 People think catering leads to an overnight success, but only after 48 years of eating, sleeping, and drinking business did Dente's Catering become an "overnight" success. Biagio A. Dente, certified executive chef, was born and raised in the grocery business and always had a passion for cooking -- he began at age 10 and even has the mark to prove it. Decades later, the scar still remains from a time when he was cooking a piece of chicken and burned his leg, but that never stopped him.
Years later after he graduated from high school, he worked for several restaurants and for the ACME market as a meat cutter in New Jersey. When he returned to Pennsylvania in 1959, he opened Dente’s Market in West Pittston, but three years later, the store closed.
“When I was in Jersey, I used to work with different caterers, moonlighting from the ACME to restaurants,” Biagio said. “When I got back home, I showed my talents to different people–– doing funerals and parties from the grocery store–– and it just magnified, so we had to close the grocery store and go into catering full time.”
Dente’s Catering was created as a spin-off from the grocery store in 1962, but his success as a caterer was not the only thing that influenced him to switch from the grocery business to the catering business. Before he was allowed to marry his wife, he had to prove to her parents that he could support her with the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. Her parents wouldn’t accept Biagio as a grocer, so he told them he was going to be a caterer. They got married on April 23, 1962 and did their first catering party May 1st for 30 brownie girl scouts. Biagio did the cooking, his wife served the food, and they both loaded the trucks and cleaned.
“I like catering because compared to a restaurant, restaurants have a lot of down time,” he said. “Instead of waiting for the customer, we’re attracted to the customer and we go out and do the party. Catering is hard work and you work sun up to sun down, a lot of 19-hour days, but I like it. It’s a lot of action and you’re always doing something different in different environments all the time.”
To this day, Dente’s Catering has served thousands of parties including social events, corporate events, weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries, graduation parties, and grand openings. The largest party ever catered was for the World Wide Church of God and had 430 people on site, which required all 50 full- and part-time employees to work. At Christmas, a few years ago, Dente’s catered to 26 parties in 24 hours, serving six parties that day and dropping off food to 20 parties. Biagio does all the cooking himself in his home kitchen with help from his son, Blaise, and the Lord.
“We’re getting into a continuation of business; my son has taken over and he’s doing very well,” Biagio said. “We have pictures from when he was seven years old, making sauce, and now he’s 40. The Lord is with us, too. We always feel like we have one extra person in the kitchen with us. He’s been good to us because some of the things we’ve been through have to be divine intervention.”
Biagio and his family have been through many challenges to find success, but the toughest challenge was coping with the loss of their daughter. She died 20 years ago, at 23 years old, from rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of rapid-growing cancer.
“When she passed away, myself and my wife couldn’t care less about the business,” he said. “We didn’t book a party for a month. That was a low time in our business and the lowest time in our life. Through the grace of God, our faith got strong. That’s the only thing that pulled us through, our faith.”
Biagio’s faith has helped him resolve several other challenges, even other people’s problems, unrelated to catering. He’s been there to help the bride who got stuck on the alter when the groom took off. He adjusted the wedding plans when the groom got injured the night before and was getting surgery on the wedding day. He even catered to a party in which no one spoke English, but still found a way to communicate and show everyone what they were eating.
“We’ve had customers who have been with us for years and they keep coming back because they like our food, they can trust us and it’s consistent,” Biagio said. “We can serve you five times in a week and it will taste the same five times. You know if we’re coming out to do your party, it’s going to be done with the best of food, the best of service, and reasonable prices.” |
