36, of Westhampton Beach, who owns the company with his



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Long Island Food Entrepreneurs Watch Their Businesses Grow -

wife, Theresa. The company's first owner, Ellen Steinlauf, opened an espresso bar and coffee roastery in 1994. Mr. Belkin took a summer job there as a college student, later returning to buy the business in 1999.

Since then, he has gradually expanded, adding a full kitchen to the 40-seat coffeehouse in 2001, with a menu that includes breakfast burritos, muffins and pecan raisin scones. Mr. Belkin opened a second store in Westhampton Beach in 2005 and last year introduced the Mobile Espresso Unit, a custom-built Mercedes-Benz van with an espresso bar inside. In high summer season, he has as many as 48 employees in the company.

Hampton Coffee imports raw coffee beans from more than a dozen countries, including Peru, Colombia, Ethiopia and Jamaica, roasting and selling 125,000 pounds of beans a year. A fragrant Bean Bar in Water Mill offers 17 barrels from which customers can scoop and bag freshly roasted beans.

"We may be Long Island's largest independent roaster, but we're still small enough to really involve our customers," said Mr. Belkin. Wholesale clients include King Kullen, Nick & Toni's in East Hampton and the Long Island Ducks minor-league baseball team.

A truck makes weekly deliveries along a route between Montauk and Manhattan. Mr. Belkin also has mail-order customers, like one in South Dakota who orders a bag of espresso beans every week.

"There are a lot of people who lived here and moved away or are regular summer customers," Mr. Belkin said. "They miss their espresso, the atmosphere and what it reminds them of -- the summer, sitting outside on our patio. We're part of their lives."

?

The Goods They Offer

TATE'S BAKE SHOP 43 North Sea Road, Southampton; (631) 283-9830. .

Eight-ounce bag of chocolate-chip cookies, $5; brownie, $2.75; apple crumb pie, $16.95.

DEER PARK RAVIOLI 1882 Deer Park Avenue, Deer Park; (631) 667-4600; .

Fifty small cheese ravioli, $6.49; 12 jumbo cheese ravioli, $6.39; 12 specialty ravioli, $9.99 to $12.99. Pasta sauces, $4.69 to $5.99 a pint (pesto, $4.99 for eight ounces).

SERENDIPITEA 73 Plandome Road, Manhasset; ; (888) 832-5433.

Most teas are $12 for a four-ounce box; some cost up to $60 for four ounces. Sampler tins, $5 an ounce.

HAMPTON COFFEE COMPANY 869 Montauk Highway, Water Mill; (631) 726-2633. Also: 194 Mill Road, Westhampton Beach; (631) 288-4480. .

Most coffee beans: $11.99 a pound for regular, $12.99 a pound for decaffeinated. Brewed coffee, $1.66 (10 ounces) to $2.07 (20 ounces); cappuccino, $2.85 (single) to $3.85 (double). Breakfast burrito, $9.50. Pecan raisin scone, $2.90.

A version of this review appeared in print on March 6, 2011, on page LI7 of the New York edition.



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Long Island Food Entrepreneurs Watch Their Businesses Grow -

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