Venetian Meat’s Winona plant aims for fall opening
New location to include ‘proper retail spot,’ founder’s grandson says
Venetian Meat and Salami Company says it hopes to move into its new Winona plant this September, adding up to 10 new jobs as it increases production and retail capacity from the current location on Burlington Street East in Hamilton.
“It is progressing really well,” Daniel Dorigiola, vice-president of sales and marketing, said of work since last August’s groundbreaking on the 38,000square-foot plant at the northwest corner of Barton Street and Lewis Road.
He said the new home will be more than twice as big as the Hamilton plant, opened in 1957, and have about 1,600 square feet of retail space to sell the company’s dry-cured and cooked deli meats, as well as dry goods, pastas, olive oils, cheeses and other foods.
“It’s a lot better than what we have (now),” Dorigiola said. “It’ll be a proper retail spot and eventually get into hopefully making sandwiches — start off with doing that, and then grow into doing other things as well.”
Dorigiola, grandson of company founder Gino Dal Bello, said the family-owned business chose Winona partly because it already had land there.
But the spot is also near major trucking routes like the QEW, Barton Street and South Service Road, he said.
“We like the location because it is home for us,” Dorigiola said, noting the area bounded by Barton Street, Fifty Road, Highway 8 and Fruitland Road is expected to see a housing boom over the next five to 10 years.
“It’s a growing area, which is really nice,” he said. “It will be a great location for our retail store.”
Dorigiola said the Hamilton plant will close once the current 17 employees shift to Winona, but there will also be “probably closer to 10” additional job openings in processing, packaging, retail, sales and delivery.