After over 30 years with their current location on Paulding Avenue, meat wholesaler and retailer Giordano’s Big G is in the process of transitioning to a bigger location only a few blocks away.
The new location is at 1852 Bronxdale Avenue – across the street from a CTown Supermarket and only a few blocks from Pine Restaurant. Carl Giordano, owner and founder, prefers how the new location is in a residential area with significant passerby driving through the area and has multiple food businesses near each other.
“In my expertise, the more food on the same block, the more business everybody will do. A lot of people have an attitude. ‘Why do you open up across from a supermarket?’ I said, ‘I’m not a supermarket, and I’m gonna help them do more business’,” Giordano said.
He expects to sell to the supermarket, and that both businesses will share customers, as well as working together to limit the traffic caused by delivery vehicles parking in the area. Illegal parking is one of his biggest concerns; delivery drivers have a tendency to double park, making it so that drivers may have to drive into incoming traffic to pass, or even preventing passage entirely.
“In the morning, there’s usually plenty of parking. I had to get rid of a lot of illegal cars. I’m calling 311 every day. because they were parking here like it was their parking lot,” Giordano said.
About 3200 square feet, the new location will have one main entrance but be divided into two halves: one retail side for smaller orders, and one wholesale side for businesses. The floor plan, completed with Architecture by Anna, includes two wholesale refrigerators over 320 square feet each, two unisex toilets, as well as multiple offices and storage areas.
Nearly 50 years ago, Giordano opened his first location on Tremont Avenue, after previously selling cold cuts out of his car trunk.
“There were 12 butcher shops there, laughing when I took it, ’cause I took this old pork store that was doing no business. None… They were laughing at me. ‘Oh, what does he think he’s gonna do here? He won’t do anything,’” Giordano recalled.
Eventually, as his business grew, many of the older shops closed. As Giordano says, “If you don’t change with the times, you’re out of business.”
“If I’m not using it, I don’t plan on leaving it there. I’m gonna salvage it or put it in a dumpster. I’m not afraid of competition, I love competition, but I’m not gonna give them anything for nothing the way I’ve been treated,” Giordano said.
Giordano says he signed the contract for the new location around August last year with plans to open this February.
The current plan is to open the new location by September of this year, though Giordano is in talks with a lawyer to maintain the ability to work out of their current location until December if necessary.
Giordano has been very active in leading the construction and legal processes of changing locations, which has required multiple permits. Once the new location finally opens, he plans to reduce his own tasks and delegate more specific responsibilities to his current employees that transition to the new location, as well as potential new part time hires— his form of retirement.
“I’m born and raised in the Bronx. I always worked in the Bronx, so I don’t want to leave the Bronx. I live all the way up in Yorktown, but my business will always be here till I die,” Giordano said.
Maurice Burbridge is an intern at the Bronx Times. He can be reached at mburbridge@schnepsmedia.com. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
