Owner Wally Giordano reflects on his years spent growing up (and growing old) working in the family business.
“We tried to do everything we could to keep the store open,” Wally Giordano tells me over the phone.
It’s actually the first thing he says to me (after hello, after how-ya-doing), and he repeats it a lot. They tried everything, he and his brothers, John and Eugene. Everything they could think of. Everything they knew how to do. But none of it was enough. The world, he says, is changing. Things aren’t the way they used to be.
And now, after 105 years as a fixture in the Italian Market, his family’s multi-generational produce company, P&F Giordano Fruit and Produce, is shutting down. He thinks they’ll last another two weeks or so on the day that I talked to him. Less by the time you read this. And then it’ll be gone…