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| Elena Giglio with her daughter Teresa and niece Aurelia. Elena is closing Elena's Italian Caffe after more than 28 years in business. |
Elena Giglio didn't set out to be an entrepreneur, although, she admits, she has never been fond of having people telling her what to do.
"When some people would tell me, 'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? I would look at them, and I would say, 'You know why I work for myself? No? Because I hate when people tell me what to do,'" she says with a laugh.
She and her husband Giacomo Giglio, started their own cafe shortly after she came to this country from Italy, 50 years ago.
"We kind of had a place on Western Avenue, where we'd just have espresso, cappucino, and all the Italian men would come and watch the soccer games," Elena says. It was friendly and homey, but they were renting, and her husband wanted a place they could own, and so they purchased the building on the corner of Lexington and Central, and opened Elena's Italian Caffe.
That was 28 years ago, and now, on her last full day in business, Elena says she never expected the business to become what it has become.
It's the night of Elena's retirement party, and the restaurant is decorated with Christmas lights, and a steady stream of people come in to wish Elena and her children the best of luck on their next adventure. Many talk about how the restaurant was a part of their daily route, and how much the cappuccino will be missed. They lean in to hug Elena who sits in her usual perch at the table by the door. They bring bottles of wine, flowers, and lots of fond memories about the place she and her family have built.
When the Giglios opened the cafe at 112 Central, they only sold coffee and pastries. When, local office workers began requesting lunch, they began selling sandwiches. "People start coming in, and they say, 'Okay the coffee's fine, but now we want lunch.' And that's really how we started serving lunch. It wasn't planned," says Elena. Little by little they built a lunch crowd, and with it, a rapport with the neighborhood and the community they served.
Elena points out the window to the surrounding businesses, and says she still sees owners from each, every week. Central Florist, Ferris Coin, Sham Candy and Grocery, Citizen Action, Brick's Barbershop. It has become a community here, and that community often finds itself at the lunch counter at Elena's.
For years, the Giglios opened their restaurant each day at 6:30am, and closed at midnight. They were open seven days a week, which meant that the couple essentially raised their three children, Dan, Giacomo, and Teresa, right in the restaurant. "We had a lot of good times," Elena says. "We really did."
It also means that the restaurant has become like a home to the Giglios. In time, the couple's daughter Teresa began working as a barista at the restaurant. Elena's niece Aurelia also joined the staff. Their son Giacomo manages the business beside the cafe, and helps out when needed inside. In recent years, they've modified hours and focused on breakfast and lunch.
"Everything just kind of came on its own. Nothing was really thoroughly planned," she says. It's an approach that has worked, for almost three decades.
Over the years, they've seen a lot of change. "You see people come with their kids, and then their kids come with their own kids," she says. "Over the years, we've lost a lot of customers, of course. And my husband passed away." After the death of her husband 11 years ago, Elena took one week off, then she told her daughter Teresa, "Either we're going to work on Monday, or I'm not going there again, and that was that," Elena says. "And we came, and we stayed."
"It was hard to be here without him, but everybody knew him, too, you know. People were great. It was bad, but it wasn't too bad, because it was a lot of people we've known for a long time. If we had to be somewhere where people don't understand, that would have been worse."
Elena says staying in business for this long has been a matter of staying flexible and responsive to her customers. She says they would get special products in, just to keep customers happy, and that customer service has always been her top priority. This came, in part, from Elena's feeling that the cafe was personal. "I always felt like it was my house. As a matter of fact, I was serving somebody, and the guy says, 'You don't need to serve me." And I said, 'You're in my house. When you're in my house, I serve you.'"
Elena's life has been so much in the cafe, that it is her house, and you can feel that, when you come in the door. "It is my house, for good or bad, it is my house."
As she gets ready to retire, and relax with family and grandchildren, she admits she worries some about what will happen to customers. Not just the ones she knows, but the ones she hasn't met yet. "I say 'Where are they going to go?' Somebody says, 'You worry about that?' And I say, 'Yeah, I worry.'"
We wish Elena Giglio and her family the best, and thank her for her years of dedication to her business and Central Avenue.
Elena's Italian Caffe, located at 112 Central Avenue, will be open until 1pm on Christmas Eve, and then closed permanently.
