When his high school teachers rejected him, Cosimo Mammoliti threw himself into travel, learning about his Italian heritage, and feeding his community. With his best friend, Paolo Scoppio, and hands-on help from family, Mammoliti founded a tiny store and deli on Queen Street West in December 1992, where they imported food from Bari, and Terroni was born.
Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, Terroni has become something of an empire in Toronto and Los Angeles. This scope includes four Terroni Locations, one located in LAX, two Sud Forno locations, Bar Centrale, two commissary kitchens, Spaccio East and West, La Bettola on Victoria Street, and Cavinona, their wine agency dedicated to wines for Terroni locations.
Mammoliti’s mother, Rita, his late father, Vince, siblings Anna and Vince, his wife, Elena, and four children, Simona, Sofia, Matteo, and Olivia, as well as other family members, a cousin, and nieces, are all part of a very unconventional succession plan based entirely on love.
Aside from the family and some trusted friends, his sole “official” advisors over three decades have included his long-time bookkeeper, advisor and accountant, one account manager from a local TD bank, a construction manager, and a chief operating officer that he only hired this year.
Through tragedy and triumphs, Mammoliti says he has kept it simple because, “I don’t take rejection well, but it’s my strength.”
While he makes panzerotti with his son, Matteo, Mammoliti shares how he lifted himself up from despair when he lost his best friend and business partner, how he keeps financial planning to a minimalist artform, and what drives him and his family to take action when his community needs them most.
What inspired you to establish Terroni in 1992?
For the way I learned, it was not helpful to me. If you were not a ‘by the book’ type of person, and you needed help … I mean, I still remember teachers from my school telling me, ‘You’re stupid. What do you mean you don’t understand?’ That was how I grew up in the school system, and that fueled me a lot. I was a straight-A student in grade-school, where you were nurtured, but then you go to high school and you need any extra help, no. That’s how I started working in the restaurant business.”
How did you move forward from that rejection?
“When I did drop out of school, I thought it was going to be more of a big deal for my father. But when he sat me down and I told him, I was really shocked because he was really calm. He said, ‘Just don’t think you’re going to be here sitting around the house, not doing anything. You’re going to go, get a job, and you’re going to pay rent. Funnily, I would pay rent, but my mother would put the money aside and opened a bank account for me. She would give it to me later.”
Is that when you started to take interest in travel and your heritage?
“The year before I dropped out of school, my father actually said that if I did good in school, that they’d pay for my flight to Italy. I went to Italy for the first time at 16 years old, for the whole summer, and I fell in love with Italy. From that age on I spent every summer in Italy. But when I came back to Canada, and I went back to school, I was in Grade 11, and all I could think about was going back to Italy.
School didn’t work out. So, then I started working in the restaurant business and … every year in June, I stopped, and I travelled for three months. I travelled through all of Italy, met the people, tried the food, really got the culture of what it was. I was already in love with everything about my culture, but then when I actually went and visualized, smelled, tasted, I was like, ‘This is amazing.’”
Who were your support system back then, aside from your immediate family?
So, I grew up with this group of people where all they did was speak Italian, talk about Italy, and they didn’t want to really be in Canada. I was 16 years old at this time. My Italian heritage came from my Italian immigrant parents, who are from Calabria. The Calabrese, and any Italian that came to Canada back then, kept traditions alive, almost more so than they do in Italy.
We do everything still – make the salami, my dad made wine when we were small, we would make our own tomato sauce, make our own bread, sundried tomatoes… So that was just normal for me. There was always something to do, and the families were always getting together … there’s always food.”
“My friends opened me up to what Italy was from a family who didn’t grow up in Canada. So, in the mid-80s and early-90s, I fell in love with that and wanted to be even more connected with my heritage and my family.”
So how did you go from working, as your father instructed, to meeting Paolo, your future business partner and Terroni co-founder?
“I started out in the Toronto restaurant business as a dishwasher in the mid-80s, and I slowly started getting into the restaurant business, working bar-back, bussing, and then I got to bartending and I started making money. That was at Noodles at Bay and Bloor. Then I started working in a few different restaurants, mostly front-of-house, but I really wanted to do something.”
How did you cope in those early days, financially?
“It was expensive to open a restaurant, and that’s why, in 1992, we had four stools. It was a tiny little store. The long bar and the booth at the back came afterwards. At the beginning it was just a little deli with four stools. The back area was not even built yet, the first year. Then we made a little bit of money, and finally, after about a year, we put the counter in, and the pizza oven, and that’s when Terroni started making pizzas.”
Do you remember your attitude toward money and investing in those early years, as young men, just out of boyhood?
“At that age, that first investment … I think I had $8,000. I was making a bit of a big deal about it. But then I thought, ‘You can spend this money on travel, or you can take a chance and work for yourself. It takes a certain type of mindset to put your money into something like that.
