Photo by George Mahe
The bakery storefront of Colino's in August 2019
One of the more interesting restaurant stories of 2019—one that partly stemmed from a squabble over whether the stems of pepperoncini peppers should be left on or off a particular sandwich—now has a new chapter for the new year.
In a Facebook post on January 1, Colino’s Café & Bakery owner Cathy Consolino wrote that the restaurant had closed that day “due to legal fees that have been spent defending myself against a lawsuit, the funds that had been set aside for operations at the cafe have been spent (and then some).”
“In the end, due to the ongoing financial pressure from the lawsuit, I made the painful decision to close,” she recently told SLM.
Consolino had been operating in the former Amighetti’s on the Hill space since August 1, following her husband, Dominic, who had operated the business under a licensing agreement since 2014. “For the last five years, my husband [Dominic] put his heart and soul into preserving a brand that had been around for generations, a brand he was all too familiar with,” Cathy told SLM.“He’d take a loaf of Amighetti’s bread to his grandmother’s house for dinner, and when he got older, he’d take his granddaughter into Amighetti’s and they’d bake the same loaf of bread.”
In 2016, Anthony Favazza bought the rights to the Amighetti’s name, recipes, and brand, and he began making menu changes, beginning at the satellite location in Rock Hill. Dominic resisted many of the proposed changes, Favazza told SLM last August. “Dominic wanted to preserve the brand as it was,” says Cathy. “We saw nothing wrong with the different locations having different products...and by simply offering the customer what they expect when they walk through the door. Anthony wanted to downsize to two soups, for example, but on the Hill we’d get requests for all four of them.”
One of Favazza’s requests, in particular, became a point of contention: to de-stem the pepperoncini peppers before putting them on the famed Amighetti Special sandwich, so the customer would not have to do so. Dominic Consolino told SLM previously that changing the flagship sandwich—which he says accounted for 50 percent of sales—was ill-advised. "It's a simple brand management issue," he said. For Fazazza, however, it was not in line with the direction that he was hoping to take the brand.
“The situation eventually reached an impasse,” Cathy says, and the decision was made to close Amighetti’s. Cathy says she then “bought the existing inventory and leased all the equipment from [Dominic].”The space reopened August 1 as Colino’s Café and Bakery, with Cathy at the helm.
Favazza then sued the Consolinos for violating the licensing agreement, a claim which they disputed. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article last August, the Consolinos' attorney, David Weiss, said Cathy Consolino was “not a shareholder to that agreement” and had not signed the agreement. "She was an employee at Amighetti’s just like anybody else there," Weiss told the Post-Dispatch. "She just happened to be married to Dominic.” The attorney also told the newspaper that Colino's Café did not use the same bread or sauce recipes as Amighetti's.
Favazza said he believes that the situation could have been avoided if the Hill location had operated in a way similar to the Rock Hill location. "Before I bought Amighetti's, it had been experiencing declining sales for 30 years," he said. "It was a dying brand. [The] Rock Hill [location] was going to close, and the Hill [location] would likely follow. I bought it as a turnaround.
"Great brands either evolve or die," he continued. "Amighetti's was a case where continuing the status quo was not the solution. In Rock Hill, I added some items, made some changes, all while staying true to the core product, and doubled sales in three years. I can't help but think that the Hill location—it is the flagship, after all—could have equalled that or better. Had there been a unified brand, we both would have done better. But the ice cube just kept melting."
“My intent at Colino’s was to move away from Favazza’s recommendations, to continue to listen to our customers, and do some things differently,” Cathy contends. ”We were creating new products, bringing back versions of others, and even began serving breakfast on Saturday.
“In the end, due to the ongoing financial pressure from the lawsuit, I made the painful decision to close,” she said. She then paused and added, “But we were blessed. We enjoyed saying we lived and worked on the Hill. We owned part of an iconic sandwich shop, and no one can take that away from us.”
Favazza says he hopes to return Amighetti's to the Hill. Among his options, he says, is leasing part of the original location at Wilson and Marconi, which is comprised of several parcels. Some change already appears to be afoot: The Riverfront Times reported yesterday that the bakery space has been papered over, and a sign in one window exclaims, "Something amazing happening."
More as we learn it.
The original article has been updated, including comments from Cathy Consolino.
