Many Italian immigrants who arrived in the Northwest in the late 1890s found themselves toiling for low pay in dangerous and physically demanding jobs, such as logging or mining. Those who could find another way to make a living did so.
One of these newcomers was Angelo Merlino, born in 1867 in Taranta Peligna in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Merlino came to the United States as a young man and worked his way across the country, arriving in the Pacific Northwest in 1896.
He found work in the coal mines of Black Diamond, Wash., about 35 miles southeast of Seattle, and traveled often into the city for food and wine. Soon, he started importing cheese, pasta and olive oil in bulk, selling items to his fellow miners. He became so successful that he decided to quit mining and open an Italian grocery store.
A friend from the Piedmont region offered Angelo a loan and with the money, he opened Metropolitan Grocery Store in 1900. Not only did he supply the Italian community in Seattle with the food and wines they missed from the old country, but he also ran an informal bank. “The Abruzzesi – the people from the Abruzzo area of Italy – were very close, and they didn’t trust the banks. So they’d leave their money with old man Merlino, and he would put it in his safe,” Bruce Biesold, president of Merlino Foods, told the Seattle Times in 2015.
Metropolitan Grocery also served as a social hub and gathering place. Angelo knew what it was like to arrive in a new town, surrounded by strangers speaking a strange language. At his grocery store, newcomers could stop in to get recommendations about housing, ask about jobs or experience a touch of home.
In 1915, Merlino purchased a tract of land south of downtown Seattle where he built a two-story factory to make pasta. He told the local paper that he chose to build the Seattle Macaroni Factory in that particular location for its “paved streets, easy grades, accessibility to the depots, and low price of land….It is less than one mile from the heart of the city.”
As his business grew, Merlino had his share of ups and downs. In 1923, he faced a lawsuit brought by another olive oil importer who asked that Merlino be kept from using the map of the Kingdom of Italy on his olive oil label. The other importer was seeking $35,000 in damages, but a King County judge found in Merlino’s favor and denied the request.
As with many Italian families, Merlino’s sons Ubaldo and Attilio grew up in the business. Attilio told stories of working in the warehouse as a boy, filling up the olive oil bottles. By 1920, both sons were working for their father full-time, and the pair took over when Angelo retired in 1946. (Angelo Merlino died in 1957 at the age of 89).
Although Angelo Merlino & Sons was created to supply the Italian community with products not available or hard to find in the Northwest, the family soon embraced the culinary needs of other nationalities as well. The Greeks went to Merlino’s for goat cheese, the Spanish bought their olives there, and the Norwegians counted on them for lutefisk.
Ubaldo died in 1968. By 1976, as Attilio’s health was waning, Bruce and Phyllis Biesold stepped in to purchase Merlino’s. Both were well-acquainted with the food industry. For years, Bruce had managed distribution and operations for more than 30 local Kentucky Fried Chicken establishments.
Phyllis Biesold had grown up in the Italian neighborhood; her father Gill Centioli was Attilio’s godson. Centioli ran a restaurant in downtown Seattle called Gill’s Beachhead and Wheel Room, and was a local fast-food pioneer in the early 1950s.
The Biesold family began operating in a rented facility in Seattle’s Rainier Valley; Bruce was the only full-time employee. His wife Phyllis, along with sons Jeff and Todd and daughter Ronna, helped out in the evenings and on weekends. Later, Jeff and Todd started driving the delivery routes.
Today, Jeff Biesold handles sales, purchasing and customer service while Todd deals with finances and legal issues and Ronna works in the office. Both Bruce and Phyllis, now in their late 70s, still come to work two days a week.
“The business has come a long way from Angelo’s day,” said Jeff Biesold. “Although our heritage is firmly rooted in the Italian community, today we serve all aspects of the restaurant business. Our customer base includes most of the high-quality restaurants in town – the ones with the white tablecloths. We supply high-end bakeries and hotels, as well.”
The company hired its first non-family employee in 1978; today, it employs about 100 people. As in the early days when Angelo Merlino began the business, the customer remains king. “Service is everything in this business,” said Biesold. “We’re only minutes from downtown, so if a chef runs out of prosciutto during the lunch hour, I can dispatch someone with his order and get it to him in just minutes, even if it’s not his regular delivery day.”
Since 2007, Merlino Foods has occupied a 98,000-square-foot warehouse in south Seattle. Its seasonal product catalog runs more than 100 pages; the cheese offerings alone occupy a dozen pages. A variety of products are sold under the Merlino private label, including canned tomatoes and, of course, its signature product – Merlino’s extra virgin Italian olive oil – still one of the company’s best sellers today.
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