Nina Balducci, who served as a key figure in her family’s influential grocery empire, has died.
Balducci died at 91 on April 12, at her home in East Williston.
Born in Port Washington to fashion designer Marta D’Amelio, the owner of a children’s clothing store, and stonemason Michael D’Amelio, the founder and owner of North Shore Mason Supply Corporation in Great Neck, Balducci graduated from Simmons College in Boston in 1949 with a degree in business, and according to the New York Times soon began working in women’s boutiques.
Three years later in 1952, she would meet Andrew Balducci, a veteran of World War II whose father owned a grocery store in Manhattan. They would marry less than a year afterward, with both of them working for her father at the mason supply.
In time, though, the two would return to the market, dubbed Balducci’s, to run it with Andrew’s father Louis and brother-in-law Joe Doria.
A move in 1972 to a 5,000-square-foot storefront in Greenwich Village, bringing a premium butcher, a fishmonger, a greengrocer and imported food to one place, would establish Balducci’s as one of the foremost gourmet specialty stores in Manhattan, alongside Zabar’s and Dean & Deluca.
Nina Balducci’s sharp business acumen was evident with the store’s marketing.
Her niece later told Newsday that she had designed the logo and the bags, and would oversee the market’s catalog as the store catered to customers such as chef James Beard, “Vogue” magazine editor Anna Wintour, and then-budding Queens restauranteur Lidia Bastianich.
The Balduccis’ eldest daughter Maria later married Kevin Murphy, who built the store’s wholesale division.
In 1991 Murphy would create Baldor, which later broke from the business and now one of the largest wholesale importers in the region.
In 1985, the Balduccis bought out Doria and his wife, Grace, who would found Grace’s Marketplace on the Upper East Side. A Long Island location of Grace’s would open in Greenvale in 2008.
In 1999, the Balduccis sold their store to Sutton Place Gourmet, a chain of gourmet markets based in Maryland, which later took the Balducci name in 2004. It currently operates eight stores, with the last New York City store located on West 56th Street.
Balducci is survived by her daughters Marta and Andrea, her grandchildren Andy, Lisa (Aurelien), Christopher (Susan), T.J. (Christine), Kirk and Donald and great-grandchildren Nina, Lily, Luca and Georges. She was predeceased by her husband Andrew in 2018, and daughters Dena and Maria in 1991 and 2006, respectively.
The family planned a private interment at Mount Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, with a celebration of Balducci’s life to be held at a later date.
