Barbones Plan Big Move
12/28/2005 9:00:00 AM
What compels two brothers of Italian, French Canadian and English heritage, one who majored in forestry and the other in philosophy and sociology, to open a Mexican food distribution company?
The same thing that propelled their Italian father more than 30 years earlier to start the same business.
Opportunity.
And opportunity is what might put their new warehouse - beginning in the spring - at the state psychiatric hospital property in Middletown that the city has wanted to develop for years.
After 13 years, Dan Barbone and Lou Barbone Jr. have outgrown their 8,400-square-foot warehouse on North Street, with its piles of boxes to the roof, and are looking to expand. That means building a 20,000- square-foot warehouse to accommodate current and projected growth. This will be financed by a $1.3 million loan they have applied for through a family-owned, small-business loan program announced in July by city leaders in Middletown, Newburgh and Port Jervis to bring jobs and taxes.
For the Barbones, the hospital property is a good location for a new warehouse. But for the City of Middletown, the Barbones' relocation would be the start of "a very good thing," said Neil Novesky, Middletown economic development director. He said industry on the property would enhance the tax base of the city. That's the taxes part.
It was Lou Barbone Sr.'s time spent growing up in California that first introduced him to the south of the border cuisine. And when he moved to New York in the late 1960s, and saw that the Mexican restaurants here weren't getting the fresh products they needed, a business was born.
But by 1990, it had gone through a business life cycle; success, followed by financial problems and finally the sale of the company. When his two sons, Dan and Lou Barbone, saw the new management begin losing clients they saw an opportunity to get back in the business; like a second wind for the family.
They began Best Mexican Foods and started by picking up the New York clients the old business was losing, and eventually getting more of their own by spreading into New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. They started from just the two of them making deliveries to 23 employees today. With the expansion, they expect to add about three new employees every year. That's the jobs part.
The business that extends over several states retains a family-owned feel.
"We're never really sure who got put down as president or vice president on the company papers, but it doesn't really matter," Dan Barbone said the other day while in the warehouse office. He turned to Lou Barbone, who was on the phone; "Do you know?"
Lou Barbone shook his head.
|