Pasta perfect Pittsfield-born sisters find winning recipe for business

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Life has two key ingredients for businesswoman Judie Vacchina: family and pasta.

In the course of a month, Vacchina recently jetted off to Italy to buy supplies; hosted the Boston Red Sox at a dinner in swanky Hyannisport, Mass.; flew off to a food show in South Carolina; and then headed back to her hometown and her sisters in Pittsfield.

The former “Mercier girls,” three Pittsfield-born sisters, spent the first half of their lives running individual businesses. Vacchina started a food service business, Sandra Friend went into banking, and Nancy McGinnis operated a restaurant.

Today, the dynamic trio runs the East Coast operations of Vacchina’s national gourmet food supply company, Amazatto Foods, from an office in central Maine. They make no retail sales, but rather sell gourmet pasta, sauces and other products to food distributors and to chains with a hundred restaurants or more.

A year into the sisters’ partnership, sales continue to skyrocket and contracts are rolling in.

“We have been blessed,” said Vacchina.

Among its clients, Amazatto Foods has the exclusive contract to provide U.S. Foodservice, the second-largest food service distributor in the country. The products are sold under USF’s Roseli label. USF boasts yearly revenues of $19 billion and services more than 300,000 customers, including restaurants, hotels, schools and other institutions across the nation.

Amazatto sells only 31 of its products to USF but produces hundreds more specialty foods for other companies and restaurant chains.

Although all Amazatto products are manufactured at the company’s plant in Leeds, N.D., it is Vacchina’s sisters in Pittsfield who handle the thousands of orders from the eastern half of the country.

The sisters’ product list can set almost any mouth to watering: ravioli stuffed with lobster, mushroom or butternut squash; smoked mozzarella ravioli; tri-color cheese tortellini; egg fettuccini and linguine; and a menu of complementary sauces such as basil pesto, roasted red bell pepper pesto and Alfredo sauce.

The products are as appetizing to the eyes as they are to the palate. The lobster ravioli is enticingly striped with bands of blue ribbons. The tri-color pasta comes in brilliant green, creamy yellow and a rich rust.

Vacchina said her North Dakota plant, at 50,000 square feet, has a test kitchen and laboratories where she is “constantly working on new products.”

Meanwhile, Amazatto has brokers across the country selling her specialty foods. “USF alone has 4,000 salespeople,” she said.

“I’ve worn out five printers in a year,” said Friend, who receives orders from all the East Coast salespeople.

“This is a huge business,” said Vacchina. “It is not a cottage industry by any means. … We deal in truckloads.”

Because of Amazatto’s contract with USF, Vacchina is prohibited from divulging any sales figures. But she admitted that at a recent meeting she sold 2,000 cases of seafood ravioli to a single restaurant.

While business has been booming, she was quick to say the payoff in opening an East Coast office in Pittsfield had a lot more to do with family than money. “All our lives, we never lost our connection,” she said. “We are very, very close. We have a good relationship with each other and we trust each other.”

The sisters’ involvement with food dates back to when their father and mother, George and Hazel Mercier, were raising eight kids and running a restaurant on South Main Street in Pittsfield. George’s Grill and Diner was the proving ground for the sisters, who did everything from sweep the floors to cook.

After they grew up, the sisters headed in different directions. Friend became a bank manager, McGinnis opened Nancy’s Dairy Bar in Pittsfield, and Vacchina headed to California and founded a restaurant and food supply business.

Now, with the sisters all between ages 57 and 61, the “Mercier girls” finally are working together again. Vacchina eventually sold her restaurant and concentrated on manufacturing specialty foods, building up the business for a few years before bringing her sisters into her company.

“After I sold the restaurant, I started manufacturing food for other restaurants and the business just evolved,” she said. “I had a client – Wolfgang Puck – who was making pizzas and he wanted to expand into pastas and sauces. I made all the products for his company.”

From there, Vacchina began picking up other contracts, such as Quizno’s, a national chain with more than 1,500 restaurants. “I’m their corporate chef. I develop all their new products,” she said.

Amazatto also has created gourmet foods for Denny’s, Applebee’s and Nancy’s.

“When I was doing some products for Quizno’s,” said Vacchina, “I was overwhelmed with work. My sister Nancy had sold her restaurant, so I asked her to come to California and help me. There was never a doubt that help would come.”

“We are a very close family,” said McGinnis. While the two sisters were working together, they hatched the idea of splitting Vacchina’s sales management into a West Coast office and an East Coast office, with the two sisters managing the East Coast operations.

Vacchina stressed that if it were not for the massive wheat industry in the Midwest, she would bring her entire manufacturing operation to Maine. “Our products are made with 100 percent semolina, and North Dakota is where the wheat is grown,” she said. “I have a deep loyalty to Maine and feel that businesses such as mine belong here, are needed here.”

Amazatto’s East Coast office encompasses four rooms of 3 North Lancey St., a former schoolhouse in Pittsfield where the sisters all attended classes. They said they did lots of reminiscing while renovating the space, painting the walls in a golden faux treatment and adding grapevines, paintings and other Italian decor. It’s not surprising that the office space includes a small kitchen to allow the sisters to express their culinary creativity.

While she lives with her husband, Leonardo, a trial lawyer, in Pleasantown, Calif., Vacchina spends less than one weekend a month at home. Her husband often accompanies her on trips, however, particularly when she travels to Italy to buy new specialty food manufacturing equipment. And her daughter manages Amazatto’s West Coast offices.

When Vacchina comes to Maine, she “takes turns” staying with her sisters, nieces and nephews. “I have a bedroom in every house,” she joked.

The sisters’ varied strengths and their dedication to family have been pivotal in making Amazatto’s East Coast operation so successful. “We are such a good team,” said Vacchina.

“Our parents were workaholics,” she said, “and we are workaholics. From a young age we learned how to divide up the work based on our skills and strengths.

“Sandra runs the management part of the office while Nancy, with her restaurant experience, runs the business and food side.”

Vacchina runs everything else at Amazatto on a national level, from the test kitchens to scores of food shows every year.

“We really like to work together and we found a way to make money at it,” she said.

Family squabbles just don’t happen. “Business is business,” Vacchina said, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re all adults.”

The sisters are so in tune with each other that when Vacchina was asked where she wants the company to go from here, all three sisters shouted “To retirement at the beach!” from various parts of the office. All three then burst into laughter, which is a common occurrence when they are together.

“Never has there been any distance between us,” said Vacchina. “We are connected.”