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Number of Stores: 3 (Fourth opening in March 2009)
Location: Denver Area
Year Established: 1978
Size of Tony's Original Dry Creek Market: 6,700 square feet
Average Number of Employees Per Store: 65 to 75
Owners: The Rosacci family
Web Site: www.tonysmarket.com


It's Wednesday morning, and a grandmother is gently coaxing her granddaughter in the direction of some perfect asparagus spears that stand at attention among the market's colorful array of produce. "We'll get these for mommy and daddy's dinner," says the grandmother, enthusiastically selecting a bunch. They move through the small, amply stocked store, gathering the makings of a wholesome meal -- pausing occasionally to discuss the role some freshly caught salmon from the seafood counter and a bottle of Italian olive oil will play in that night's dinner.

Their very presence in the store -- not to mention the unhurried pleasure with which they are shopping it -- is as sweetly Old World as the market itself.

It's just a typical weekday morning at Tony's Market in the Denver suburb of Centennial, Colo., which means Tony Rosacci and his son Danny are out on the floor, greeting customers both young and old with a neighborly: "How's everything today? What can I get for you?" They're also sizing up their gleaming display cases so expertly stuffed with the freshest meats, seafood and prepared dishes that they appear to defy the laws of geometry.

"The case looks great today," says Danny, smiling at the butcher and surveying the house-made barbecued brisket, pork, turkey and ribs he's just piled into neat, saucy rows. While Tony's Market has a repertoire of some 500 recipes, the wildly popular barbecued meats are a mainstay.

It's early now, but the store soon will be bustling with people. "We think of it as controlled chaos," says Danny, describing the beehive of activity that is Tony's Market.

That the 30-year-old store runs like an enviably efficient hybrid -- one that offers the quality and customer service of days gone by with the savvy and pace of specialty food retailing today -- is no accident. When Tony's opened in 1978, it was an old-fashioned meat market with beef hanging on a rail and sawdust on the floor. It was also a dream come true for Tony Rosacci, his wife and their three children.

As a little boy, Tony lived with his Sicilian grandparents in an Italian neighborhood of Detroit, where he savored the experience of shopping for meals with his grandmother. At each stop -- the butcher, the cheese shop, the bakery -- they were offered samples from friendly shopkeepers: a bit of salami or a piece of Italian bread. "It was an adventure," recalls Tony. "It was how I fell in love with the food business."

It's that good old-fashioned service that distinguishes Tony's Market, a place where a new generation of children, parents and grandparents are discovering their sense of culinary adventure.

The Balducci's of the West
Tony and his young family moved from California to Colorado in the late 1970s. An experienced butcher, he had always dreamed of owning his own family meat business. So, in 1978, when a 7-Eleven closed down in a strip mall near the Rosacci family home, they decided to buy the place and turn it into a butcher shop. The entire family worked at their collective dream, including the three kids, who helped out after school.

"We grew pretty quickly," recalls Danny of the business. "One day, we had some extra hamburger meat, my mom made meatballs, and our deli was born." From there, it was making sandwiches with their fine meats and then some potato salad to accompany the sandwiches. And it wasn't only the store's offerings that enjoyed rapid growth. Each time one of the businesses that had occupied the strip mall would close, the Rosaccis would buy the space and incorporate it into Tony's Market. Today, the store is about 6,700 square feet, including back-of-the-house kitchen space.

Now a full-fledged specialty food store, Tony's customers have dubbed the market "The Balducci's of the West." While meat and seafood are still the backbone of the business, the deli/prepared foods area has come into its own. "There are people who drive hundreds of miles for our lasagnas, meatballs and spaghetti pie," says Danny. Tony's sells an impressive 1,500 lasagnas during the holiday season alone, and between 500 and 600 pounds of meatballs a week, year-round.

Tony's other son Mick Rosacci is the gourmet guru behind many of the prepared food department's recipes, which are flawlessly executed by the team of approximately 20 culinary graduates who work at the store. "Our prepared foods and deli are nearly toe-to-toe with our meat and seafood, and may overtake them in another three to four years," notes Danny, who attributes the shift to an American culture that finds less and less time to cook from scratch.

Abbondanza!
While there are many Italian influences at Tony's Market -- from the boxes of Panettone that hang from the ceiling during the holiday season to the overflowing platters of eggplant parmesan in the prepared foods case to the bakery's perfectly golden pignoli cookies -- the emphasis overall is on a wide variety of specialty foods from the Mediterranean, America and around the world. But when it comes to merchandising philosophy, Tony's is all about abbondanza.

"The word abbondanza is actually in our mission statement -- or what we call our guiding principles," says Danny of the Italian word for abundance. "It's like my father always says, 'If you have room for five pounds of tomatoes, you put out 10.'"

One quick look around this closely knit, perimeter-focused store and you immediately understand the merchandising philosophy that keeps customers coming back for more. "We display with food," explains Danny. "We don't have a lot of cute signs. It's just clean, fresh, extraordinary things to eat."

Meats, Cut to Order
Given Tony's beginnings as a butcher shop, it's not surprising that all meat is cut to order at the meat counter, which takes center stage along the back perimeter wall, visible from the entrance to the market.

