News

May 11, 2017

Mazzone Merger Adds Global Partner

After decades as the owner of the dominant restaurant and catering company in the Capital Region, Angelo Mazzone, who started his empire with a Schenectady pizzeria in 1980 when he was 27 years old, is adding a partner with global reach.

The $58-million-a-year Mazzone Management Group is essentially being split into two entities: Its catering and business-dining wings are partnering with the international food-service conglomerate Restaurant Associates, and the area’s individual Mazzone restaurants will continue to operate as they have.

From customers’ perspective, little should change, said Mazzone, a tireless presence who often makes stops at half a dozen of his locations in a single day and plans to continue to do so. Mazzone, now 64, said maintaining local control of the business he built was the largest factor in accepting the offer from the Manhattan-based Restaurant Associates, which provides food service to such prestige clients as Google, Sony, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the U.S. Open. It is a subsidiary of Compass Group, headquartered outside London, which operates in 50 countries.

“We’d grown as big as I could take it,” Mazzone said. “I’m never going to settle for just being where we are. I’ve got to be greater and find the best way to get there. This company will allow us to get there.”

Restaurant Associates is investing an undisclosed sum in Mazzone’s institutional-dining operations, which generate about $32 million a year in revenue and comprise the company’s Clifton Park headquarters, mobile catering and private events at five locations, and business- and senior-dining dining wings with contracts at GlobalFoundries in Malta, the Empire State Plaza, Hudson Valley Community College and area retirement communities.

The partnership has been signed and will take effect in a couple of months, once paperwork, including transfer of liquor licenses is completed, according to Matt Mazzone, Angelo’s son and corporate chief financial officer. The new entity will be called Mazzone Hospitality LLC. Mazzone’s seven restaurants will continue to operate under Mazzone Management Group, either owned by the company outright or with existing business partners.

Operational and financial resources from Restaurant Associates will allow Mazzone to pursue big institutional contracts in the local and regional market, such as with hospitals, convention and entertainment facilities, and colleges and universities.

“They’re making a strategic investment to grow this market and expand this market,” said Matt Mazzone. “They like our brand, they like what we do … and they see the opportunity, if we had the right infrastructure, to take on a lot more business.”

He said preliminary projections from Restaurant Associates and Mazzone’s own research suggest the new merger could result in a tripling of business to institutional clients, to about $100 million in annual revenue, for Mazzone Hospitality LLC.

While declining to identify specific expansion plans, Angelo Mazzone gave an example of a company with a Capital Region presence that had asked Mazzone to consider taking on food service at its locations in Tarrytown and Burlington, Vt. While Mazzone previously was unable to consider the possibility, he expects to go after the contract with the backing of Restaurant Associates.

Restaurant Associates deferred comment to the Mazzone organization. “Their philosophy is, Ask Angelo; he’s still in charge,” said Mazzone.

The Mazzone company’s reputation was built over more than three decades on a foundation of service and an upscale experience, guided personally by Mazzone and a cadre of managers and chefs with extraordinary longevity for the hospitality industry.

Dominick Purnomo, co-owner of the 30-year-old Albany restaurant Yono’s, founded by his parents, recalled as a child visiting Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia soon after Mazzone bought it three decades ago as the headquarters for his catering operations. He’s followed and admired Mazzone’s career ever since.

“Whether you were dining at one of his restaurants, supporting a charitable cause at Glen Sanders Mansion or attending a wedding at Hall of Springs, there he was, making time for everyone,” said Purnomo.

Restaurant Associates, its name notwithstanding, is not especially interested in a-la-carte restaurants, Angelo Mazzone said. As such, Mazzone Management Group will continue to operate its seven restaurants, in some cases allowing senior managers who have existing profit-sharing arrangements to assume more ownership control.

“This is a huge opportunity for me, and I’m grateful to Angelo to have it,” said Jaime Ortiz, who has been general manager and business partner in the high-end steakhouse Angelo’s 677 Prime in Albany for the past two and a half years and is increasing his ownership stake. Ortiz, founding head chef of 677 Prime a dozen years ago, has worked for Mazzone for 17 years and was involved in many of the hospitality company’s major ventures, including, for a period, serving as the corporate head chef.

“Everything I know about the business and running operations, I learned from him,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz, echoing Mazzone, said, “Nothing major will change for a long time. We’re committed to the standards Angelo set.”

Mazzone, who started working in his grandfather’s pizzeria at age 11, earned degrees in hotel/restaurant management from Schenectady County Community College and the University of New Haven in Connecticut, returning to the Capital Region to work as a dining-hall manager at Union College. He became manager of campus dining services within two years, and a few years later left after purchasing what was then called Peggy’s Restaurant, near Proctors in Schenectady, on the footprint of what is today Aperitivo Bistro, one of Mazzone’s seven restaurants.

His next big move, in 1988, was the purchase of Glen Sanders Mansion, a 17th-century estate on the banks of the Mohawk River in Scotia. Mazzone expanded the property to include ballrooms and other banquet facilities, added an inn in the mid-1990s, and began branching out, taking on the catering contract for the Hall of Springs at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Mazzone’s growth has been explosive in the past dozen years, starting with 677 Prime in Albany in 2005, a northern sibling, Prime at Saratoga National in 2007, business- and senior-dining wings, and a-la-carte restaurants in Albany, Clifton Park, Latham, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Scotia.

“I always say when I grow up I want to own just one restaurant,” Mazzone said. “This will allow us the opportunity to grow one part of the company but really get back to being with the customers at the restaurants, going out to meet the bride and groom’s parents at a wedding.”

He said, “Restaurant Associates is putting in more (money), but we’re still running the company.”

Source: Times Union