I do remember, at the time, it felt like such a big risk. It was everything I had. We didn’t come from money. This was my $8,000. Paolo had some money, and we were there working every day. My father came in and helped build the shelves that are still there on Queen Street. I remember painting the walls. We bought everything used at auctions. We did it very, very old school, and when we opened up on Queen Street, it was just a store front, because we didn’t have enough money. Then, after a year, we extended the bar and put in the pizza oven.”
How did you progress from the tiny storefront to lineups out the door on Queen West?
“At the beginning it was a used deli fridge, used espresso machine, four stools, and shelves that my dad made. We put out the product that Paolo was importing, and dried pastas and stuff like that. That’s how it started.
Once we got the pizza oven and a liquor license, [it took off].”
At this point, when business starts to boom in the mid-90s, who is advising you, financially or otherwise?
“In those days, the local banker from the TD down on the corner, he was dealing with you personally. [Mr. Totino] would call me and say, ‘Cosimo, you guys are overdrawn, you need to put money in your account.’ This is how it was back then.
You were in a community, and it was cash. You had to go put cash in the bank. Mr. Totino would warn me, and he would help me. He was the only person that I could say, today, when it comes to financial institutions, that helped me out to grow my business.”
How was your family involved in the business at this stage?
“My sister, Anna, is the eldest and she works with me as vice-president, restaurants and Cavinona. Then I have my brother, Vince, who is vice-dpresident, Sud Forno, T. Spaccio, and importing. My brother, Fernando, who doesn’t work with me – he’s in the marble business.
At the very beginning it was me and Paolo, and my younger brother, Vince. He finished university … and started pretty much at the beginning. I was making pizzas. Anna was a teacher and she started [later when] I opened my third location. Anna’s been with me for over 20 years. My mom would make biscotti for the places, and my mom and dad would make the ravioli for our pastas – everybody was doing everything.”
And how about your wife, Elena? We know the famous story from Terroni folklore, where Elena, newly arrived in Toronto from Italy, has a man come in inquiring about “a table for six”, and, mishearing him, says, “We don’t do that here!”
I met Elena the summer before I opened Terroni. I was visiting Italy and Paolo knew Elena’s sister very well. …We met casually in the summer, but then I came back, and she was going to go to England to study languages, because she was an interpreter. Instead, she came to Toronto, because we kind of met and something was happening, and Paolo was living here and said, ‘Come to Toronto and you can stay with me.’
So, she came to Toronto, and we started our relationship. And then on December 4 of that year is when we opened Terroni. Elena, right from the start, when she was coming back and forth from Italy to Toronto, she was helping out washing dishes, making coffees… You’d walk into Queen Street, and it would be me, Paolo, Elena, my brother Vince, and friends. We’d be there all day, then we’d be cleaning, and then we’d go out at night, and wake up and do it all again. That was how that place grew.”
Paolo died early in the mid-1990s, just as you were thriving and opening a new location. How did you cope?
“Paolo passed away when we had just opened up Victoria Street. It was tragic. He was my best friend, and I talk about him all the time. He left a big hole in my heart, and in my business. He was the person that really showed me Italy. It was because of him that I started my business. It was thanks to him that I met my wife. When you take that leap, as a brotherhood and as a friendship, you never forget it.”
As you were grieving and trying to keep the business afloat, when did it become apparent that a new location was worth the risk?
“Queen Street really took off when we got the pizza oven and the liquor license. Once we started making pizzas, everyone was coming in. Then it happened pretty quick. A friend of ours who worked in the financial district in that building where Victoria Street was, said, ‘Listen, there’s this place downstairs and you should move over there.’ But it was an odd location, hidden on Victoria Street, and there was nothing really in front of us. But it was the financial district.
How was your sense of family at that point, in terms of relationships in and out of the business?
“Once Paolo passed away, the business became my business. I take a lot after my dad, and [need] to look after my family. Once my brother and sister started working with me, because they knew it was my business and they respected that, that was a very important thing.
It’s different than when you have your siblings working with you and your parents pass you the business, and you’re all in it together and you’re all equal. I don’t want to say that we’re not all equal, but it’s my business that I started, and they know that. There has never been a fight. Even to this day with my brother and sister, I feel really lucky that I have them with me. They always want my opinion, and I always want their opinion. There’s a mutual respect. It’s a business that I started, but they’ve been doing it their whole lives. They’ve put their lives and their everything into it, so they feel like it’s their business and they grew it with me. I think that what makes it easier for us is that everyone is aware of what they need to be doing.”
What about challenges within family relationships, particularly as Terroni is expanding with locations and tributaries around Toronto and even in Los Angeles?
“At the beginning, yes, everyone is crossing over. But I think when Anna, my sister, became involved in the early 2000s, I think there were enough locations – three locations at that point – that you needed everybody. If we’re all under one roof, it’s hard not to step on each other, but that’s the great thing about growing is that we could spread out a little bit and everyone could take on different responsibilities.”
