My grandmother shopped at Marcello Giordano’s grandparents’ store in Overbrook. I remember going with her to 62nd and Lancaster. There was a garage door gate and produce everywhere. Marcello’s grandmother also owned most of the stand-fronts and a lot of the storefronts along S. 9th Street from Washington Avenue to Federal. His family still has the iconic produce place there on the corner of 9th and Washington.
Giordano started working at his father’s Italian Market store when he was 8. He helped his family open the Overbrook store. “The lifestyle back then: If there was a Cub Scout thing on a Saturday, or Little League, that was on the back burner. You had to be at work,” he says. “Back then, it was like we were bred to build an army for the business.”
He and I have a lot in common. He dropped out of high school in February of 91. I dropped out in November of 91. We were both born two years apart to the day, February 23. We also share that hustle mentality. You see what’s missing in the game, and you come right in there.
As a kid, Marcello introduced new products to the Overbrook store — expanding into chips and juices. Back then, they delivered produce to local pizza shops; restaurant owners would come in for cash-and-carry goods. When the wife of the owner of Thai Pepper in Ardmore came in, everything changed. “I remember like it was yesterday. She started talking to my pop and me about Why don’t you try to delivery for us? I started delivering to restaurants up to the Main Line. We did very well,” he says.
“I wasn’t raised that when someone’s down, you step on their necks. You put your hand down and you lift them up.” — Marcello Giordano
Soon he was beating out much bigger purveyors with fleets of trucks and 15-person sales departments. He did it by making friends. His buddy Raoul worked at a new Old City restaurant called The Continental and told him to stop by. He did, met owner Stephen Starr, and Center City’s biggest restaurant group is still a client. So are chef-restaurateurs Marcie Turney, from her days at Audrey Claire, and Jose Garces, from opening Amada.
I love his ambition. A few years ago, he bought a 100-acre blueberry farm in Hammonton, NJ. You can see it right off the Atlantic City Expressway.
When Covid hit, Marcello went old-school. Letting go of workers seemed heart wrenching, so he “dug deep.” He went into his office, sat down, and came back out with an idea for a $35 essentials box containing eggs, butter, milk and fruit. To get the word out, he reached into his memory bank. “I remembered handing out fliers when we were opening the store in Overbrook when I was a little kid, going to City Line Shopping Center,” he says. They did the same thing again, four blocks north and four blocks south. “In 20 minutes, people were walking up, wanting to buy it.”
By the end of that first day, they had 200 customers. As the pandemic continued and other purveyors inflated prices, Giordano’s kept theirs the same. “I wasn’t raised that when someone’s down, you step on their necks.” he says. “You put your hand down and you lift them up.”
They sold 200,000 boxes that year — and still collaborate with Philabundance and the Garces Foundation on boxes for nearby schools. His next project is a garden grocery in Manayunk — like the pop-up he had for a while in Allan Domb’s building at 1845 Walnut Street. Marcello plans to train retail employees there like he does his workers who answer phones and drive his trucks.
“I tell them, ‘If they don’t like you, the lettuce will never be green enough.’ You gotta have that passion for what you do.”
West Philly born and raised with a slosh of Brooklyn, Big Rube partnered with Mitchell & Ness in 2000 to help make it a global brand marketing and selling high-end throwback jerseys. He has been photographing Philly since 2009, including in a Daily News Column from 2011 to 2017. He’s also a chef, operating Chef Big Rube’s Kitchen seven days a week at Pitcher’s Pub in Manayunk, selling the best handmade food in a Main Street dive bar.
