Mama’s Recipes

Madelyn Alfano has just the cure for even the heartiest of appetites: Her mom’s Italian recipes. The owner of Maria’s Italian Kitchen grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor. She wanted to help take care of people. Alfano’s career path took a different route after college, when she worked as a cashier and produce girl at her parent’s neighborhood deli in Brentwood. Working for the family, allowed her to combine her love for food and people. “The customers and the conversation is what I loved,” Alfano said. “I loved being a part of their family.” In 1985, Alfano acquired a small café in Sherman Oaks and opened the first table-service Maria’s Italian Kitchen, serving her mother’s recipes and the dishes she loved as a child. She has expanded Maria’s Italian Kitchen to nine locations serving the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles. In 2010, the company put their business on wheels with the first Maria’s Gourmet Mobile Food Truck. Although running ten establishments can prove a daunting task, Alfano ensures that each location remains consistent with the values and recipes she grew up with. Question: Tell me about your childhood and growing up in an Italian family. Answer: I was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. From Hoboken, my parents moved to Long Island, New York. It was a small town called Copiague. My dad was a truck driver and my mom opened a little Italian delicatessen around the corner from where we were living. And having five children and a husband who was a truck driver, she did this all on her own. It became so successful and got so busy that my dad quit his job and worked with her in the delicatessen. So I learned at an early age about entrepreneurship and about really taking care of your customers and making sure you treat every single person who walks through your door as if they were a very special person, your family. Q: Did you want to get into the food industry when you were young? A: No. Since the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a pediatrician. I love learning. I love children. I love taking care of people. Q: I understand you got your bachelor’s in psychology. A: Originally I went in as a pre-med student. So I took all the chemistry, calculus and all the courses required as a prerequisite for medical school. I was living in a sorority house at UCLA and there were two girls living there that were pre-med students. They were so stressed about the studies and it was just so competitive. I didn’t want to be so competitive with my peers. So I continued with a psychology degree. After graduating, I started working in my parent’s deli in Brentwood, in takeout. I put in a lot of my personal principles of organization and structure that my parents didn’t partake in. I created a little more structure in their business. I drove my dad a little crazy because he liked doing things his way. But I also think they welcomed my business savvy. Q: Do you love to cook? A: I don’t consider myself a cook. I do cook, and I can work every station at Maria’s. I always say I’m the best dishwasher in the company. I’m very organized. I think I’m a good restaurateur because I understand everyone’s position and their place at Maria’s. Q: What inspired you to get into the restaurant business? A: Well at 8 or 9 years old, I was standing on a milk crate and working as a cashier. My dad put me in front and said “Ok, I’m gonna be in the back, you stay up here and take care of the customers.” I would ring people up, pack their groceries and ask them how their day was. I delivered groceries; I would help people make decisions on what they were going to eat. I found that I enjoyed customers who came in, because they really loved going to a family business and they loved the neighborhood interaction. We were part of everyone’s family. When we came out here and my parents took over the Village Mart in Brentwood, I was around 13 or 14 working the cash register or produce. I was the produce girl one day so I learned all about produce and how to take care of it. But really the customers and the conversation is what I loved. I loved being a part of their family. Q: What’s your least favorite part of running a business? A: My least favorite part is the litigious nature of California and the legislation. There are so many laws that come down from Sacramento with little or no thought about how it’s going to affect the job creator, which are the business people. I spend a lot of time in Sacramento, speaking to our legislators to protect our fellow small-business people. Some (legislators) are just absolutely unreasonable. Q: Explain the transition that took place in taking a small deli in Brentwood and creating the business that Maria’s is today. A: Well my parents had their grocery store in Brentwood and then they created the first Maria’s Italian Kitchen takeout. It still exists today in Brentwood. My parents eventually sold the grocery store and the man that bought the grocery store didn’t know how to operate the meat department. So my mother volunteered me to do that. I subleased out the meat department and deli and created an international deli. I had fresh meat, fresh chicken, fresh fish and all these fresh cheeses and cold cuts. The owner then sold the market again, and I moved my deli across the street to my own business where I signed a lease. That was in 1984. That same year, my parents sold the original Maria’s to two guys. At the same time, I was approached by someone that owned a building in Sherman Oaks. She told me she had a tenant that didn’t know what they were doing. She said “someone told me you could help him.” So, when I came to the Sherman Oaks location, the place was a pizzeria called Jo Mamas. The owner asked “what should I do?” I told him I didn’t think he should be in the business. The bottom line is I took him out of his misery. I bought the space from him, I hired him and he became my first pizza man in the first sit-down Maria’s Italian Kitchen in Sherman Oaks. I then grew the concept