Italian deli and caterer near Schaumburg adds to post-pandemic success with grocery store

Having weathered the pandemic through grit and determination after opening barely a month before it began, Finuccio & Sons Italian Deli & Catering just outside Schaumburg has now doubled its size with the addition of a specialty grocery store.

Located at 1612 E. Algonquin Road, in a strip mall in unincorporated Cook County, the Italian grocery store opened last month in the next-door space previously occupied by State Farm.

“I always wanted to do a store,” owner Fino D'Agostaro of Palatine said. “The deli was an idea I had with a store.”

It was the deli and catering business that opened first in late January 2020. The impact of the pandemic was nearly devastating to the young establishment that didn't have much time to build up a loyal clientele. Nor was D'Agostaro able to demonstrate losses when applying for pandemic-related government assistance.

While the business had been his dream, D'Agostaro credited the strength of his wife Stacy for getting through those lean months, in which perhaps only two or three people per day would come in.

“It was very difficult,” he said. “I based the business on catering. But no one was having parties. Everyone was working from home. The only thing that saved us is that we make everything from scratch. I was always a firm from-scratch guy.”

Though the love and heartfelt philosophy behind his cooking and ingredients came from his family, much of D'Agostaro's business sense came from working for his father's Jaguar dealership in Palatine for about 20 years before its closure in 2017.

Having been poor at math earlier in life, he one day found himself thrust into the role of the dealership's accountant after the previous one abruptly resigned.

“If you get thrown into the fire, you have to do what you can to survive,” D'Agostaro said. “My father said, ‘You have to step up.' I have to be honest, that really helped me with business. It's something I do now with a blink of an eye.”

Things began to turn around for the catering business at Thanksgiving 2020. But the end-of-year holidays proved to be as much a curse as a blessing, as he struggled to keep up with a sudden demand that he hadn't had the opportunity to gradually build up to.

Now he's regularly called upon by businesses and hotels in the area, and finds himself adjacent to a redeveloping area of Schaumburg that promises more growth and demand.

Though his father owns the building in which the new business is located, D'Agostaro said it was really the area that made it right.

“It just happened that there was a space available,” he said.

He finds his dedication to the more labor-intensive practice of making his own bread and other dishes the key to the delayed success he's now experiencing.

“We're a scale above fast food. We're fast, but we're homemade,” D'Agostaro said. “Italian food is the number one to cater. You have to stand out. That was a big thing for me. How do you stand out in an environment where you're swarmed with competition?”

His teenage sons have helped with the business on the weekends since the beginning, but he's only recently been in a position to hire more help from a pair of high school students who come in during the afternoons.

The new grocery store space took longer than he'd intended to build out due to supply-chain issues, and his next goal is to add rare but in-demand items that true connoisseurs of homemade Italian dishes will appreciate.

“In a store, you're going to stock what sells,” he said.