By Paul Bufano
pbufano@hunter.cuny.edu
Salvatore Vacca
Photo by Meredith Whitefield Goncalves
In 1949, 19-year-old Salvatore Vacca left the small Italian island of Capri and embarked on a journey to the United States. He had little money in his pockets, but he carried generations of Italian tradition with him.
Vacca now owns A. J. Trucco, a multi-million dollar company that supplies dried fruit and nuts throughout the United States and Canada. But the company’s reputation was built up thanks to the Italian chestnut. Two-thirds of all the chestnuts Italy exports to the United States go to Hunts Point to be distributed by Trucco.
Vacca acknowledges his success, but speaks humbly about his accomplishments.
“It’s not just about the money; it’s about sharing the products that back home we take for granted,” said Vacca. “I have an emotional connection to chestnuts. Growing chestnuts on the hillside is a tradition that has been handed down from generation to generation.”
As a new immigrant, Vacca moved into Hells Kitchen, and started to work for Domenico D’Angiola, a food broker that represented Italian companies across the United States.
“I had a great relationship with D’Angiola, he even paid for me to come to America,” said Vacca. But Vacca didn’t get along with his mentor’s brother. So four years after Domenico died, he left and opened his own company, Salvatore Vacca.
Trucco, who had been a customer of Vacca’s’, approached him to join forces, and in 1965 Vacca bought Domenico D’Angiola. “It was the most beautiful day in my life,” he said.
A. J. Trucco was initially located at the Washington Market in Greenwich Village, but in 1967 moved to its present location at the New York City Terminal Produce Market in Hunts Point. Ever since, Vacca has followed the same routine. He arrives at work at 4:30 a.m. and doesn’t leave until 2 p.m. He enjoys being on the loading platform, talking and kidding with his employees and his customers.
“Nobody is a number,” he says of his 22 workers. “We joke around and we tease each other, it’s a big happy family. Wait until baseball season. Then we really have some fun.”
Still Vacca’s life doesn’t revolve only around work. He’s enjoys tennis and music, especially opera or jazz. And, he enjoys all things Italian, including soccer and cooking risotto.
Although business is good, Vacca says it would be better if the market weren’t so outdated. Like other owners in Hunts Point, he says he needs more space. He maintains a refrigerated warehouse in Vineland, New Jersey, to which all his products from Europe are shipped before they make their way to Hunts Point.
Despite his complaints, he doesn’t want to leave. Many of his employees live only blocks from the market. “If we move out of here, the Bronx is going to lose a lot of jobs,” Vacca says. “Many of my employees who live locally wouldn’t be able to afford to travel. I wouldn’t want to put anybody out of a job.”
Although its star is the chestnut, the company also distributes an assortment of other nuts and fresh and dried fruits, including, most recently, kiwis from Italy, Chile and New Zealand. Its prosperity, Vacca believes is based on “a special relationship with the growers, which allows for a level of quality control that many other companies simply do not have.”
No matter how much the company expands its product line, though, Vacca says chestnuts are still its lifeblood.
“Everything I own, I owe to chestnuts.”