Equally understandable is Danny's assertion that Tony's buys only the best meat in all of Colorado, which he says with such no-nonsense certitude that you're more than willing to take him at his word. But before anyone can nod in agreement, he's pulling out a sheet of paper and illustrating the levels of U.S. beef quality using a pyramid as a visual aid.

"We buy the top 12 percent of beef in Colorado," says Danny, drawing a thick decisive line, well above where he's written the word "choice" on the pyramid. "We buy from the upper one-third of choice and all of prime," he explains. Then, as if suddenly realizing that not everyone lives, breathes and eats meat like a Rosacci, he adds, "You see, beef is my passion."

So much so that five years ago, Danny began posting on www.tonysmarket.com the results of the third-party testing he commissions on every piece of beef, pork, lamb and veal he puts in his meat case. In the five years since the testing began, Danny has never had a single piece of meat test positive for pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic hormones, a fact which he believes speaks to the high quality of his suppliers. To ensure that his staff understands these quality issues, Danny takes his entire meat department and all of Tony's managers to visit these suppliers each year.

The Freshest Seafood
Tony's well-earned reputation for refusing to compromise on quality is not exclusive to the Colorado beef-producing community. Seafood suppliers from the East, West and Gulf coasts -- many of whom have worked with the Rosacci family for these last 30 years -- know a thing or two about Tony's propensity for cherry-picking. "Our fish is flown in on commercial airlines each day around 3 a.m. for arrival in our stores by 8 or 9 a.m.," explains Danny. "We check the temperature and quality of all the fish, and if it's not perfect, we refuse the shipment. Our fish suppliers understand that we only want the best, and they give it to us, because they don't want us sending it back."

Touchdown Catering
From the moment Tony's offered prepared foods, it offered party trays, platters and more. Trouble was -- no one knew it. Today, there's not a Bronco football player, television station or wedding planner in town that doesn't know Tony Rosacci Fine Catering Company.

To get the catering side of the business the attention it deserved, the Rosaccis moved the Catering Company to a separate facility with its own kitchen. The business, run by Tony's third child, Avie Rosacci-Williams, also has its own Web site and logo, but with enough similarities to Tony's Market that it's clear they're all related.

The strategic positioning paid off. For the past four years, Tony's has been the caterer for the Denver Broncos, working with the team dietician to satisfy the nutritional needs of each player from quarterbacks to linebackers during training camp and the regular season.

Another of Tony's high-profile catering accounts included MSNBC and NBC during the Democratic National Convention, which met in Denver this past August. But like most catering businesses, the core of Tony's Fine Catering remains weddings, fundraisers and other large events.

Customer Service and a Tire Change
From the cut-to-order meats to the milk sold in glass jars to the rich, comforting smell of roasted balsamic chicken coming from the kitchen, there's a lot about Tony's that inspires feelings of nostalgia for the way we were. But the Rosaccis would tell you that the warm and fuzzies you may experience while shopping their store are simply a response to unbeatable customer service.

"The only thing better than friendly service is friendly service from people who know what they're talking about," asserts Tony. With this in mind, many of Tony's butchers are not only experienced meat-cutters; they're culinary grads who can tell customers what to buy and how to prepare it.

A commitment to knowledgeable and friendly service is also one of the reasons the Rosaccis play a daily and hands-on role in their business. "My father and I are the best carryout boys in town on a busy day," says Danny, who notes that "titles don't mean much in a family business." The Rosacci family's willingness to bring their work ethic to the store and leave egos behind has served them well. "We're like a jigsaw puzzle that fits together perfectly," says Danny. "Our responsibilities are based on drawing on our individual strengths."

When the owners have a can-do attitude with regard to customer service, it doesn't go unnoticed by their employees. "I can't tell you how many times our meat-cutters have changed a customer's flat tire," says Danny. Indeed, the willingness of the staff to be of help in this regard was evidenced later that morning, when TGR was asked if we owned the black Honda out front -- one of the meat-cutters had noticed its back tires were low.

Retailing Mindfulness
How does Tony's cultivate employees with this kind of attention to detail? The answer -- mindfulness -- is part retail expertise, part Buddhism.

"Practice mindfulness" is the fifth principle on Tony's Market's list of five guiding principles. Functioning much like a mission statement, these guiding principles provide a mental checklist for employees as they make decisions on the job.

Danny has taped an abbreviated version of the guiding principles to his computer keyboard. It reads:

Put our customers first.
Maintain integrity and honesty.
Deliver the highest quality.
Give the experience of abbondanza.
Practice mindfulness.

"I could get rid of the first four if I could teach our employees to practice mindfulness -- to be completely present in everything they do," admits Danny. "If your job is mopping the floor, that means the floor is going to be spotless. It means you'll put up a sign before you begin mopping so customers won't slip and fall. It means you'll be aware of what you're doing and everyone around you as you mop."

When employees approach their work with concentrated awareness, they naturally put the customer first, maintain integrity, deliver the highest quality and so on. "Mindfulness is the hardest concept to teach," says Danny, "which is why we're always working on it."

Another benefit of practicing mindfulness is that it teaches the team at Tony's to listen to their customers and appreciate their needs -- which are always changing. "Nothing stays the same," says Tony. "It either gets better or worse. As retail managers, our job is to make sure that things keep getting better for our customers." Now that's a philosophy everyone can understand.

Comments? jstrailey@gourmetretailer.com