For Jonathan Iavarone, expanding the Iavarone Brothers store in the Lake Success Shopping Center was a matter of keeping up with the times.
“We were tight in the old spot. We were looking to accommodate our customers and expand the selection of what we offer,” said Iavarone, the manager of the family-run chain’s New Hyde Park location.
The store, which reopened in mid-November, now offers a more relaxed shopping experience with more than double its floor space – and a “super-sizing in the variety of the foods its offer, he said.
Iavarone said this includes a larger variety of baked goods, more groceries and more organic vegetables. The store now offers more gluten-free products, he said, along with a larger selection of imported and micro-brewery beers. The Iavarone Brothers delicatessen section now offers 100 prepared dishes a day, all freshly prepared in the store’s kitchen.
With a particular accent on its Italian foods, Iavarone Brothers’ selection of imported cheeses, pastas and canned tomatoes has also expanded. The store now offers 34 different antipasto items in its olive bar. And it has added lobsters – steamed to order – to a growing selection of seafood.
“We’re trying to accommodate everybody as best we can,” Iavarone said.
He said the store is sensitive to the age range of its customer base and adds products based on customer requests.
“We listen to the customer comments, good or bad,” he said.
So far, he said, business has been good since the store reopened.
The store, which has had a presence in the Lake Success mall since 1991, has been in its present location since 2001 and has been looking to expand for the past five years, Iavarone said.
When the Hallmark card store next door didn’t renew its lease, Iavarone said the company jumped at the opportunity to push its New Hyde Park store’s size to 9,500 square feet from 3,800 square feet.
The New Hyde Park store, which is located on Union Turnpike, is one of four locations in a chain that includes stores in Woodbury, Wantagh and Maspeth. The Maspeth location was the first one the Iavarone family opened outside of Brooklyn, where the chain had its origins in a pork store Jonathan Iavarone’s great grandfather, Pasquale, opened in 1927.
“It’s nice to have that history. You kind of want to make that past generation proud of you,” Iavarone said.
His father, Pasquale, is still involved in managing the New Hyde Park store and his uncles Joseph and John, are involved in managing the other stores. It’s a family business in which he said the family members “have a lot of mutual respect for one another.”
The current operations are somewhat distant retail relations to that original pork store. They carry some of the same traditional Italian meats and other products, but they generally serve a very different generation of customers. The increased variety of prepared foods is aimed at offering households with working couples an alternative to preparing meals themselves, Iavarone said.
“We try to offer enough of a variety to accommodate everybody’s tastes and interests,” he said.
The store’s reopening was originally scheduled for early November, but Hurricane Sandy forced the company to alter those plans.
The storm also prompted Iavarone Brothers to bring food daily to 1,000 workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the former Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, Iavarone said. I
avarone Brothers also brought trays of food to Island Park residents after the hurricane “ to give back,” he said.
The four Iavarone stores have also been collecting donations for the Red Cross from customers at its registers and planned to match those donations, to the tune of $30,000 to $40,000 when that donation drive ended at the end of December.
Iavarone Brothers in New Hyde Park continues to support the Ronald McDonald House with contributions on a regular basis, Iavarone said. Extending its community involvement, Iavarone recently became a member of the Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce.
A grand reopening party is planned for the New Hyde Park location in January or February, with what Iavarone called week-long “super-specials” to accompany the event.
