Pietro Brembilla’s childhood was magical. He pedaled his bike around his parents’ expansive, peaceful estate in Bolgheri, Italy, weaving his way around grapevines, farm animals and olive trees.
“I cannot think of a better childhood,” Brembilla said.
Yearning to visit an area with a little more action, he and his childhood friend, Brian Persico, left the quiet, rolling hills of Tuscany for bustling New York City. The two fell in love with the city and the “sabbatical” turned into a new adventure.
“It was a big shock, but we wanted more of it,” Brembilla said with a laugh.
Making their NYC stay permanent in 2007, after serving at restaurants for two year, the duo founded Sogno Toscano in 2009, with one product — olive oil from the Brembilla family estate in Tuscany. Persico and Brembilla hand-labeled bottles of premium Tuscan olive oil from their modest one-bedroom apartment.
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“We would go around to restaurants and sell the olive oil that was produced at my family’s estate,” Brembilla said. “We would sell olive oil here, olive oil there. These two kids would go around the city selling this very high-quality Tuscan olive oil.”
“I was born and raised in Tuscany and, at age 20, I moved to New York City for what was supposed to be a sabbatical for a couple of months,” Brembilla said in his Arcadia café.
“It turned into a life choice; this is 2008. We were kids, and kids with big dreams. In fact, the name of the company, Sogno Toscano translates to Tuscan dream. Literally, it was a dream of ours to build a company on what we grew up around.”
They knew chances were slim that they could build a successful company in a foreign country with an unknown industry. Persico and Brembilla were not in the food industry, and they were in their twenties.
“Still, we own it,” he said. “We run it and we have several people involved in that [distribution] division. We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of products that we import from Italy; 720 to be precise. We started with one. AJ’s is a good client of ours.”
Persico and Brembilla moved to the Valley, where the latter’s family owned property. Now Sogno Toscano-branded products are available to the public at the Arcadia restaurant/store.
The Tempe-based company supplies products to the “top chefs nationwide” through its 10 distribution centers, a division that was founded in 2018. Sogno Toscano delivers to homes and those who operate lifestyle cafés and markets dedicated to sharing authentic Italian culture and cuisine.
“Our standards are so high,” he said. “They [chefs] judge our products. We have to impress them. If it’s a charcuterie board or something on the menu like pizza, everything has a story behind it.”
To add to the authenticity, the general manager, Giacomo Dali, and the sommelier, his wife Gaia, are Italian. The store is peppered with those of Italian heritage.
In Arcadia, Sogno Toscano sells its olives, cured jowl, olive oil, cherry tomatoes, cheeses, sauces, balsamics, bruschetta spread and home décor, among other items.
The cafés were born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which they lost 90% of their business.
“All my clients shut down,” he said. “We took a major hit. We had all these products coming in from Italy — you can’t stop shipping containers.
“We had all this stock that was maybe about to expire. You can’t just keep cheese. We figured we would open our own store in New York, where everything started. We thought we could at least have retail.”
In the charming store on Perry Street in New York City’s West Village, in 2021, the masked and gloved men distributed bags of pasta and parmesan cheese wedges to help home chefs. Customers could call them and they would send a truck to their homesd, as well.
Sogno Toscano was so successful that they expanded on the market/deli concept. Instead, it became a hospitality house and, “Thank God the business came back.”
The retail shops work to build Sogno Toscano’s clientele. They want the public to enjoy the café.
“With the market, we’re always on the lookout for the next wholesale client to walk in and sell them something,” he said. “Maybe they will start carrying our products in their stores, restaurants or whatnot. That has been proven successful so much that we keep opening the markets where we do wholesale business.” The stores are in Santa Monica and Los Angeles’ The Grove. All of the stores, including Arcadia, have charming patios on which to dine al fresco, surrounded by vegetation and pottery.
“We worked very hard for it in the first decade,” he said. “It was a struggle, like any business that you start. You never know when it’s going to break through. It took us a decade to do so. We have the mission, the purpose and the name of the company means ‘Tucson dream.’ It was a dream and dreams can come true.”
Information: Sogno Toscano Lifestyle Café, 3950 E. Indian School Road, in Phoenix’s Arcadia neighborhood. 480-210-4337, arcadia@sognotoscano.com
