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Wiscon grows from pizzeria supplier to cheese powerhouse By Brigid Sweeney - Medill News Service When Pasquale Caputo set about creating his American dream after immigrating from Italy in 1954 and working a variety of jobs, he took a hint from a quintessentially American company. He studied at Hamburger University, McDonald’s worldwide management training center in Oak Brook. “My dad saw the product … came in prepared already,” his son Natale said. “The tomatoes were sliced already; the lettuce was shredded. So he thought about the same thing for cheese and he started shredding mozzarella for pizzerias.” With that bit of innovation, Pasquale and his wife René founded Melrose Park-based Wiscon Corp. in 1976. Wiscon, which makes the Caputo cheese line, now employs more than 100 people and, according to Natale Caputo, sales will hit $50 million this year. The Melrose Park facility encompasses 200,000 square feet, including the Caputo Cheese Market and a cheese-aging facility. Wiscon also operates warehouses in Boston and San Francisco and co-owns a manufacturing plant in Brazil. These days, Natale Caputo runs the business while his father acts as the company’s “cheese executive officer,” traveling the world to visit suppliers. The son, whose history at Wiscon dates back more than 20 years to his days as a 10-year-old cashier, said his father never pressured him to take over. Still, he never considered doing anything else. “My father gave me one prerequisite: graduate from college,” he said. “I did, and then came right back.” When Natale Caputo took over in 1997, Wiscon had posted $17 million in revenues the previous year. As Wiscon grew, it expanded both its customer base and its offerings from north of the border, and around the world. Where it once sold mozzarella, the company now sells several hundred varieties of international cheeses, including about 30 different Caputo brand cheeses. Its clients, once mainly pizzerias, now include thousands of food distributors, hotels and restaurants, including the national Buca di Beppo chain. “The success came from hard work, without a doubt,” Natale said. “Long hours, honest work and business ethics. We keep it as simple as possible.” Luck, he is quick to point out, also helped. “People really started eating Italian cheeses around 1990,” he said. “Things really started taking off, and they haven’t stopped,” though Sept. 11 did temporarily hurt sales to hotels, which placed fewer orders as Americans scaled back travel. Giovanni DiNigris, the owner of Evanston’s Trattoria Trullo, has used Caputo cheeses throughout his restaurant’s seven-year history. He said he chose Wiscon for its quality service and fresh products. “In all these years I have never had a headache,” he said. “No matter what I need, they provide it. My customers always ask, ‘What kind of cheese is this? Where is it from?’ They love it.” Such enthusiasm helped to revive the Caputo Cheese Market, a specialty grocery and deli which closed during the 1980s as Pasquale Caputo steered the business toward food-service distribution. “We reopened the store in the early ’90s because people kept coming to the door, knocking and asking for product,” Natale said with a chuckle. “We’d be selling one person five pounds here, another three pounds there.” The 10,000-square-foot market features more than 1,000 cheeses from dozens of nations. There are also plenty of fresh Italian foods from the deli, bakery and produce sections, as well as packaged goods like pastas and wines. Business is so good, in fact, that Natale plans to open at least one more outlet next year. Because the cheeses he carries can cost more than mass lines, he is targeting several upscale locations. Chicago’s Lincoln Park and Bucktown neighborhoods are on the short list, along with Lake Forest. As Natale plots Wiscon’s future, his father focuses on civic contributions. Heavily involved in local and national Italian organizations, he has served in such capacities as chairman of Chicago’s Columbus Day parade and host of Miss Italia beauty pageants. He owned a professional Italian basketball team for several years. “He paid to fly a 50-piece orchestra in from Italy for the parade,” said Joanne Serpico, president of the parade sponsor, the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans. |