And yet you’re still not inviting financial advisors or middlemen of any kind at this point?
“I don’t take rejection well, obviously. The rejection I got in school from the teachers made me who I am, and only made me stronger. So, early on, when I said [to bankers], ‘It would be nice, can you help me, I’m opening up another restaurant, I want to do something,’ they never helped me. I’m almost grateful to them, because the fact that they never helped me, every business that I own today, is paid for from my pockets, from my cash flow. When the door is open, it’s paid for. I don’t have debt. I don’t have partners. It’s my business. In my Terroni business, in my direct business, that’s how I grew it. Thanks to those bankers who said no to me.”
Were there ever points at which were frightened, making decisions alone? Perhaps when you moved your second location, Victoria Street, to the much larger Adelaide location?
An agent called me around that time and said you’ve got to see this place. I was like, ‘I can’t,’ because, financially, I know what I can do. But I walked into this building, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ It was about 10,000 square feet. Way bigger. At the beginning I always said I’d never do big restaurants; it’s too risky. Victoria Street was 1,800 square-feet. I was moving from a 60-seat restaurant to a 350-seat restaurant. That was a moment where I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to be careful.’”
So how did you handle the fear or risk surrounding that investment?
“I’m not going to do another project just to do another project. I could open up 50 restaurants if I wanted to. Back then, it’s just what I did. When I opened up Adelaide, I looked at the rent and said, ‘Okay, the rent is going to be this much; I pay this much at Victoria Street; This is how much is coming in… All I need to do is double my current business and I should be able to make it.’ This is how my mind was thinking. I didn’t have financial advisors to help me. I’d sit down with my accountant after, and I’d go, ‘Listen, this is the rent, what do you think the fixed costs are going to be, etc.?’ This was old school, written on a napkin kind of thing.”
How is your mother part of the business today?
“My father passed away, but my mother is still with us. She still makes the biscotti for me. We sell them at Bar Centrale, because we have people come in that want them, and I sell them there and one other location.”
How do your children show interest in the business? Will they be part of its future?
“All my kids have attended university, and my youngest is in her second year. Simona is my eldest daughter, she’s 25. She’s worked with me in the business since she was very young. Sofia is my second daughter, she’s 23, and she’s working in marketing with us. My son Matteo is 21, and is already working on the line, there. I didn’t think he was going to work in the kitchen, but he loves it. And Olivia, my youngest, is 19, and she’s in her second year at Queen’s [University]. We’ll see what she wants to do when she finishes school.
You’re known for having kept everything almost entirely within “la famiglia” for the duration of your business. What brought you to hire a chief operating officer now, after 30 years?
“After [the impact of] the pandemic, we didn’t want the confusion and crossover. When we were smaller, there was crossover. My brother could come into a restaurant and say something, then my sister could come into a restaurant and say something different. Then you’re mixing up your staff, and they feel like, ‘What’s going on? Who do I listen to?’
I hired a COO just this year. … He is the best thing that ever happened to us, because he just brings a different view. He organized the hell out of all of us. He came in here the first day and he said, ‘There cannot be crossover.’ After 30 years we’re still learning, and are you kidding me? It’s great. Everybody wants to be disciplined, organized and have their routine. But up until now, our 30th year, it was mainly family.”
How did pandemic affect you?
“I was worried. In all these years of business, I’m always worried, and I never take anything for granted. But COVID was such a long period of time, and having to lay off my staff three times, and then bring them back … I kept all my chefs and all my managers. Takeout was fantastic, and the support I got from takeout was huge. It paid my salaries.”
Did anything come out of your desire to bring life to your community during the pandemic?
“Porta is a business that came out of COVID. An acquaintance and investor, Andrew Black, met with me during COVID, and we spoke a bit more about how much takeout I was doing at the restaurant. We started thinking about what we could do with a line of frozen food that our customers could subscribe to. So, I make my pizza, blast-chill it, make my fresh pasta, blast-chill it, make my Bolognese sauce, blast-chill it … eight different types of pizzas, my little dessert jars, my croissants, blast-chill, etc., So you can have your Terroni food at home.”
We also talked to Matteo Mammoliti, Cosimo’s son about how his father and family inspired him.
“I’ve been inspired by him my whole life. I knew from when I was a kid that I always wanted to be involved with the restaurant. I’ve started more recently working in the kitchen, for about two
or three years. I’ve always loved it. He’s 100-per-cent supportive of what I want to create. I’ve started coming up with specials and trying out something new.
My mom is in the marketing department, which I’m also interested to try and see how that field works. What she’s done is amazing. I see my future as being in the family business, 100 per cent.
Everything that my mom, my dad, and my sisters do … I’m so proud of them.”
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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