Giordano’s Big G has spent five decades serving the Bronx, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
The wholesale warehouse and market, located on Paulding Avenue in the Morris Park neighborhood, is considered one of “the Best of the Bronx” and a borough staple. The warehouse was previously located in Throggs Neck through the 1990s, after owner Carl Giordano founded it nearly 48 years ago.
Giordano has been in the food business since age 14, when he worked delivery for a local supermarket. After a few years learning the management side of the business, Giordano decided to venture out on his own.
“I figured if I’m broke working, I could be broke working for myself and never starve because it’s the food business,” said Giordano.
Giordano started his business alongside his cousin, John Giordano, who was a butcher. Originally, the Giordanos focused on supplying meat to local restaurants. But after just a year, John Giordano left the business, and Carl Giordano began to expand into wholesale.
Today, Giordano’s Big G sells everything from butcher products to wholesale and retail. The market is known as a local go-to around the holiday season, supplying seafood to help customers celebrate the Italian Christmas tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The Morris Park warehouse welcomes both customers who fill their baskets for weekly grocery shopping, and retailers who stop by to place large wholesale orders.
Giordano prides himself on his relationship with his customers, and his willingness to go the extra mile to make sure they can get everything they need.
“I sell anything, anything meaning all food, any paper products [customers] need, all the cleaners to make their place look pretty. … And if [customers want] something I’ve never sold before, the first thing I’ll do is tell them to send me a picture of it, and I’ll find it and sell it to them,” he said.
Giordano, 68, pointed to how his business functioned as a dependable supplier of goods during the COVID-19 pandemic, when certain products became difficult to find.
“We never ran out of anything,” said Giordano. “We always had full stock. And not only that, I went into things that I wouldn’t normally do. I made sure there was toilet paper here. I made sure there was Bleach Wipes here. I made sure there was gloves here. I made sure there was masks here. Anything that was very hard to get. … And everybody knew me as, all right, you can’t find it anywhere? Call Big G’s.”
Giordano’s commitment to his business knows no bounds, joking that his work has “taken over every table in the house.”
“This is my kind of hobby,” he said. “I don’t see it as a job anymore.”
One of his goals was breaking into the competitive fair supplier business. Giordano has been in the fair business for nearly three decades, supplying wholesale goods to vendors at fairs across Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but has dove head first into it over the past few years. He is now a supplier for the Big E fair in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of the country’s largest.
Giordano hopes to grow Big G even more in the coming years. While he doesn’t yet have a timeline, he wants to start shipping goods to other parts of the country. While he recognized that it might be an expensive endeavor, he expressed excitement at the opportunity to try something new, even after nearly a half-century.
“Many parts of my business started as a seed,” he said. “And 95 percent of the time, they grow into a tree.”
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