DEL.ICIO.USAtlantan businesswoman takes her pasta on the road
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
The pasta truck rolls into Ansley Park, pulls up by a dogwood in full bloom and idles by the side of the road. Soon, a crowd has descended and a line has formed — a woman with a toddler on her hip, a little girl engulfed in a striped umbrella ignoring her mother, a lady in a gray slicker with an excited yellow Labrador straining at his leash.
Wait. Pasta truck?
Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com
Tom Lombardo and his daughter Lucy, 12, and son Sam, 10, hold fresh pasta as Elisa Cambino (second from left) checks her order list at her second stop in Sherwood Forest.
Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com
Elisa Gambino drives her truck twice a week to Atlanta neighborhoods to sell fresh ravioli to neighbors, who line up like kids waiting for Popsicles.
Indeed. If it weren’t for the pictures of ravioli rather than ice pops on the truck’s side, you might think this was the second coming of Good Humor. But no, instead of frosties, fettuccine is flying into eager hands.
“Thank you very much,” says Elisa Gambino, the truck’s driver, as she tucks a $20 bill into her satchel, turns on her heels, and addresses the next customer. “We’ve got lemon ricotta and porcini ravioli. Oh, and one order of sweet potato gnocchi left.”
Gambino, who runs the Via Elisa Fresh Pasta shop, has been delivering her wares to Ansley Park and neighboring Sherwood Forest for the past eight months. The service is a timely idea: People have been dining at home more than going to restaurants since the start of the recession. And Gambino has noted a 30 percent drop in her restaurant delivery business, consistent with the decrease in business that many area restaurants report.
“I bought the truck to make restaurant deliveries,” says Gambino with a rueful laugh, “but I wasn’t using it as late into the day. There was also a lot of construction [by the retail pasta shop] on Howell Mill Road. I wanted to find a way to get the pasta to the people.”
And so her weekly route began. Locals are thrilled with the delivery service. “Tuesday night is now officially pasta night in our house,” Ansley Park resident Cheryl Meddin says. “I don’t even think about cooking anything else.”
Meddin says she loves her new Tuesday routine — walking her dog around the block, picking up a cannelloni special and a loaf of H&F Bread Company ciabatta (which Gambino also sells), and nibbling the bread on the way home.
Growing roots, fame
Unlike an ice cream truck, the pasta truck doesn’t randomly cruise into a neighborhood and announce its arrival with, say, a loudspeaker blaring a Tarentella. Gambino has prescribed 45-minute, early-evening stops in each of the neighborhoods to which she delivers.
Most customers place orders via e-mail prior to delivery, although more than a few show up hoping to snag of a stray flat of ravioli. In addition to H&F bread, she also delivers Hope’s Gardens Pesto, and brings fresh produce to customers who subscribe to Serenbe Farms’ community-supported agriculture.
On Tuesdays Gambino’s truck stops in Ansley Park and Sherwood Forest; on Thursdays, she hits Brookwood Hills and her own neighborhood, Collier Hills.
The first home deliveries of sorts started four years ago when a neighbor who couldn’t get to the shop in time for dinner asked if Gambino would stop by in her truck. Two years after that, another customer persuaded her to bring the truck to Brookwood Hills.
“I love the social aspect of meeting people and making friends,” Gambino says of her deliveries. “I have always believed that a small business cannot grow unless it is rooted in the community, and I have tried to grow those roots with the truck.”
The pasta truck’s fame has spread. Customers in Vinings, Brookhaven, Buckhead and Morningside have asked Gambino to deliver to their neighborhoods too, but for now she’s resisting. With two school-age daughters, she likes to be home during her remaining free evenings.
‘Like a rock star’
Back in Sherwood Forest, the rain turns from a light drizzle to a steady downpour. Still, the pasta lovers keep coming.
Gambino pulls on her hooded rain slicker, cracks open the passenger-side door to her truck and sets a large umbrella over it, creating a makeshift tent. Customer Denise Massone soon pulls up in her car, her two preschoolers snug in the back seat, and darts under the umbrella.
“My kids know every Tuesday, we’re going to get pasta,” Massone laughs. “They’re happy.”
Adds Lisa Booth, the neighbor who keeps a spot for the truck in front of her house: “Kids love Elisa. They always want to get their picture taken with the pasta lady. She’s like a rock star.”
To wit, the next customer, 3-year-old Amalia Pompe, looks up expectantly from beneath her umbrella as Gambino readies the family order, a flat of sweet potato gnocchi, a jar of tomato sauce and a loaf of ciabatta.
Though Amalia declines to comment for this story, her father, Hjalmar Pompe, speaks for her.
“She’s a big fan,” he notes.