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Jan 15,2006 - Jan 22,2006 |
26 - An empire built on peanuts
Vincenzo (Jimmy) Pulla took a handful of nuts and created an international business
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-12-22
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Vincenzo Pulla
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Can an empire be built starting from a handful of peanuts, roasted on a stove and sold to neighbourhood stores? Yes it can, and Vincenzo (Jimmy) Pulla is living proof of that.
Or rather not, because he looks much more like a grandfather spending Sundays at the park with his grandchildren than a gritty businessman. He's also very reserved and modest: "I worked hard," he says, "and now I'm collecting the fruits. But everybody else would, if they had done what I did."
Vincenzo (Jimmy) Pulla's "fruits" are facilities and stores all over the Toronto area and in Montreal, with seven companies controlled by Johnvince Foods, the flagship, producing and marketing under their own brand names or for big supermarket chains, hotels and restaurants, including tons of nuts, sweets, legumes, flour and even paper products (tablecloths, napkins, toilet paper, etc.). The group employs about 1,500 people, and the processing centre alone, at 555 Steeprock Drive in Toronto, covers 350,000 square feet.
He knows these figures by heart, but lets Vince Cimadamore explain them. Cimadamore is the store manager of the big supermarket annexed to the processing centre, and Pulla's right-hand man. "Ours," says Cimadamore, "is a big family. There are Jimmy's children, Joe, who's our company's VP and Rita who manages administration, and there are the closest managers, such as me, who he treats more like children of his. I don't say this to flatter him, he really is like a father to me. He trusted me, and I try and live up to his trust every day. Maybe this is the secret of our success."
Success that came with home-roasted peanuts. Vincenzo (Jimmy) Pulla smiles: "Precisely," he says. And he tells his story, that's no different from those of many other immigrants who left Italy looking for jobs, but adds an apparently important point: he sold roasted peanuts because nobody wanted raw ones.
"I arrived here," says Vincenzo (Jimmy) Pulla, "on May 2, 1958. I was 27, and I had already married Irma. It was nine days by ship to Halifax, then two days by train to Toronto. In my hometown, Limosano, in the province of Campobasso, I was a peddler. I had a shed that I loaded onto a pick-up. I toured the villages, stopping in the central squares assembling the shed and selling baccalà (Mediterranean codfish, dried and salted). But baccalà didn't make me enough money to live on. So I decided to come to Canada. Things turned out well, and that's all."
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