Where there’s smoke, there’s often Chiavetta’s
Firm’s barbecues are popular fundraisers
The smoky aroma of barbecue marinade and hundreds of half chickens sizzling over the open flame of a charcoal pit often wafts through the fields of Brant.
Chiavetta’s, a Western New York barbecuing and marinating institution, has been grilling at that spot for over 55 years.
The same marinated aroma is familiar in towns and villages, at churches, fire halls, legion posts and Kiwanis Clubs throughout Western New York. The Chiavetta’s name has become a staple of summer barbecuing and fundraising in the region, raising nearly a half a million dollars for the hundreds of nonprofit organizations that use it for their events each year.
So popular are the chicken dinners that some people seek out the Chiavetta events and make special trips to buy the meals. For many functions, it’s not simply a meal, it’s a major attraction.
It’s a different business now than when the late Thomas Chiavetta began raising poultry in 1951. Then, the Chiavettas often cooked a few of their chickens and served them at extended family events.
Today, the company grills more than 325,000 halves of chicken a year, shipped in from Dudley Poultry Co. in Middlesex, for fundraisers, private events and take-out orders. And its trademark barbecue sauce is available in grocery stores throughout the region.
Business has grown by about 10 percent each year, said Peter Chiavetta, 56, son of the founder, who now runs the business. That growth led Chiavetta and co-operator Phil Pericak to open a second take-out dinner location off Transit Road in the Town of Lockport several weeks ago.
“There’s people up there in the Northtowns that really want our product, and we were not helping them get it,” Chiavetta said.
The company also is planning a third store in Orchard Park in the next couple of years.
“Our goodwill has established our name,” Chiavetta said. “And we’ve maintained that goodwill.”
St. Columban’s On The Lake retirement home in Silver Creek has hosted Chiavetta’s fundraisers for almost 40 years. Assistant administrator Jerry Kehoe said the annual event, which this year benefited a mission in the Philippines, sells between 1,500 and 1,800 chicken dinners.
“You have to have a signature item that’s recognized,” Kehoe said. “Once you have a product that’s good, there’s no reason to change.”
Chiavetta said the company charges $3.50 a dinner to the nonprofits, which in turn sell the dinners for $7 to $8 dollars each. The low price means Chiavetta’s makes a thin profit margin from the fundraisers: Chiavetta said a broken down delivery truck can wipe away the day’s earnings.
“One of the biggest satisfactions is that it can be used for charitable organizations,” he said. “There’s a genuine appreciation for the product and what it does.”
Peter Chiavetta started helping his father with the business at the age of 10, and inherited the workload as co-operator when Thomas Chiavetta died more than 20 years ago. Now, Peter’s daughter Kathleen is the company receptionist, and twin daughters Margaret and Martha work part-time.
Soon after his father’s death, Peter Chiavetta began bottling their marinade and selling it to area grocery stores, a practice his father had always been reluctant to start.
The idea grew out of the customers who approached him with empty mayonnaise jars at fundraisers, offering him a dollar to fill them with the marinade. Today, the company sells more than 30,000 cases of 32- ounce bottles, and 15,000 cases of 64-ounce bottles of marinade.
When Chiavetta’s other products, including wing sauce and salad dressing, are factored in, the company sells more than 500,000 bottles of products a year, grossing nearly $1 million a year.
The growth of the company forced it to move past its Brant headquarters. Chiavetta’s outsourced its bottling division to a Pennsylvania company in 1992, after keeping up with product demand became too burdensome.
“We couldn’t find enough staff to run it,” Chiavetta said. “I was thinking, ‘I’m working way too hard here.’ ”
While Chiavetta has tried expanding his marinade to stores in Ohio, Florida, and other areas, his strongest market continues to be Western New York.
“It’s tough to get it off the shelf in other areas,” Chiavetta said. “The Save-A-Lot in North Collins sells more than the 15 stores in Cleveland combined,” he said.
The bulk of the company’s advertising is by word of mouth and through the fundraisers they staff, Chiavetta said. The company only occasionally runs ads in a handful of Southtowns community newspapers.
The Chiavetta’s Web site has more hits on its events page than it does on its home page, which Chiavetta said was due to devoted customers scouting out future barbecue fundraiser locations.
A fan of the marinade in California even created a Facebook page in homage to Chiavetta’s, which now has almost 1,500 friends online.
Chiavetta said many customers think the Brant location is also a restaurant. On the contrary, the 10,000-square-foot warehouse facility contains a series of storage rooms, sheds and walk-in coolers that hold everything from the salad mix that feeds 124,000 fundraiser patrons annually, to the 200,000 rolls consumed, to the tens of thousands of pounds of charcoal the company uses every year.
While some chicken is cooked in Brant, Chiavetta’s grills most of its chicken at each fundraiser, on portable charcoal pits. Transporting and cooking the chicken at the various fundraisers involves a team of 10 employees, which grows to 30 to 40 during the summertime, and a fleet of seven trucks. Smaller events only require one employee, Chiavetta said.
One of those employees, Jordan Stapf, made a 54-mile trek last week from Brant to grill for Lockport’s Charles Upson Elementary School, where a fundraiser for the school’s Relay for Life sold 420 chicken dinners. Stapf said he enjoys the job, even though his clothes and car constantly smell of chicken and marinade.
“It’s better than going to the same place every day,” Stapf, 23, said. “It’s a different area all the time.”
At Upson, teacher’s aide Mary Kay Brady said the relay teams should have ordered more chicken. The team pre-sold 300 dinners and the remaining 120 sold out within the first 10 minutes of the two-hour barbecue.
“You know the phrase, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ ” she said. “This is, ‘If you smell it, they will come.’ ”
One of Upson’s customers, 14-year-old Theresa Roth, was ultimately successful when she decided to stick around until the end of the fundraiser to see if any pre-sold dinners would go unclaimed. Her mother sent her out to get one for her older brother, who missed the taste of it while away at college.
The eighth-grader at De- Sales recognized the Chiavetta’s smell from when her school had a fundraiser.
“We could smell it in the hallways,” she said.
It’s the brand recognition among the young that Peter Chiavetta feels will drive his business into the future. He said he remembers a fundraiser event 30 years ago, where a youngster walked up toward the grill, breathed in and exclaimed “Ah, Chiavetta’s!” It was then, he said, that he knew he’d be in the business for the rest of his life.
“When you get little kids recognizing your product,” Chiavetta said, “You know you have a market.”
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