The aroma of baking pepperoni bread and freshly made tomato pie are unmistakable as you enter the door to Marchiano's Bakery.
On some days, the entire Marchiano family is scuttling behind the bakery counter, answering phones, preparing orders and helping customers. Most of the time, however, it’s just Daneen, a University College student at Saint Joseph’s who was only 21-years-old when she took over her father’s bakery in Manayunk.
Although Daneen’s plan wasn’t always to run the family business, her father’s heart attack in 2003 compelled her to take the reins of the business he built out of his mother’s basement in her small row home in Manayunk.
Juggling a full-course load while running Marchiano’s Bakery full-time was a balancing act for the 26-year-old, who will graduate from Saint Joseph’s with a degree in food marketing on May 16. “I was burning the candle at both ends, but I’m happy to be graduating Saint Joseph’s as a strong student,” she confirmed.
Though she had minimal prior experience in business management, Daneen's hard work has expanded Marchiano's Bakery to the point where it is literally outgrowing its walls.
Despite Marchiano’s rapid growth, several aspects of its operations are dated and need an upgrade. Currently, the bakery only accepts cash and all of the bookwork and ordering is done by hand. Revenue is based mostly on repeat business, and they rely on word-of-mouth as the primary source of advertising.
“It was a big deal when my dad let us get a computer in the office a few years ago,” Daneen joked. “Even then, it didn’t have the Internet or Microsoft Word.”
With the lessons Daneen learned from an independent study she took this spring under the guidance of Richard George, Ph.D., professor of food marketing, she hopes her plan will come to fruition. The class allowed her to devote time specifically towards creating a business plan.
After graduation, Daneen will take what she has learned in the classroom and apply it directly to her family business in order to bring it up-to-date in a technology-based world. On her to-do list are tasks such as creating an e-mail list and customer database, recording customer demographics and branding a slogan for the bakery to increase recognition.
“My father has done a wonderful job building the business with my mom, but it’s still an old-world bakery,” she explained. “We need to make some changes.
Contact: Office of University Communications, 610-660-1222, ucomm@sju.edu
