{"id":10169,"date":"2017-01-13T02:56:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T07:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=10169"},"modified":"2017-01-13T02:56:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T07:56:36","slug":"uncle-ginos-market-owner-comes-full-circle-with-new-store-in-brick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2017\/01\/uncle-ginos-market-owner-comes-full-circle-with-new-store-in-brick\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Gino’s Market Owner Comes ‘Full Circle’ With New Store in Brick"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gino<\/a>

Gino Palummo at his store in Brick, Uncle Gino\u2019s Market. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Gino Palummo\u2019s father came to Brooklyn from Italy in 1968, leaving most of his family behind, and took a job as a stock boy at a local market. Four years later at age 19, he bought the store.<\/p>\n

With that, the legacy of the family in the supermarket industry began. Palummo eventually brought his family to America and partnered with his brother to expand the business to seven Palummo Brothers stores in Brooklyn and Staten Island. His son, Gino, was born the same year the first store opened and he, too got into the business, eventually rising to vice president of Key Food, a large supermarket cooperative in New York.<\/p>\n

After years in the industry, the younger Palummo thought it was time to go back to his roots. He opened his first store, Uncle Gino\u2019s Market<\/a>, in Manalapan in 2015 and opened his second store Nov. 1, 2016 in Brick at the former Top Tomato location.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came full circle, back into retail,\u201d he told Shorebeat this week, explaining that what made him want to return to the local business was a lack of the old-time values, freshness and sense of community his father\u2019s stores once had. \u201cI\u2019m honored when people walk in my store. They\u2019re taking home food to put on the table to feed their mother, their father, their kids. It has to be quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Customers one day this week strolled through the aisles of the 7,000 square foot retail space, picking up fresh produce, fresh meat and poultry, a full slate of food items, and a wide selection of prepared meals and soups offered daily. Though much smaller than Shop-Rite and other massive supermarkets, Palummo believes his store can compete on price and best the competition on freshness and one major intangible \u2013 trust.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s \u201cno inventory\u201d at Uncle Gino\u2019s Market, Palummo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe handpick everything off the truck, he said. \u201cWe get deliveries seven days a week if we need to. Perishables are everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some items that can be left on the shelf for seven days are removed after four to guarantee customers receive the best quality products, Palummo said. But in addition to the food is service that is reminiscent of those stores his father and uncle once ran in New York during a different time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a throwback,\u201d Palummo said. \u201cThey tell me that it\u2019s like the old days when they grew up in Brooklyn or Jersey City. You walked in the store and you knew the butcher, you knew the cashier, and everyone knew\u00a0each others\u2019 kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating a second Uncle Gino\u2019s Market in Brick has taken a tremendous amount of work. It\u2019s not uncommon for Palummo to work seven days a week and put in 13 hour days. One staff member told a reporter Palummo personally oversees all of the store\u2019s operations. In the short amount of time since taking over the Top Tomato space, Palummo said he has cleaned the entire store from top-to-bottom, powerwashed everything, added brighter lighting and new paint. A new floor is next on the list.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to brighten is up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to buying and selling items, a special part of Uncle Gino\u2019s Market involves making prepared dishes and side dishes each day. The food sold at the store are served on Palummo\u2019s own table at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an outstanding chef, plus my dad\u2019s and my grandmother\u2019s recipes,\u201d he said, adding that the original chef at Top Tomato, who left to work at his store in Manalapan, has returned. \u201cOur grab-and-go section is pretty big, and then we dedicated half our deli case to different things, like stuffed artichokes, stuffed peppers, all those thing you like but might not have the time to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

A catering menu is now in the works.<\/p>\n

Polummo said the \u201cUncle Gino\u201d name came from not only plenty of nieces and nephews, but the tendency of his own employees and friends of his kids to refer to him as such. A resident of Farmingdale, Palummo said he always becomes involved in the communities he serves, including donating food to organizations or youth sports pasta parties. But most of all, he said, trust is earned, and he\u2019s in Brick for the long haul as his family business grows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a person here who cares,\u201d Palummo said.<\/p>\n

Uncle Gino\u2019s Market<\/strong><\/a>
\n515 Brick Boulevard
\nBrick, NJ 08723<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gino Palummo\u2019s father came to Brooklyn from Italy in 1968, leaving most of his family behind, and took a job as a stock boy at a local market. Four years later at age 19, he bought the store. With that, the legacy of the family in the supermarket industry began. Palummo eventually brought his family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,1649],"tags":[24,2708,2707],"class_list":["post-10169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-in-brick","category-local-business","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-top-tomato","tag-uncle-ginos-market"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/uncle_gina_brick.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2E1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}