Cardona’s is buying Roma Foods
Italian grocery stores to finalize sale soon and then it’s on to renovations, expansion
Cardona’s Market, the Italian grocery founded in downtown Albany in 1945, is buying Roma Foods Importing Co., established a year later, also in Albany’s former Little Italy.
The deal, in development for nine months, is expected to be finalized soon, family members on both sides said, and the Cardona’s name should be on the two Roma locations, in Latham and Saratoga Springs, by summer. Spurred by retirement plans of the four sons of Frank Bolognino Sr., who opened Roma in 1946 after serving in the Navy, the acquisition will triple the revenue of Cardona’s, representatives said. It will make an already thriving company the dominant player among the more than 15 similar businesses in the Capital Region’s four core counties.
The opportunity to buy Roma, which the second-generation Bolognino brothers had been quietly offering for several years, coincided with growth plans put in place by the third-generation Cardona brothers earlier this year after they took over the business from their father, who had run it since assuming control from his father in the mid-1970s.
“We knew we wanted to expand, and it made sense that rather than try to compete with (Roma), we could continue what they’ve been doing, build on it and introduce their customers to what we do,” said August Cardona.
A serial entrepreneur who is partner in a New York City hospitality company that has opened seven businesses in 10 years, with two more under development, August and his brothers Robert Jr. and Anthony recently finalized the purchase of Cardona’s,
at 340 Delaware Ave., from their father, Robert Sr. T.J. Conti, a childhood friend and New York City business partner of August’s, has moved back to Albany and is an investor with the brothers in the Delaware Avenue shop and
the new venture. Another New York partner, Kevin Garry, was added for the deal to buy Roma, August said.
“I decided to do it because a) it was a perfect fit and b) I knew they could do the job but would still keep our name out there somehow,” said Frank Bolognino Jr., who dropped out of college at age 20 to take over the store when his father died suddenly in 1974. “All of them are great guys, and they really know the business.”
Bolognino said he intends to spend time in Florida and on the golf course, not making and selling food.
“The only meatballs in my future will be the ones I’m eating,” he said.
The Cardona brothers have been observing Roma operations and examining its books for months, they said. The process showed how the two seemingly similar businesses — with products imported from Italy, meat and deli counters and prepared foods — in fact are different enough that their merger will be more complementary than redundant, August said. About 80 percent of Cardona’s revenue comes from items prepared in its kitchen by Robert Jr., who has
been the executive chef since 2002 and leads a team that now sells threequarters of a ton of cooked chicken cutlets and about 2,500 beef-veal-pork meatballs every week.
In contrast, “(Roma does) so much more in grocery, meats and cold cuts. There’s not as much crossover as you’d think,” August said. And while Cardona’s has a strong sandwich business, averaging about 200 a day, the Saratoga Roma is a sandwich-making behemoth.
“They’ll do 50 dozen a day during track season,” said Robert Jr. Once the businesses are combined, the Cardona’s brand likely will sell upward of 1,000 sandwiches daily among its three locations, he said.
The Cardona brothers stressed that they do not intend to impose a radical overhaul on the Roma stores. They plan to keep as many of Roma’s approximately 40 employees as want to stay, including Nicole Bolognino, whose father is one of the owners and manages the Latham store and will be essential to the transition, both sides said.
“The name will be Cardona’s, but we will find a way to honor the tradition of what Roma did for 75 years,” August said.
Roma opened a Latham location in 1961, closing the downtown Albany original two years later as development of the Empire State Plaza gutted their 98-acre neighborhood and razed 1,200 buildings. Roma moved to its current location, at 9 Cobbee Road, in 1978, by which point Frank Jr. had been joined in the business by his brothers, John, Peter and Paul. They debuted a Saratoga Springs store in 1984, moving it in 2002 to the present, larger quarters at
222 Washington St. The Bolognino brothers are in their early to mid-60s; the Cardonas, 38 to 44.
After the name change takes effect, the initial focus will be on the Latham store, the Cardona brothers said. They plan renovations that will include a production kitchen, intended to serve all three Cardona’s, in the Latham building, which has a retail space of 5,200 square feet, slightly larger than the original Cardona’s. It also has a basement of the same size that will be home to the production kitchen, the Cardonas said. The plan is for Roma to stay open throughout, except for a several-day break that will be required for major construction. Attention will then turn, likely next winter, to the Saratoga Springs shop, where an expansion to accommodate a larger kitchen will be undertaken.
August Cardona, who focuses on business operations and analyzing data, declined to specify the purchase price for acquiring Roma or revenue projections for the combined stores. Speaking generally, he said, the two Roma stores do about twice as
much business as the current Cardona’s. He said the deal and subsequent capital projects are being financed by bank loans.
“It’s a great move. I wish my mother and father were alive to see it. They would be so happy,” Robert Cardona Sr. said. His mother, Albany native Mary Sgroi, married the Italian immigrant Augusto Cardona in 1939 and ran the store with him for decades. She died in 2003, Augusto six years later, at age 93.
Though he retired at 62, Augusto kept coming to the shop most days of the week, usually to make meatballs, for the next 30 years. Robert Sr., now 71, who still runs the Cardona’s butcher shop, said he, too, is at least semiretired, which in the Cardona family means a work week of only five days and 40 hours, for the first time in his life.
“I always told (my sons) that they need to have a five-year plan, to be working toward something and seeing how you could grow,” Robert Sr. said.
“When they told me about this and I saw how good it could be,” he said, “I thought, ‘I guess they were listening after all.’”