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Bella Napoli's Family Bakery
Family Matters
No matter when you walk into a
Bella Napoli Bakery, you’ll enjoy the pleasure of gazing on a
cornucopia of classic Italian and American baked goods as inviting to the eye as they are to the palate. President Dominic Mainella insists on it. “Availability of products is very important for us,“ he said. “Our cases are always full, even at night.”
That’s no small feat, considering both Bella Napoli locations (in Troy and Latham, two neighborhoods just north of Albany, New York) stay open until 10:00 p.m.—long past the hour when the average bakery has sold out and closed up shop.
Many Mainellas keep business humming
For this full-line bakery, keeping its shelves stocked and its customers satisfied is much more than a business. It’s a family affair. No kidding, Bella Napoli has almost as many Mainellas on staff as cannoli in the display case!
Dominic Mainella is the bakery’s president, working with his two brothers, Geno and Mario, sister Victoria, and several uncles and cousins, including Theresa Mainella, manager of the Latham store. His mother and father, who founded the business in 1957, are both still involved. Dominic’s wife and teenaged son help out when needed, as do his brothers’ wives. Carmen Sposito, a long-time family friend has also been with the bakery for decades. The Mainellas call him their "blood and sweat brother."
Family is the Mainellas’ main focus, and their strong family values have long been the driving force behind the bakery. Their
down-to-earth philosophy rests on basic fundamentals. “Offer a good product and good service, and customers will always
come back.”
Bella Napoli lives that philosophy every day, attracting a crowd of regulars with a dedicated core of pleasant staff, and a friendly atmosphere that Mainella says is a lot like “a mini Cheers.”
It all began nearly half a century ago, when Dominic’s father, John V. Mainella, borrowed a friend’s station wagon to land a delivery job at a local bakery. Working his way through an apprenticeship, John V. eventually left to start his own bakery. Dominic was born shortly afterward, and has helped out in the bakery for as long as he can remember.
After a few years, the family moved the business to its new quarters in Troy, operating out of a small area that has since become the bakery’s front room. Sales really took off when they went beyond their original focus on Italian breads and rolls to offer a full line of authentic Italian pastries. Several expansions later, the Troy bakery has grown into a 20,000-square-foot operation.
A second bakery takes off
In 1982, Dominic Mainella opened a second bakery in Latham, a 4000-squarefoot shop about five miles away. They’ll celebrate their 20th anniversary there this fall. Troy supplies most of the product to the Latham store, although donut production and some prep takes place on site.
Situated along a busy stretch of road near the airport, Latham attracts a steady stream of customers. “There’s always traffic,” Mainella said. Sales took off immediately, exceeding the family’s wildest expectations, and forcing them to face the enviable challenges of adapting to rapid growth. “The first year, we ran out of cookies at Christmas. We learned fast how to make adjustments.” Latham has since added a café, offering soups, sandwiches and salads, and business continues to thrive.
Classic Italian pastries offer old-world flair
Bella Napoli specializes in authentic Italian breads, pastries, cookies and biscotti, but also caters to American tastes with a broad array of donuts, muffins, Danish and rolls. It uses Progressive Baker® Gibraltar and Hummer brands as its primary flours.
Its Italian specialties include Sfogliatelle, a very flaky pastry filled with sweet ricotta cheese and diced orange peel. People drive for miles for the bakery’s signature cannoli, available in raspberry, cappuccino and other flavors. Baba is another popular favorite, an Italian sponge cake soaked in rum, which the bakery offers plain, and filled with Italian vanilla custard or cannoli fillings.
Its almond horn cookie made with Progressive Baker® Gibraltar Flour, tops Bella Napoli’s best seller list. Mainella is currently exploring opportunities with local food distributors and grocers to brand and market this popular cookie beyond his retail stores.
Italian breads are still a mainstay
The Italian breads and rolls that gave Bella Napoli its start continue to account for significant revenue, particularly on the
wholesale side. The bakery supplies local Italian restaurants, grocery stores, sub shops, and pizzerias.
It produces private-label mini frankfurter rolls for two major deli meat manufacturers, as well as several independents, who combine the buns with the frankfurters they sell in supermarket and grocery store deli sections. Mini frankfurters are big in Albany, according to Mainella, and his custom finger-sized rolls are a perfect complement to the snack-sized treat. “I always say the roll makes the sandwich,” he said. “It is the first thing you bite into.”
Embracing technology makes production easier
Looking back over how business has changed since his father began, Mainella sees the shrinking labor pool as the biggest
change affecting how they operate. As more bakeries move toward product specialization, it’s becoming more difficult to find
people trained in the wide range of tasks a full-line bakery needs.
“There’s a much smaller pool of wellrounded bakers to choose from” Mainella said. For example, Bella Napoli still makes donuts the old-fashioned way, cutting them out by hand. “We can run an ad in the paper, but we’d be hard-pressed to find a person even with bakery experience who already knows how to do that.”
Bella Napoli’s strong family network has helped it curb the labor challenge. After all, it has a big family to draw on to carry on its baking traditions. Still, Mainella wonders where help will come from down the line. He believes firmly that investing in modern equipment technology is crucial to a full-line bakery’s ability to succeed in today’s market environment.
“Bakers tend to shy away from technology, but I believe it can be a huge aid to the business,” he said. “I don’t believe in it as a way to eliminate people—we’re always going to need good, qualified help.” But he thinks it helps a bakery use its good people to produce more product, more efficiently. “You can’t automate everything, but there are a lot of areas where the right equipment makes the job about 100 percent easier.”
Bella Napoli recently invested in a Rondo line to streamline production of its Danish and puff pastry dough, labor-intensive items it still makes from scratch. The equipment affords Bella Napoli the convenience of making up a week’s worth of product in one day. “We have enough freezer space that we can combine production of some items two weeks out. It’s helped us a lot.” Mainella plans to invest in a new cookie depositor soon, to handle its burgeoning cookie sales.
Working with relatives day in and day out can put a strain on family relations, but the Mainella family has managed to forge an
alliance that works. “When push comes to shove, every one comes together to get the job done,” Mainella said. He’s carrying on the bakery’s success by embracing a basic principle. Family matters.