from one to another; to Woodland Hills, Encino, Northridge, etc. It was all from my cash without any investitures or banks or anything. Banks won’t loan money to restaurants very freely. I own all of the Maria’s restaurants. In 2003, I bought back the original Maria’s from the people my parents had sold it to. That was great to do. Q: How did you decide what went on the menu? A: Our core menu is basically dishes we used to eat at home with the family, spaghetti with marinara, meatballs, sausage and pepper. We make our sausage from scratch. What’s great about our sausage is there are absolutely no nitrates or preservatives. It’s completely natural product. It tastes really good. Our lasagna is my mother’s recipe. Q: Did your mother write down all of her recipes and give them to you? A: Well my mother never writes anything down so it was challenging in getting the recipes from home to a restaurant and keeping some consistency. So every time she would make a dish and say “Now I’m going to put some salt in,” I would say “Wait! Let me measure it first” or “How much wine are you putting in that?” She would tell me she was putting three onions in and I would ask “Well are they big onions or small onions?” I really sat with her, right next to her, and wrote every single thing down. One of the things that are difficult in having nine restaurants is making sure there is that consistency between the restaurants. Everyone has a different sized hand and timing is different with everyone. Q: Talk to me about your famous rosemary bread. A: Well, when I first opened Maria’s, I ordered a dozen rolls, maybe two dozen, for sandwiches. In Brentwood, it was a takeout, so people would order at the counter and then sit down. No one really asked for bread. Two customers came in one day and sat down. I walked over to them and asked what they would like and made some suggestions from the menu. They said “we’ll take the spaghetti and fettuccini. And, could we have some bread?” I thought if I gave them a roll that would be one less roll I had to make a sandwich. What if someone came in to order sandwiches? I grabbed some pizza dough and stretched it out. I took some rosemary, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and hot red chili flakes. I cooked the oil and brushed it over the dough. I put the dough in the oven, let it cook and cut it up into pieces. I brought it out to the table and said, “This is our bread.” They asked me what it was called. I said “Rosemary bread.” I just came up with that name and that’s how the rosemary bread started. It’s the most popular dish on our menu and the least expensive dish on our menu because it’s free. I even decided to put it on the back of our t-shirts. It says, “I love the rosemary bread” because that’s what everyone always tell me when they see me. Title: President and CEO age: 54 College: Bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA Most Admired: Mother, Maria Alfano Career Turning Point: In 1994 when grew from one restaurant to four restaurants. I realized I was no longer in the restaurant business- I was in the business of running restaurants Personal: Married, three children Q: Does your mom ever come in and critique the food? A: Yes. She comes in and will yell on occasion in her Hoboken, Italian style. For the most part, everyone knows her and appreciates her critique. If something is not right she will go right into the kitchen and speak to the cook and say “Hey this is how you do it.” For the most part I think she’s pretty happy with the way things are. I know she’s very proud of me and what I’ve accomplished. Q: What has been the most challenging time in the 25 years that you have been in business? A: I would say in 1994, when we had our earthquake (in Northridge). I was just finishing construction on my fourth restaurant in Northridge. Our Woodland Hills restaurant, which I opened in 1988, burned to the ground. The Sherman Oaks restaurant was badly damaged. Banks weren’t lending money and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) took forever. So, I had to take my staff from my Woodland Hills location and move them to Northridge. We then opened on Feb. 13 of that year. As far as the Sherman Oaks location, we did our best to clean it up. We took all the food that we had in the restaurant and brought it to the park on Hazeltine. All of the apartments (surrounding the park) were damaged and people were literally living in the park. We served all of our food to the community. We didn’t do it for press or anything like that. It was the right thing to do. Q: What would you say is your key to success? A: I think you have to be resilient to change and resilient to all of the natural disasters that can happen. For me, the earthquake was one (natural disaster), the first recession. I’ve been through three recessions now, but this is the worst. With every recession, we’ve learned to be a little forward thinking. In 2009, I initiated half-portions on our menu. Everyone is looking to economize and eating out, although a way of life, can become a privilege. We want to make sure we take care of our loyal customers and make them feel like we are there to support them. My greatest inspiration was my son Max, who died in 2000, because he taught me that you can survive any circumstance with a positive mental attitude. When he died I didn’t learn anything. I learned from his life. It was challenging for him to do just the little things, yet he was a remarkable inspiration for me. Q: Do you cook for your family at home? A: My family always laughs because when I cook, I cook for twice as many people and I make a lot of variety. What I love about the kids now is they observe and appreciate things when we go to a restaurant to eat. They appreciate balanced color on a plate and comment on the rapini being overcooked. I have a bunch of gourmands now. Cooking to me is an extension of entertaining. If I could be a stand-up comedian or lounge singer, I would. I don’t think anyone would pay me to do that, so I have to stick to the restaurant business.